Being a teenager is no easy thing... Everyone is always watching you, waiting for you to do something wrong. Growing pains are even worse for Shizuka Shiroyama. Shizuka is a very shy girl and on top of this she has Translucent Syndrome! She literally starts disappearing when she gets nervous or too stressed out. It usually starts with her right fingertips and sometimes her entire body becomes translucent. For such a shy girl this is a definite problem, not only does she get ignored because of her shy personality but also because sometimes you can't even see her!
Lucky for Shizuka, she has soon really good friends watching her back. Okiouchi-san is the most beautiful, popular girl in class, she is always trailed by a group of her fan club members, and she only wishes Shizuka's translucent syndrome would rub off on her. You see, she wishes that everyone would stop looking at her beauty and see what she is really like inside. Shizuka also has a boyfriend, his name is Mamoru Tadami. He is the one person in her life that supports her no matter what she decides to do, even when she decided to become an actress. Tadami loves her so much that he doesn't mind that he can't always she her face. Tadami's support is what helps Shizuka get through the translucent times and shows her that she is important after all.
Translucent is the first volume in a series by Kazuhiro Okamoto. It is a comic written in the Manga style, which is very difficult to get used to for the average American reader. You see, the Manga style means that the back of the book is the front, and the pages are read from right to left instead of from left to right. Even the words on the page are oriented from right to left.
I enjoyed reading this book, but I have to say it took me awhile to get past reading it backwards. I found myself re-reading pages accidentally. The overall story is a good one: what happens when you not only feel invisible, but you really are invisible? It has a cute love story with Shizuka and Tadami and her relationships with the other characters are interesting as well. I also appreciated the twist that Okamoto writes in, every teenager has to deal with physical and emotions changes and for his heroine it is invisibility. He makes this into a lighter read by taking out any serious emotional issues and relating it back to the Translucent Syndrome.
3 comments:
Kristy, I really enjoyed your review and thought that the cover of the novel was interesting as well. As I read your review I kept recalling my own post on Sarah Dessen's, "Just Listen." I sympathized for Shizuka and was intrigued by learning about her translucent syndrome, I'm going to have to read it too. Good job!
Thanks Amanda! If you want I can send you my copy, I am pretty sure I will never read it again! ;-)
Your review is very interesting.
I like the authors idea to take the step from feeling translucent to being translucent (and yours to point that out).
I wonder if the Manga style has symbolic meaning or just Japanese tradition. It would be great if it had something to do with Shizuka's translucency.
Nice job.
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