Perfect World

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From age 5 to age 11, I lived with my grandmother whose body was 96% immobile. From Monday to Friday, she'd take care of me (alone, my grandpa was dead by that time). During the weekend, I'd be with my parents.

This is why 'Perfect World' was a personal premise to me. Especially as I have hazy memories of my grandma's condition - she became wheelchair-bound within 2 years of the first symptoms.

Enough personal stories: let's see why the manga is a solid 7.5/10 to me. Here are 5 bad and 5 good things about it:

The bad things:

- Kawana's growth took way too long. She spent ... so many volumes being the typical shoujo protagonist in a manga narrative that warrants a quicker growing pace.
- The middle volumes were filled with too much drama which sometimes almost reached 'Domestic Girlfriend' levels of forced character confrontations/plot 'progression'.
- Reducing the above drama a little and instead focusing a bit more on the architecture/industry details and its interaction with barrier-free projects would have been amazing.
- Slightly disappointing treatment of one of the main side characters.
- Slightly jarring time skips - realistically, the manga goes through A LOT of years. I'm not fully sure, but it covers a 5-6 year span or so through its entirety.

The good things:

- Aruga-san has done extensive research for her work and it shows. From complications to the general lifestyle of wheelchair-bound people, her compassion and interest shine through.
- Ayukawa is simply a great character. Later on, Kawana becomes a fleshed-out counterbalance to her earlier persona.
- Decent side character cast. They can be one-dimensional, but it's better than your typical shoujo manga.
- Extended period of time covered -- I said it's a bit jarring (the transitions just feel awkward); however, it's great to see a series which follows the main couple through several years with distinctive progression and life situations.
- Simple, but very expressive art style; some beautiful chapters and tear-jerker scenes.


I guarantee you'd feel irritated and itch to drop it around the middle, where the forced drama is the worst. Highly suggest you persist through that, the latter chapters are very slice of life and more mature.

As I said, 7.5/10, a solid one. I wish my grandma were still alive, so I'd read some chapters to her.

This manga could have been great, and it started out very strong, but contrived drama seriously undermines it. The characters become unlikable and typical love triangle (square?) nonsense cheapens what had the potential to be a very powerful romance. The struggles that the main couple would have to deal with provides enough dramatic content to sustain the entire story - it should have focused on the couple growing through their hardships, learning to support each other in an inhospitable world. Instead, far too much time is focused on communication problems and manipulative secondary characters that never really earn our support. The entire middle of the ... manga was a chore to get through because of this and what could have been a 9 or 10 was ruined.

The art is great as is much of the writing, so I'm giving it a 4.

Normally I wait until a series is over to review it, as I believe a series can to some degree be saved or ruined by it's ending. This manga however, like a shack built on sand or in a swamp is built with a flawed foundation. Spoilers.

The first few chapters of this series seemed rather interesting and promising. As proper, well done Josei is some of the best romance manga out there. I, like a specific comment I read on a chapter of this manga, expected to see the difficulties of being disabled, how to handle them, and how to provide support to such a ... significant other. Not this shit, where instead of focusing on those aspects, the manga uses them as a cheap weapon for characters opposed to the relationship to force cheap superfluous and frankly contrived melodrama. Something that certainly isn't SoL, and in my opinion, ends up creating a bad manga.

The characters of this manga seem irredeemable. Kawana is the most typical Shoujo protagonist I have ever seen, and hoped never to see in this supposed Josei and in any manga in general. She's weak, unable to function or think on her own, and frequently breaks down. Nothing is 'evil' or 'wrong' with these qualities individually, however compiled together it creates a frankly annoying character who has basically become concurrent with the Shoujo genre. Ayukawa is a bit more sympathetic a character and is generally of greater quality. He's paralyzed from the waist down, understandably tormented by it, and trying to deal with it. The ways his disability affected the main pair's relationship was interesting until the side characters started using it as a weapon to force drama and try and split them up. While this isn't impossible or even unlikely, it's overdone and out of place considering the genres. Kawana's parents use emotional blackmail stating her father is going to die soon and don't want their daughter tied to a cripple because 'he won't be able to provide or protect her'. Neither Kawana nor Ayukawa refute this or defend themselves. While they thankfully do not concede, they do simply accept this grotesque and invasive bullshit without response. It is not enjoyable or reasonable and does not make for a good slice of life, what this manga claims to be. The other cunt who weaponized Ayukawa's disability is his freshly divorced nurse who uses it to poke and prod Kawana and Ayukawa into breaking up be she thinks she a superior partner. An arrogant, god complexed and narcissistic cunt if I've ever seen one.

All in all, this manga instead of focusing on what it should and what by genre it purports to be, the reality of being in a relationship with someone who is paralyzed, it decides to focus on emotional blackmail, and the torment of two vulnerable characters. The only character I had the slightest respect for was Koreeda, however he ends up pursuing a relationship with Kawana after her emotional break down and nasty break up. Which is one of two things, a display of unparalleled idiocy and selfishness, or like the cunt nurse, an abuse of position and emotions.

In summary, the manga magnificently failed to focus on and write about what it should as a Josei and more specifically a Slice of Life. Instead it took a typical Shoujo approach to romance and further desecrated itself by using a character's disability as a weapon to push cheap drama. I believe such a manga had the potential for at least a "7 / 10". The reason however I am writing this review prior to it's completion is because I believe it has lost all possible hope of redemption. Regardless, I'll likely update the review upon completion of the series. While I'm almost certain that completion will resolve with the revival of the main relationship, I'm unconfident but suspect the road to such will be a typical and generic soul search, unhappiness in a new and unhealthy relationship followed by the ever unoriginal realization of who their true love is followed by reconciliation and a sad but inevitable acceptance by all previous cunts who opposed the relationship.

Considering such, I deem this manga an astounding 1 / 10. This manga merely uses disability as a cheap weapon instead of a main theme of the story. Follows typical Shoujo character design and plot formula, and aside from the aforementioned disability is of no originality of notice.

Update: I was right. Disappointing all around.