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 andincredibly 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.