I Hear the Sunspot

This story should have ended with the first volume (the first 6 chapters). It treated the subject of disabiity in a realistic and respectful manner, showed likable characters growing closer in a way that felt natural, and skillfully avoided problematic tropes. I would recommended not reading past that point. Chapter 6 is where the story was originally meant to end, with just a bare hint that the characters would grow to develop romantic feelings. But because it was serialized in a BL magazine, the author was told to add more chapters and ramp up the romance content. From that point on, every scene feels forced.Annoying characters are thrown in to cause interference, and the rest of the drama rests entirely on misunderstandings due to lack of communication effort. It's frustrating to watch, and we end up losing most of what made the first volume enjoyable. We run into clichés, the characters feel off, and it's obvious the author isn't having a good time.

I'm going to start out with the negatives. The romantic scenes were definitely lacking but aside from that the communication and misunderstandings between the main characters, Taichi and Kohei are beyond frustrating. It seems like 98% of this story is just them getting into fights or being too busy to even be together. Which I understand, those kinds of things happen which makes it semi realistic but I think it's just overly excessive and reused the same plot line of them having a lack of communication throughout the majority of their story. It was starting to become heavily repetitive and it seemed like they couldn'tfigure out how to solve the issues on their own without constantly hearing advice from friends/family. Because of the whole story basically being (for lack of a better word) "angsty", we got very few happy moments to just see them being in a healthy relationship. Also I could go on about how unrealistic the whole prejudice of hearing disabled came across, though that might sound a bit ignorant coming from me considering I'm not audibly impaired and not from Japan. When I was reading it, I felt like it diminished how society actually views the impaired. Though there are lots of people out there who are more over arrogant when it comes to the disabled, most of society is accepting to changes and adjustability. Granted, we can do more to learn and educate ourselves as a society, but unfortunately we haven't reached that length just yet. Once again, this is all based on my ignorance, because depending on the time period this is taken place in, could have a heavily impacted how the prejudice is justified in here. And not to resummarize but like I mentioned, I'm not from Japan and I'm not familiarized with the prejudice that happens specifically towards the hearing impaired. Although, this is just my opinion as an American reader. Like that whole thing with them constantly separating the hearing and non hearing into separate categories and how the disabled viewed the "hearing" as people who are condescending and/or makes fun of the impaired just seemed hyper unrealistic imo. Maybe it is like that in Japan or like that with the impaired and I'm just ignorant or maybe I'm just an idealist who has too much faith in society and blinded to how things actually are. Either way, enough of that ramble, I hope I got my point across without trying to sound too uninformed or what not. Moving onto the positive sides of things, for this being a romance, like I mentioned before it was kinda lacking in those scenes however, I like to think the main focus of this wasn't indeed the romance but in prejudice and society. There seems to be a bigger lesson here that we readers can take and digest. As I mentioned earlier, the prejudice seems a tad unrealistic, but overall it's not entirely wrong when they show how "normal/hearing" people always seem to pity the impaired. I think the story does a really good job at displaying things that us, who don't have disabilities, can come to understand those who do better as well as the hardships they have to face on a daily basis. The author does a fantastic job when it comes to diving into the depth of emotions of characters and their thoughts. It's very clear that the characters all view the world differently from one another, so at least for me, it didn't seem like anyone's view was in the wrong. Yes, at the beginning of meeting Ryuu, he had pissed me off so much, but the further we delved into the storyline and came to understand his thoughts and emotions, I actually felt really bad for him. Like I said, the author does a great job at explaining everyone's sides to certain situations, making us, the readers, conflicted with our thoughts and really forces us to think things we normally wouldn't think. Overall, like every story it has it's good and it's bad. Though, given this is my first time writing a review on MAL, should show that it's definitely an interesting read to take upon.

This will be a short review. If you typically avoid Boys Love (BL) titles due to genre conventions like coercive power dynamics and sexual harassment, I Hear The Sunspot is surprisingly different. This is an emotionally grounded short romance story with tension involving social and disability themes. There is no coercion, no romance between an adult and child characters, no perverted gag humor or sexual fanservice. Beyond the romance, it covers miscommunications, bullying, trauma, ableism and disability advocacy. Characters set boundaries, make mistakes that alter their relationship dynamics, and gradually adapt to eachother. There is no wish fulfillment, and no exaggerated archetypes or melodrama. Theart is well drawn, and the panels are easy to follow even for beginner manga readers. Those looking for a calming story with no tension, or a more theatrical romance series with frequent melodrama may find it less engaging. I recommend I Hear the Sunspot for anyone looking for a cute romance story with tension and social theme exploration without conventional rom-com tropes.

Hidamari ga Kikoeru in the beginning was setting itself up to potentially be a high 8 on my list, but it did not live up to that expectation towards the end of the first volume. I'm a sucker for somewhat slow-burn romances, but only under the circumstances that the issues and internal struggles the characters are facing are focused first. MAL needs to update the number of chapters the manga has published because I was expecting a short cute story arc in the span of 6 chapters. If that was still the case, I wouldn't mind this end to the 6th chapter, but with therebeing 20+ chapters with a supposed completed story, the development of the main couple's relationship came almost instantaneously. The biggest turn-off of all time, especially when it set itself up for focusing on the struggle of Kohei being hard of hearing and with his hearing degrading by the day. I think directionally this manga could've shown a gradual romance towards the end of the entire series. But of course, why develop characters and have them resolve or have a full character arc when codependency on each other in a romantic relationship makes it easier for audiences to not only consume the media, but to excuse the main concept of Kohei's hearing to favor fetishized gay relationships. I'm sorry but it's true, the amount of so called "fujoshi's" that consume this just make it hard to take this media seriously. I heavily related to Kohei's issue with hearing, and it's disappointing to see that development quickly disappear so early for a (possible spoiler??) a frustrated random ass kiss scene???? THEY COULD'VE BUILT UP TO IT MOREE :( If you're looking for something cute and an easy read, this is it. I just think it could've been so much more, and I had high expectations due to the MAL ratings. I had to drop it, so if I missed something vital, keep this in mind--the main consequence of me rating it this is due to the direction in which their romance gets developed. I like payoff, they kissed towards the end of the first volume, and it came out of nowhere. If they built it up more, I would've kept me reading but..it is what it is.