Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread

tl;dr - Go read "Love's in Sight!" It is extremely good.

Alright, here is the deal. Over the past week, I haven't posted as much as I normally would, but it's not because I haven't been reading manga. Instead, I found a manga that I binged the heck out of this past week and sucked up almost all my manga time instead. This might be a long post, so I put a tl;dr at the top. Ok, story time...

On the recent updates feed for mangadex this past week, I saw a chapter get posted that was marked as the end of the series. Out of curiosity, I click through to the page for the series and read the synopsis. The synopsis was just one, short sentence, but mentioned that one of the leads was partially blind. This caught my attention, so I thought I would check out some chapters. That was five days ago. As of writing this, I just finished the series with chapter 125. I couldn't put the series down once I got into it. I wanted to talk a bit about what I thought made the series good since that tiny little synopsis on mangadex doesn't really do it justice.

First, a bit of a more thorough synopsis while still remaining spoiler-free. This series centers around a delinquent, yankee, gang-leader named Morio and a mostly blind girl named Yukiko. Morio, due to his appearance, including a prominent facial scar from his younger days, is typically treated as a fearsome ruffian to be avoided and finds himself outcast from society unable to find a job and eventually dropping out of school. Yukiko, mostly blind, uses a cane to get around the city and literally runs into Morio. She scolds him for standing in the way on the braille blocks built into the sidewalk. Not used to being treated this way, Morio finds himself interested in Yukiko and her boldness in dealing with him when most others are cowed by fear.

In general, this series focuses on characters that are different from the societal norm in some way. Our leads are different in that they are a scarred delinquent and visually impaired. However, other characters that feature heavily in later story arcs are different in other ways; social anxiety, sexuality, etc. Each of these is handled with a lot of care and respect. The cast of characters grows as the series goes on and each of them feel unique and like real people. We get to see how people face the challenges of everyday life while bearing the burden of their own circumstances. What looks like a small step for one person can be an impossibly high hurdle for another and this series does a great job of depicting this.

The thing that caught my eye about this series to start was the partially blind female lead. In my professional life, I work in pharmaceutical R&D, typically working on medications before reaching and while undergoing clinical trials. Some of the projects I have worked on in the past were for eye conditions including Choroideremia and Retinitis Pigmentosa. Both of these diseases are genetic and result in a decay in your vision as you age, starting in childhood. Essentially, young adults are basically told they will go blind (or mostly blind) and to start practicing being blind now so that they can more easily transition. What follows is a years-long gradual decline in their vision as their retinal cells atrophy due to these genetic diseases. I have had the chance to speak with patients going through this process and their family members. So, I was curious to see how visual impairment was depicted in this manga.

I am thrilled to say that the types of challenges that Yukiko and her friends from the School for the Blind experience are extremely realistic and the same types of things I heard about. Things that many of us don't think twice about like self-checkouts (and touch screens in general), untextured sidewalks/crosswalks, muffled speakers announcing stops on the bus/subway, become huge challenges when you can't see. They also depicted three different types of blindness, which is something many people don't realize. Often, my younger self included, people think that being blind means you can't see anything. However, in reality, there are many different types and degrees of blindness that result from different underlying causes.

I also want to mention that, despite covering all of the above subject matter, the romance in this series is very good. Our main pair of leads are open and communicative and work through issues that arise in a refreshingly open manner. It's just a really well written romance that also happens to have all this other stuff in it as well.

I cannot recommend the series enough. I spent most of the last week reading it, and have enjoyed every minute of it. There are chapters that are hilarious, some are heartbreaking, and then some are incredibly touching. I have only known about this series for the past couple days, but I already miss it.