When staffing changes at Masato’s company get him transferred to a dead-end job in the middle of nowhere, more suffering seems imminent for the Azuma family. However, Masato approaches the situation with aplomb and comes up with new ways to pave the way for Hikaru and those like him to become “cheerful working adults”… with surprising results. Hikaru himself seems to be getting closer, bit by bit, to achieving this goal as the Azumas decide to foster their son’s independence in a variety of ways, including getting to and from school on his own. But when Hikaru encounters an old acquaintance on the way home and leads Sachiko to a horrific discovery, will the Azumas be able to return a favour and help out a friend in need? (from back of book)
Okay, this time the summary on the back of the book is pretty accurate. Sachiko does make a horrific discovery, but more on that later.
This volume doesn’t really feature Hikaru directly much at all. He only really shows up a few times just to let the readers know that he has an amazing memory (think Reid from Criminal Minds), that he’s advancing in his development (he walks to and from school on his own and spends a lot of time in the mainstream class now), and that he’s a total sweetheart (he is a very good big brother to Kanon).
This volume starts off with Masato going to work. He was demoted at the end of the last volume and it hasn’t really started affecting the story until now. First of all, there will apparently be a decrease in Masato’s salary, but money has never really been mentioned except in passing or as a reason as to why certain things can’t be bought, or whatever. The really big change in all of this is that Masato has basically been shipped off to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere (since some of the higher ups in the company are trying to get him to quit because they have no real grounds to fire him).
Working at the warehouse/office looks just miserable. Masato is confined to a small room with only a table and a window. There is no air conditioner to help with the sweltering summer heat and all the other workers either ignore him or aren’t allowed to talk to him. He isn’t given anything to do and the only thing he really has to work on is his laptop brought from home.
The upside to all this is that he has a lot of time to himself… and he’s certainly up to something.
We don’t find out until later what’s going on with him, but at the end of the first chapter Masato says that he’s finished working on something and it all seems pretty important. He keeps going to his new office every day, much to the annoyance of the two higher ups there who are just waiting for him to quit, until he gets a call from his old work partner Tanigawa saying that big changes are going on at their old workplace.
Masato takes advantage of this new opportunity and manages to get himself back into his old company in a good position. His first order of business is to take the warehouse he had been demoted to and turn it into a place that would hire people with disabilities as workers. This volume talks a lot about disabilities in the workplace as Masato and his new employees learn about how to smoothly run a company and turn a profit while working with people with disabilities.
This part of the volume is awesome because I don’t think a lot of people (me included) really think about people with disabilities having jobs. Then Masato and co. take a fieldtrip to a company that has been employing disabled people for over ten years. We’re shown how a company like this might be run, and what kind of adjustments would have to be made for everything to work effectively.
This is a pretty big deal for Masato. Not only is he about to start managing a company where he expects a grand majority of the workers to have some sort of disabilities, but this is kind of a glimpse into Hikaru’s possible future. Hikaru won’t be in school forever, so companies like this are very important if he is to become a cheerful working adult when he grows up.
After the workplace arc is over, it’s time for Hikaru’s AAPEP evaluation. The AAPEP is to evaluate his functional skills to see what he can already do and what he still has to work on. There are forms for Hikaru’s parents and Gunji-sensei to fill out concerning Hikaru’s skills and when and where he uses them.
Hikaru goes to Sunshine House to be evaluated by a psychologist named Soejima. Soejima-sensei has Hikaru do a number of different tasks: sorting things, playing basketball, asking for food, following orders, working through distractions, and other things. He does pretty well (there’s no tantrums or crying) and the results allow Hikaru’s parents and teachers to create a personal curriculum for Hikaru.
It’s getting close to Christmas in the second half of the volume. School is going well; Kanata seems to be under a massive workload, and Hikaru still wanders as he walks home from school on his own. There most likely won’t be a repeat of Hikaru’s Adventure (from Volume 2) since most of the neighbourhood kind of watches out for Hikaru… that and he has a GPS tracker on him.
It’s on a detour while walking home when Hikaru is found by Oki-kun. The two meet while Hikaru is looking at an outdoor Christmas tree (he still loves shiny things) and then they are found by Sachiko. Oki tries to run away when Sachiko shows up and he almost gets hit by a car. When Sachiko checks him over to make sure that he hasn’t gotten hurt, she discovers bruises all over Oki’s torso. She invites Oki to come back home with them and then takes him to the doctor, where they find out that he has a fractured rib.
No one’s really seen Oki since Volume 2 and this is the first time he’s shown up since he left. He looks like he’s doing better than before: he’s put on some weight and he’s dressed appropriately for the weather. It would seem that all is going well for him, until Oki goes back to where he now lives and we see that not everything is as it seems.
Masato goes to visit Oki and discovers that the school where he lives is terrible. It doesn’t specify how many children are actually there (I think there’s only four or five that are shown, but there are more), but there’s a poor teacher-to-child ratio. The principal is totally clueless as to what’s going on, one of the teachers believes strongly in corporal punishment (with a baseball bat), another seems to be there just for show, and the only sympathetic one we see seems to be in way over her head.
Luckily, it’s Masato to the rescue and CPS, or whatever the Japanese equivalent of that is, is called in to help. Oki-kun’s arc wraps up on a positive note. This arc moves away from the subject of autism to shed some light on child abuse and abuse happening in institutions. There’s even a brief scene where Sachiko talks to Masato about her almost abusing Hikaru when he was younger and how lucky she felt that she found support and was able to change her ways.
The last major thing that happens this volume is that Kanata moves away. Even since Volume 1, I never thought of him as a major character since he doesn’t really show up much. However, he seemed to start appearing more often as Hikaru started to spend more time in the mainstream class. Until this volume I didn’t realize how close Hikaru and Kanata were, but the reality is that they are childhood friends (like Hikaru and Nobuaki, or Hikaru and Moe). It was really sad to see Kanata leave, and Hikaru took it pretty hard, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.
Although this volume didn’t feature too much of Hikaru, it did bring to light pertinent issues related to Hikaru, such as work after leaving school and abuse.
At the end of every volume so far there’s been a text preview for the next volume. This volume is different because it also includes some actual pages from the next volume. I think this works better to make you really want to read the next volume because the preview mentions graduating.
…
Hikaru’s almost finished elementary school!!!
It’s his last year! Are you excited? I’m excited!
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