Anime Talk - My Prayers have been Answered
I've asked for it for years by now, and finally, it's hear!
Lately, anime has become better at displaying people with disabilities. Two years ago there was Yubisaki to Renren (A sign of Affection), featuring the romance between a deaf woman and a hearing man. It seemed like an accurate portrayal of the daily struggles of deaf people, even if I don't know anyone who's deaf. And not only that, there were matters that I related to as well, like the struggle to communicate when one of the three key components of communication is missing, seeing, hearing and feeling. It was a beautiful anime. But since I finished that, I was wondering when we would get a similarly accurate portrayal of the blind people.
It's not like blind people are not portrayed in anime, but in most cases, either they are completely useless and have a different disability that makes them wheelchair bound, or they are simply too overpowered so it feels like they were made blind just so they could have a weakness.
Breakers, an anime about para-olympic sports did a pretty good job portraying the blind and visually impaired, and all the other disabilities represented. However, they only focus on the visually impaired for a few episodes.
But finally, there is an anime that seems to focus more or less exclusively on the blind. The protagonist of Toumei Otoko to Ningen Onna: Sonouchi Fuufu ni Naru Futari (The Invisible Man and his Soon-to-be Wife), Yakou Shizuka, is completelly blind. She has a job, she can get around by herself by using her cane, she uses some type of voice over when working and she struggles with all the visual cues of communication. Well, everyone has that issue with the titular invisible man. Shizuka, however, seems to struggle a bit less because she does not rely on sight to locate him. Instead she relies on hearing and smell. Admitedly, I have only watched one episode, so I don't know how it'll turn out yet, but judging from the first episode, this is promising.
To me, it feels like my prayers have finally been answered. It feels like I finally have a proper representation of myself, someone I can relate to in a different way.
Don't get me wrong, I also relate to characters emotionally, Some might correspond well to other feelings inside of me, and that's also very nice, but this is different.
So far, I think the original creator has done a good job with this story and portrayal of the blind, but I'll be keeping an eye on this series and see what comes next.
