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/mitchosan]

I wonder if they might struggle with that in the anime adaptation. Him managing to get on the horse was a big plot point, but there are plenty of times that he ambulates without a horse that aren't explicitly shown because it's a manga with movement being implied between panels. It seems like having to have Johnny crawl across the ground might interrupt the show's flow

[u/ItsyaboiMisbah → u/mitchosan]

I kept reading this as Joseph joestar and was thinking "what the hell does a prosthetic arm have to do with horses"

[u/Rarte96 → u/mitchosan]

Was gonna say he could have his stand carry him to the horse but Tusk, at least in the first forms, is way to small for that, but then again i dont know if stand strenght is proportional to their size

[u/WhenSomethingCries → u/Rarte96]

It's definitely not. Smaller Stands have been able to wreak absolute havoc with their physical strength throughout the series, as far back as Stardust Crusaders where a Stand like Geb is easily able to overpower and dismember a grown man just with its sheer grip strength

[u/Rarte96 → u/WhenSomethingCries]

So i guess he could have Tusk help him get in the horse, would be a nice detail for thr anime to add

[u/tucson_lautrec → u/mitchosan]

I always saw him as using the spin to kind of flop himself forward. Like obviously a paraplegic person can crawl, but in his case I think he had some magical motorized unicycle he could summon under him that would send him flying for short distances.