For Sachiko and Masato, it seems like only yesterday that their children, Hikaru and Kanon, were little. But these days, Kanon is about to start elementary school, while Hikaru is getting out into society and going to junior high by bus. However, in the outside world, some of Hikaru’s insistences that were acceptable when he was younger are not so anymore. When one such habit creates chaos during the morning commute, Sachiko has to find a way to clear up a serious misunderstanding with Hikaru’s fellow commuters and take steps to curb any behaviour that might stand in the way of Hikaru living in the world as a “cheerful, working adult.” Furthermore, dealing with the negative perceptions that others – including her mother-in-law – have about Hikaru begins to take its toll on Sachiko, especially with Masato occupied at work. Will the stress of facing new challenges presented by Hikaru’s autism drive a rift between the two? (from the back of the book)
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Hikaru in a junior high uniform everyone! He’s gotten quite big over the course of 6 volumes; he’s already 12 years old.
This volume doesn’t really bring up Hikaru’s schooling. He’s in the hands of competent staff now and he’s progressing fairly steadily, so there really are no problems there. It’s the same pattern from earlier volumes, not much is shown if everything’s going well. It’s sad that he can’t be with his childhood friends, who attend Shichigatsu Junior High, but they do get together every now and then (karaoke fun, yo).
Strangely enough, this volume seems to put a lot of focus on health problems. This wouldn’t be a problem except that when the characters talk about it they all sound like doctors. Seriously, Sachiko’s mother gets heart surgery and suddenly everyone is an expert on clogged arteries.
So, Sachiko’s mother gets heart surgery. This new development doesn’t come completely out of nowhere (very unlike Aoki-sensei and Wakabayashi-sensei’s romance) because it’s been mentioned a few times before in earlier volumes that Sachiko’s mother has weak veins, or something. Because of her mother’s health problems Sachiko has to go be with her in the hospital and help her father out at home. Can I just mention the fact that Sachiko’s father is practically incapable of running a house? I mean, he can’t even hang up clothes to dry. I know that his wife’s the one who took care of the house, but didn’t he help or learn anything at all? Didn’t he ever live on his own? Is this normal?
Anyway, Sachiko has a lot on her plate these days. She has to take care of Hikaru and Kanon, be a housewife, work, help her parents, and volunteer at Sunshine House. She’s running around a lot, probably trying to do too much at once, and is tired and stressed out. Then she thinks that Masato is cheating on her.
Yeah, this comes completely out of nowhere. The only thing that would ever even suggest this is a remark Sachiko’s mother makes one day when Sachiko visits the hospital without make-up on. We all know that Masato isn’t the cheating kind, and Sachiko says as much, but he does pick the wrong time to start giving advice to a young female co-worker. Funny thing about all this is that it was a big enough event to get mentioned in the book’s summary, but nothing really came from it. Sure Sachiko was slowly heading towards a melt-down and Masato was helping out a co-worker for quite a bit, but I can’t believe that all that was building up to a small fight that only lasts for a few pages half-way through the book, and then never comes up again past Masato receiving a New Years postcard from the co-worker (like, the next day).
… glad we had this unnecessary drama.
There are a lot of things that happen in this volume that happen in the other volumes: little glimpses of life in the Azuma home, some small scenes from school, Hikaru doing this and that, the usual. Hikaru goes to karaoke with some friends over winter break, and while that happens there’s a cute story where Oota visits Tanaka in the hospital (appendicitis). Also, Kanon graduates from daycare and starts first grade at Shichigatsu Cho Elementary.
One thing that’s fairly new in his volume is that we see a lot of Azuma-san (Masato’s mother). There are a lot of Kanon-centered things going on (daycare graduation, starting elementary school, some kind of festival) so it probably isn’t so surprising that she’s showing up a lot.
