With the Light 4
Posted: November 9, 2009 Filed under: With the Light Leave a comment »Keiko Tobe – Yen Press – 2009 – 14+ volumes
this omnibus contains volumes 7-8 of the series.
Continuing with the omnibus theme for this week, here’s With the Light, which I am sadly behind on. This only comes out every six months, so there’s really no reason why I can’t stay caught up. Oh well.
I don’t really have that much to say that I haven’t said already. There weren’t a whole lot of changes to Hikaru or his routine in this volume, though careers were discussed, as well as factories that employed handicapped individuals, and Hikaru had a kind of assessment to determine his strengths and weaknesses. There were some comings and goings. There were two parts that were quite touching, though neither dealt with Hikaru directly. One was where his father was finally able to deal with his situation at work and come to terms with it (complete with a long chapter about appreciating what you can in a bad situation), and the other dealt with an old friend who was having some abuse problems in an orphanage. Actually, that storyline was never quite resolved. I wonder what happened to Oki?
Reading the series is a little more tedious than I like, mostly because of the repetition I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. The story was written with the magazine format in mind, and exists to inform more than to entertain (which is fine, that’s what it does), so a lot of the story points and information are repeated over and over again. This probably isn’t a problem if you make the long volume stretch out over several days worth of reading, but you’ll notice if you read it all in one sitting.
Again. This series is wonderful at what it does, which is to teach the reader about autism and show how an autistic individual develops and adapts to the world and people around him. It really is an interesting read, and I learn so much from every volume. It’s not light, entertaining reading, though. Don’t look for the usual story and plot.
Hmm. I wonder if this series is still running in Japan? It doesn’t sound like it ends at volume 14, but I can’t find it in any of Akita Shoten’s current women’s magazines, and they stopped featuring the newest volume on their site, something they’d been doing for at least a year or two.
