パーフェクトワールド

PERFECT WORLD

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
12
RELEASE
January 24, 2021
CHAPTERS
59

DESCRIPTION

26-year-old Tsugumi Kawana reunites with her first crush from high school, Itsuki Ayukawa, at a get-together between an architecture firm and the interior design company she works at. He sends her heart aflutter, until she realizes he's now disabled, and in a wheelchair. At first she feels she couldn't date a guy in a wheelchair, but then her feelings begin to change...

(Source: Kodansha USA)

CAST

Itsuki Ayukawa
Tsugumi Kawana
Hirotaka Koreda
Miki Yukimura
Aoi Nagasawa

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

ladyfreyja

75/100

A rookie mangaka with an anecdotal career produces a hit manga.

Perfect World (パーフェクトワールド ) is a romance and societal drama manga by Rie Aruga, serialized between 2014 and 2021 inside the adult shōjo magazine Kiss by Kōdansha, and published in 12 tankōbon volumes. The manga tells the love story between an able woman and a disabled man.

The manga met a huge success in Japan; it won the 43rd Kōdansha Manga Awards for its shōjo segment and it got adapted into live-action twice, with a movie in 2018 and in TV series in 2019. It's a big success, considering the fact that Aruga is basically a rookie.

_Promotional visual for the movie._

For this review, I have read the French edition, published by Akata.

Context

Manga about disabilities is a rather recent trend inside shōjo manga and ladies comics; the topic was only sporadically approached before the important success of Keiko Tobe's Hikari to tomo ni… (光とともに...), published between 2000 and 2009 inside the Akita Shoten's magazine For Mrs., which started the trend. Following this new trend, Kiss' editorial staff wanted to publish a manga about mobility impairment, one of the most visible form of handicap. They somehow asked Rie Aruga to work on this new manga.


Kimi no te ga sasayaite iru _(君の手がささやいている) by Junko Karube, published in_ Mimi _then_ Kiss, _1992~2002._
_One of the few early shōjo manga about disabilities, in this case, deafness._<center>

As a child Aruga wanted to become mangaka but ended up to become an office lady in an import-export company. One day she started to read _Nodame Cantabile_ and decided to try to fulfill her childhood dream by becoming a mangaka. She won a contest for _Kiss_ and finally started in 2011 with the oneshot _Tentai Kansoku_ (天体観測), a romance in an college astronomy club. She kept publishing oneshots until 2013 where she adapted _Tentai Kansoku_ into a series called _Oruto no kumo kara_ (オールトの雲から). But the series wasn't popular enough and was stopped after only 6 chapters; the series will not even be published in tankōbon format.

This is directly after this more-or-less failure that _Kiss_' editorial staff asked Aruga to draw a manga about disability, they still considered that she had some potential. At first, _Perfect World_ was conceived as a oneshot. It was well-received and Aruga was then allowed to continue the story after the events of the oneshot (which thus became the first chapter of the series).

#The manga
------------

The story is about Tsugumi Kawana, a young interior designer, who is reunited with her crush from high-school, Itsuki Ayukawa, who became an accomplished young architect. But she is shocked to discover that he is now disabled, after he suffered an accident damaging his spinal cord, and that he must use a wheelchair for moving. The shock passed she learns about his new life, and finally fall in love with him again; this is the end of the first chapter and ex-oneshot. This story is very touching, even if it feels a little packed like most oneshots.

</center><img width='300' src='https://i.imgur.com/W2kNEoh.jpg'>
_Itsuki (left) and Tsugumi (right)._<center>

Then the story continues in the following chapters, and it is roughly divided into four arcs of about three volumes each with a tipping point between them. They are tackling various topics, like the health issues of Itsuki, the overwork and stress of Tsugumi, family rejection, natural disasters _et cætera_, with of course, your usual love-square, since this is fundamentally a shōjo romance manga.

This is the first important point about this manga: if it definitely contains a lot of educational content, this is not an educational manga in itself but is a romance manga. It avoids unnatural explanations and forced dialogues, there is no schematics and the medical jargon stay very low. I have read _Hikari to tomo ni…_ recently, and the contrast between the two works in that regard is very notable. Depending of the reader, this approach of the topic might be a negative or a positive point; in my case, I would say it is a positive one.

</center><img width='300' src='https://i.imgur.com/Ju0KnPp.jpg'>
_Usual shōjo romance melodrama._<center>

Consequently, despite its length, the story stay focused on the issues encountered by the main couple and do not digress much, notably when it comes to the handicap; there is other disabled people in the secondary casting, we understand that their problems are different, but they are never approached with much details.