I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I really don’t like Azuma-san. It’s bad enough that she’s a snob that puts image above everything else (people like that are a pet peeve of mine), but she does it at the expense of Sachiko and Hikaru. She does love Hikaru, I’m sure of it, but I’m also sure that she’s ashamed of him. She doesn’t say it outright but it’s pretty obvious by the way she acts, especially in public. I won’t go into much detail, but I’m pretty sure she’s of the opinion that Sachiko should keep Hikaru away from the general public. She was really starting to come around a bit when Hikaru was younger, but she changed her tune when Kanon was born. It’s almost like she was ‘settling’ for having Hikaru because she had no other options (since her other granddaughter, Noa, lives far away), but then Kanon was born and all her attention was focused on her. Now that Kanon’s getting older and is able to do more things, we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of Azuma-san next volume.
Another new things in this volume are the two small scenes that happen from Hikaru’s point of view. One is when he’s cleaning during New Years, and the other time happens while being babysat by Masato’s mother (which actually went pretty well despite, well, Masato’s mother). The one at Masato’s mother’s house is pretty funny and I often refer to it as ‘The Marvellous Misadventures of Hikaru Azuma’ (the face he made after drinking a special soup he thought was barley tea was just hilarious).
These scenes are interesting because they are the only times I can remember seeing Hikaru with his own thought bubbles. Hikaru can communicate verbally so he has plenty of speech bubbles, but it’s not until we suddenly see thought bubbles that we realize that we know very little of what exactly goes on inside Hikaru’s head. From what little we see, Hikaru’s thoughts seem pretty simple: mostly one or two words long, sometimes longer if it’s something he memorized. Also, the panels depicting what (I’m assuming) he’s looking at are fairly simple, showing only specific things (wipes, a garbage bag, pudding cups, whatever he’s focused on at the time).
I really wish there were more of these scenes throughout the series, I would’ve loved to see things through Hikaru’s eyes.
Well, that’s Volume 6. Hikaru’s getting older now and, because of that, his autism and any problems it may cause are starting to get easier to deal with. Hikaru is learning more about the world around him and it’s easier for him to communicate with people now. The series would get boring and repetitive if all it showed was Hikaru going through life doing the same things over and over without any obstacles, so that’s probably why we’re given stories that focus primarily on other characters.
Something I’d like to mention that isn’t exclusive to Volume 6: I love the relationship between Hikaru and Kanon. It’s probably more noticeable now that they’re older, but I’ve always thought that Hikaru and Kanon’s relationship was completely normal. You can really tell that they’re brother and sister. It’s obvious that they love each other but they also fight a lot, as siblings often do, further proof that Tobe-sensei can write realistic children.
Hikaru is autistic and Kanon is neurotypical, there are so many ways in which this relationship could go wrong because of bad writing. Luckily, Tobe-sensei made both children normal. Hikaru is autistic, but he isn’t a savant and he doesn’t have any crazy special skills that leave people in awe of him. Kanon is a very normal little girl and is neither saint-like nor ‘wise beyond her years’. Because of this, they’re interactions with each other are believable and fun to read.
Hikaru knows that he is the big brother and he does have a special relationship with his sister (I think she’s the only one who can argue with him and deliver blows to his ego). On her part, Kanon is seven years younger than Hikaru and living with him is all she knows. I’m pretty sure that Hikaru is the only autistic person Kanon knows, but she doesn’t find him at all strange or weird (even though the things he does are sometimes unusual). To her, he just is, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t annoy Kanon at times and when he does she lets him know. That’s what I think Tobe-sensei did really well: she wrote Kanon as a very realistic character.
Kanon is only a little girl; she’s six years old in this volume. She understands that Hikaru sometimes needs leniency on certain things and that there are some things that he may not understand, but she also doesn’t let him get away with everything. They’ve been fighting and arguing on a fairly regular basis since Kanon was born. They get in each other’s business and they annoy each other, and that’s what makes it so great. A real child isn’t going to let another child get away with bothering them, even if the other child has disabilities, and the same goes for Kanon.
When they get along it’s sweet and funny to see, but sometimes they get on each other’s nerves (which can also be pretty amusing, come to think of it). Luckily there isn’t too much of one or the other. That’s all I have to say on that subject unless something comes up in the next volume.
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