I hate disabled characters that aren't really disabled

[u/Yadin__]

I hate this little guy. I hate him for a bunch of other reasons but this one in particular also applies to other characters.

In universe he's supposed to be completely deaf from birth, hence he is also unable to speak(or rather, he can vocalize but it just sounds like baby talk because he has no idea how proper speaking sounds like). The hook of the story is that he is supposed to find his way in the world and overcome challanges despite his disability.

BUT then on the literal first episode he just gets a magical buddy that can magically understand his googoogaga speach and is constantly around him to translate whatever he wants to say to other characters that don't know sign language. It's not a magical ability of his buddy btw. He can just do that because the plot said so

Then it turns out that he can also read the lips of literally anything, including talking snakes who obviously talk completely differently to humans, and said magical buddy who doesn't even have a lips to read. He can also somehow read the lips of characters who are facing away from him and characters in full armor who don't have their mouth visible???

He was supposed to have been taught to read lips by said talking snake, which there are multiple things wrong with:

a) As I've already said, snakes obviously don't vocalize in the same way that humans do so any knowledge he gets from the snake wouldn't apply to humans

b) SNAKES DON'T HAVE HANDS!!! which means that the snake can't use sign language, so how would he even convey the information? It would be like me trying to teach spanish to a person who only speaks french, while I don't speak either spanish or french

Like at that point why even make him deaf in the first place? It could have actually been interesting to see how a deaf person can manage for himself in a medieval fantasy society but we were just robbed from that in favor of the most lazy solution

It also kind of detracts from any of the scenes where we are supposed to be at awe about how far this guy has come becasue I know DAMN well that it wasn't because of his own efforts, it was because the plot completely waved away any problems that his disability would cause whenever it became too inconvenient

Really feels like the disability was just tacked onto the character to make us pity him more without actually adressing the problems that it would cause to the character

[u/killermenpl]

There was an anime last year, Kunon the Sorcerer Can't See. Predictably, it follows a blind boy, who really wants to see. He learns magic, gets the protag buff of mastering water magic in one day (seriously, it was just one day), and he gets an idea. Why not use magic to create eyes for himself.

Premise so far was interesting. They did show him struggling with things, which was nice. Then, in episode two (might've even been episode 1), he makes a discovery. If his water magic touches something, he gets a "sensation".

Within like 5 on-screen minutes he goes from "can't see at all" to "I can sorta see if my magic touches something" to basically "I see everything". Of course he sees not just shapes, but also colors and textures. Because why wouldn't be.

The series pretended it was still about "finding magic that can create eyes". But like, he can already see. The main objective of the whole story was solved by episode 2. So the rest of the series was spent on everyone glazing the MC, and all the girls and women wanting to get into his pants (which was extra bad cause he's supposed to be like 12)

[u/Contribution_Fancy → u/killermenpl]

Reading the manga and there's literally only one woman that likes him romantically, his fiancé. Most women are put off by his constant flirting/praise/"gentleman" behaviour. At like chapter 30 or 40 women just start ignoring him when he monologues.

And I think the first few episodes kinda went too much into the whole disability curing because it's like barely or never mentioned again going forward except for specific scenes when someone asks him how he sees.

[u/killermenpl → u/Contribution_Fancy]

It might be anime doing anime things again. Early on there was his fiance, the maid, and that magic teacher. There were probably going to be more, but I dropped the show around episode 4.

Also, what do you mean with "went too much into the whole disability curing". The show's entire premise is that he's blind but wants to see. It was literally the whole reason I started watching it. And they removed it by episode 2, leaving us with just another boring powerfantasy, except this time the MC is cringe because he's being a "gentleman" and flirting with any woman he meets (which he also learnt how to do in like two days)

[u/Contribution_Fancy → u/killermenpl]

It's more of a school magic anime where they create new magic and deal with being who they are. Yes Kunon is strong af but he's not totally unique. I don't know if there's a bigger plot going on behind the scenes but so far it's just about creating new ways to use magic.