Now, Aruga is a rookie, and it shows when it comes to story-telling. In the first half of the manga the advancement of the plot feels somewhat forced and too convenient, always following the same schema: the two protagonists meet a problem, can't deal with it by themselves, encounter some other characters who have almost exactly the same issue, and thank to that, they manage to overcome their situation.

In the second part of the manga, the story basically follows the same structure, but at least the artificial feeling disappears, the flow of the events feel more natural. But then the pacing become a little more disjointed, with some important but seamless leaps in time, which feel a little disconcerting. Still, despite those two issues, overall, the manga is very enjoyable, giving a good place to melodrama and a nice character growth.

</center><img width='300' src='https://i.imgur.com/eOm7OkT.jpg'><center>

When it comes to the style of the manga, the art is clean and nice, with a typical character design for shōjo manga from this period. The page composition is also very typical, with a lot of empty backgrounds, open panels, internal monologues, and decorative and emotional elements. Overall I feel that, as the manga progress, the pages contain less but larger panels, which helps at portraying emotions.

The main issue that I have with the composition is how some speech bubbles are still placed on the very edge of the internal part. As it is Aruga's first manga to be collected in tankōbon format, it is not a surprising issue, but it is still inconvenient, especially when it still appears in the 12th and last volume.

</center><img width='400' src='https://i.imgur.com/mDUSqYu.jpg'>
_Badly placed speech bubbles in volume 1._~~~

#Conclusion
------------------

In the end, we have a romance manga build around a societal topic. I think it keeps a good balance between melodrama, romanticism while handling decently its topic. The characters face important challenges without failing too much into miserabilism or optimism. This balance is not an easy goal, and I think that if the manga managed such a success, it is because it founds it.

All in all, the manga is very pleasant to read even if not exceptional, and when you consider that it is the first proper series from Rie Aruga, it is nice to see her growing as an author during seven years of publication.

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Sakuraplant
80/100
“Every moment, good or bad, is worth treasuring”
__Spoilers ahead __ Perfect World is a unique manga that I picked up back in September. It's about Tsugumi Kawana, a girl who reunited at her job with her old high school crush, Itsuki Ayukawa. The only difference is Ayukawa is now in a wheelchair due to a car accident. At first, it only looks like a little, but as you continue to read it gets interesting. Besides learning about our two MCs' relationship, we know a lot about medical science and the struggles that some wheelchair users face daily. I say some because every wheelchair user is different. Our female MC, Kawana, is shown to be a very caring person. She's also very insecure and compares herself to others. Kawana thinks that she is unreliable to Ayukawa. So, she decides to learn how to be a caregiver. It shows her devotion and determination, which is a likable trait. Some characters seem to see Kawana as selfish, but I don't see her as such because she's doing it for a loved one. It's not just our female MC who is shown to be worrisome. Ayukawa is shown to be very anxious but, at the same time, calm and laid back. When he was young, he believed the accident had utterly ruined his future. However, instead of giving up, Ayukawa worked hard and got his certificate and a job in architecture. What's interesting about him as a character is that he uses his love of architecture to help others who are disabled like him. He designs barrier-free homes so those with disabilities can live easily and comfortably. He wants to create more barrier-free places so that people, disabled or not, can go anywhere, normalizing it to the point where the term "barrier-free" is no longer used. We have side characters like Koreda and Nagasawa, who add great tension to the story. These characters want the same thing: to date the MC's because they see themselves as better partners and see how unhappy the MC's are when they are together. Nagasawa is a nurse and believes that she could take better care of Ayukawa and that Koreda would be a better match for giving Kawana a " happy, normal life." Too bad for them cause they ended up losing anyway. These two characters eventually give up and realize that maybe the MCs are happier together, so they move on with their own lives. We also learn about disabled couples like Kaede and Keigo, who go through just as much as the MC's. The author uses other disabled couples in the story so the MCs can learn from them. Despite Kaede having an illness that only allows her to live for a certain amount of time, Ayukawa and Kawana help to create their dream home, allowing them to enjoy their last few moments before Kaede's passing. Kawana And Ayukawa go through many struggles during their relationship, such as Kawana's parents initially disapproving of their relationship, Kawana being unable to get pregnant with the fertility treatments, and Ayukawa being in and out of the hospital. It's tough. The two even separated and came back together in the 8th volume because Ayukawa thought he was a burden on Kawana. After all, it can be hard to date someone in a wheelchair. Did that stop them from being in love and happy in the end? No, because they prioritized their own happiness over others. Fortunately, they were able to make their dreams a reality and have a family. Many people can learn a lot from reading this manga. It's a good read, and could learn a valuable lesson from it.
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