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Review: "Perfect World" Volume 1 by Rie Aruga

 


First manga read in years, and I’m really happy I picked this one up the other day in a physical copy! I think that this manga beautifully portrays the difficulties in life, relationships, romance, and health when one has a spinal chord injury WITHOUT sugar coating anything (which I find to be very important). I really liked how this manga wasn’t afraid to be very bold and blunt with the negative aspects of this disability, as well as being fully respectful- I had the overwhelming feeling that the author did their research before writing this. One of the reasons I gravitated towards this manga is because I hadn't seen one or read one in which issues like this were delved in to as well as being in a romantic context. I was interested in seeing if the topic would be over romanticized or sugar coated, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that this was far from that case. 

It also deals with people’s prejudices and stereotypical mindsets and has depictions of bigotry, so that would be my one TW for this manga. However, of course, the romance going on is extremely precious and lovely! I'm a big sucker for childhood crush/friendship budding into romance/slow burn romance so I’ll definitely be excited to see where this goes :)

ALSO it ended on such a sweet yet yearning note, I definitely instantly wanted more! 😭 

My one critique/note on this manga is this:  In the Author’s Notes at the end of the book, it’s mentioned that this was meant to be a one-shot, and that reader’s support helped it turn into a series. My one note on this volume one is that based on how fast-paced it was, this makes so much sense- it does feel a whole lot more like a one-shot than the beginning of a series, which was my one qualm (since I went into this thinking it was already a series). As I was reading it, a lot of really emotional moments happened in succession and it felt like we were kind of hopping all over the place with not much emotional deepening and continuation as I would have liked (which makes sense from a one shot's perspective). The author does note that this is a juvenile first volume because of that, which I appreciate the heads up on, and I will look forward to the improved pacing in the future volumes! Hopefully once the second volume gets stocked at my local bookstore I'll have a more fleshed out review on the pacing and on if I'll be interested in reading this entire series.

Rating: 4 Stars

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