Slightly Biased Manga

I only have time to do one review tonight (I’ve been trying to do two a night to get back into the habit of updating regularly), and while I have a big stack of manga I need to talk about, I’ll pick the one from the newest publisher in the bunch.

I honestly don’t know what to think about this title. The plot is about a boy who suddenly sprouts wings. Turns out the boy has a disease called… angelosis, maybe, and a lot of people have it. It was hushed up, but because his exploitative brother released images to the public, the government decides to make the main character their poster boy and reveal that there is and always has been a lot of individuals who suffer from angelosis. Their assimilation into society is helped by the popularity of the band “Angelaid” since many fans of the band wear costume wings around. It’s an episodic story about getting accepted into society when you find yourself with wings.

I just cannot forgive it the totally obvious metaphor. It treats the subject with an entirely straight face, as it should, and the tone is genuine as it goes through the different stories about discrimination in many forms. But angelosis is pretty ridiculous in the context of the story, and everything else is serious… I can’t mesh the two in my head. It would be like reading “With the Light” if, instead of being autistic, Hikaru was a pumpkin and everything else was exactly the same AND TOTALLY SERIOUS. “Flock of Angels” suffers a little from sacrificing character development in favor of its messages, but is every bit as genuine as “With the Light.” There are several things that could have been done to make the metaphor more effective and integrate it into the story more, but as it is, it throbbed in my head like a migraine the entire time I was reading the volume.

I just… I’m so confused. I’ve rewritten this review about twelve times, seesawing back and forth between writing about how rotten I thought it was and presenting my problems with it in a neutral way. I don’t know. No manga has ever made me question its values and intent the way this one has. Does that make it bad or good?