With the Light Volume 6

Back in the day, when I was a freshman in college, I began reading the With the Light series on a whim. I first became aware of the title on a trip to Borders (R.I.P), as they had the placed the first volume of the series on display in the manga section. I was immediately intrigued by the cover ("Is this a parenting book that was shelved incorrectly, or what?") so I picked it up and started thumbing through it. As soon as I flipped through this first volume I was immediately struck by the heart-wrenching cuteness of the art so I just knew I'd have to read it. Hey, I never denied being shallow.

The With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child series, true to its name, follows the trials and minor victories of the Azuma family as they grapple with their son's autism. Dutiful mother Sachiko serves as the series protagonist, and it is through her interactions with others that we are given lessons about the issues surrounding autism. While With the Light is a work of fiction, it has been heavily researched. In the process of creating the work, the series author Keiko Tobe profiled a variety of real life families of autistic children. From what I understand, Sachiko's autistic child Hikaru was created as a sort of amalgamation of a handful of various real life kids that the author observed. This lends the story a familiar edge. Nothing that occurs in With the Light seems beyond the realm of possibility, and one can easily imagine the events of the story playing out in everyday life.

Volume 6 of With the Light sees Hikaru as a junior high school student on the cusp of puberty. Aging is a major theme in this volume. As Hikaru visibly ages, the world at large begins to react to his behavior differently, which creates new problems for Sachiko. Behavior that strangers would find cute and endearing in a prepubescent child begins to seem threatening or inappropriate in an older boy. This issue is brought to the forefront of the story when, on a public bus trip, Hikaru touches a female passenger's hair. While Hikaru's intentions were innocent, the woman assumes he's a perv and screams. This situation foreshadows the new and unique issues that Hikaru's parents will have to deal with as he ages.

But Hikaru's not the only one growing up and dealing with the unique challenges that come with entering a new stage of life. In one part of the story, Sachiko ruminates on aging in an internal dialogue that opens one of the chapters, "My children are growing up right before my eyes...and this means that I too am getting older. And so are my own father and mother..." And fittingly many of the pages after this are dedicated to events in the lives of Hikaru's grandparents. Sachiko's mother deals with health issues as Hikaru's paternal grandmother struggles to accept her grandchildren for who they are. Hikaru's little sister Kanon is also growing up and learning to deal with the popularity contests of primary school. As the sister of a disabled child, Kanon faces her own unique challenges and much of this volume was also focused on the experience of being a sibling to an autistic individual.

There are a number of reasons why I enjoy the With the Light series. I enjoy its gentle plotting and grounded characters. I like that there are no villains in the story. Characters might act out and hurt each other emotionally in the process, yet such actions are often the result of ignorance or good intentions gone bad rather than maliciousness. There's also a novelty to the story. While I've heard that in Japan there exists a plethora of manga for every taste and interest, in the U.S. it's still rather rare to see a mainstream comics title aimed at an older female crowd. So that's undeniably a factor in my interest as well.

If With the Light doesn't sound appealing to you then you surely won't get into it. But if you read this post and experienced even a glimmer of interest then the title's worth checking out. It's a sweet light read that might even teach you a thing or two about autism.