Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy
About the Mangaka
Sadly, despite looking everywhere (english sites that is) I can’t find anything else on Tobe Keiko. If anyone knows anything about her, please drop me a line through the contact page.
About the Manga
With the Light was my first Yen Press title, and as such it holds a special place in my heart. Not to mention me being a huge fan of the series. However, even after all that I found myself more than a little exasperated over this volume.
As always Keiko’s art is nice, nothing special, but nice. She also uses chibi characters in this volume really well.
I like the cover designs, which are simple, soft and appealing, perfectly matching the art style of the volume itself.
As with the previous volumes this one has a clear shoujo art style, but it’s definitely an older art style. I look at it as being very similar style to that of the first volumes of Glass Mask. This isn’t a bad thing, as I’ve said before. I really love the art of the volumes, and it’s softer art style makes it easier to follow and get into.
There are of course a lot of comical aspects of the art, not as much as in previous volumes, but still present. The art style that Tobe uses makes it very funny. More so than if it was more of a shonen or seinen style of art.
The issue I had this volume however was over the story flow. It started off pretty good and I had the usual high hopes, however I felt it was basically repeating the previous volume but with a new teacher. While this isn’t the case really, it’s what it felt like as I was reading it.
Rather than having another bad teacher, I would have preferred Tobe to move back onto the family aspects of the story. In truth we get to see very little of the impact having a autistic child has on the home life anymore. I was expecting to see more of this after Kanon was born. Since having a new child in the family would I think have a huge impact on the family.
I can’t help but love Kanon, who does inject a lot of comedy into the series, but at the same time I can’t help but feel that she’s being ignored. The same with the grandparents, especially Masato’s mum.
That said, I did like the way this volume ended, which gave me hope the next volume would shift the focus a bit.
I have to admit I find the constant struggling they have to go through a bit wearing, and while it may be a true reflection of what life is like in Japan, I think it does make for bad reading. To much tension and depressing events with not enough lighter release.
I also find I really miss the Portuguese family we met in the first volume, I keep hoping for their return, but nothing has happened yet.
As always Yen Press did an amazing job on this release, and I have to admit I’m getting more and more used to the over sized nature of the volumes. The translation is nice and smooth and flows really well. No guttering issues this volume, and as with previous volumes there’s loads of autistic information at the back. also included is a brief apology for a miss accreditation in volume four, which I found nice. They made a mistake and admitted it straight away and made a public(ish) apology for it.
While I admit I didn’t love this volume as much as the previous volumes, I did still like it. There are always volumes of long series we don’t like as much as others, so I see no reason for it not to maintain it’s place on my Essential Read list.
Where to Buy
