Helen ESP

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I suppose there are countless ways of approaching disability in fiction for contemporary authors. And countless ways to fail doing it. It is a rather difficult field to tackle with so many trapdoors to fall into and so many people to offend. How do we treat handicap in fiction? Is Daredevil really a blind man when he can actually sense whatever is happening around him due to superpowers? Is Professor X really a proper representative of people bound to wheelchairs when he can move whatever he wants with the power of his mind? And does it really matter?
Katsuhisa Kigitsu, author of the brilliant and ... incredibly repulsive dark satire manga series "Franken Fran", confronts us with Takahara Helen, a young girl who lost her speech, eyesight and hearing in a horrible car crash. She soon realizes, however, that she also developed a peculiar psychic power: she is now able to talk to her guard dog Victor through telepathy, turning him into her eyes and ears.
Instead of forcing the readers to pity the girl for her unfortunate situation, the author (in an unexpectedly gentle and optimistic fashion) illustrates Helen's life full of wonder and fantastic adventures that shape out the well-written characters of the girl, her dog, her loving uncle and her growing social environment. However, the moment when we readers realize that Helen is more troubled by her newly gained powers and their consequences than by her disabilities is when the true colours of this strong character begin to shine through.
In that manner, by facing challenge after challenge with the iron Miyazaki-esque will to selflessly help others despite her own problems, Helen makes her way through this episodic 18 chapters supernatural manga, which, instead of dissecting disability, illustrates a character with both handicaps and growing superpowers and her curious everydaylife with her dog, her uncle and her friends.

I can't stress enough how much I enjoyed reading this manga.

Made by Kigitsu Katsuhisa, the person who made Franken Fran, you know it will at the very least be interesting.

Here, I will tell you in 3 questions to see if you will like this.

Do you know who Helen Keller is?
Do you know what esp is?
Do you think the two combined could be interesting (keep Kigitsu Katsuhisa in mind)?

If you said yes to all 3, you will enjoy this manga. It's highly episodic, which is both a good and bad thing. It makes the story seem longer, and doesn't dwell on things to long, ... but some people would have liked to see more of that.

Commenting on others in the review is not allowed, but I believe that in this case there is a good counterpoint to be made. Moritheil, as of 26/12/10 just did not get the manga at all. I suggest you read his review too. If you find what he says very agreeable, than this may not be for you. But what he failed to realize was this was a light hearted (at least as light hearted as the author is capable of) and borderline fantasy, not set in the "real" world and meant to be heavy drama.

But there is only one thing that I personally can complain about, and that is the manga only lasts 18 chapters.

Here is a possible spoiler, but in the whole manga, nothing really seems to move forward, or gets resolved, leaving a mildly unsatisfying ending. Which is only patched up by the VERY interesting chapter 2 extra. The manga almost feels like it was meant to go on a little longer. That complaint aside, you are doing yourself a favor by reading this.

-- This review was originally removed, I forgot what I rated the manga but the way I made it sound seems like it was a 10/10 all round. The reason it was removed was spelling and grammar, and apparently I said nothing I liked or didn't like, though apart from grammar, I changed nothing. --

The focus of this series, that some other people have obviously missed, is not disability. At it's core it's a slice of life series about a girl with ESP powers that goes around encountering short stories evolving the supernatural. Each chapter is like a fairy tale, an urban legend, a fable, et. It's almost like Mushishi.

Not every story involving a disabled person is about the disabilities. And if your dismiss a series just because it overlooks the disability after reading merely 2 chapters you should not be writing reviews.

Anyways, if you read Franken Fran by the same author, this series is pretty similar except it ... take a more lighthearted approach and there isn't nearly as much ironic deaths/tragic ends. Imagine Mushishi + Franken Fran with a kind girl as the MC. It's a nice quick read and definitely accomplished what it set out to do.