Read this series a few years ago but I'm seeing a lot of people talk about it lately so I thought I'd share my thoughts. Perfect world is romance between the able-bodied female protagonist and her high school crush that she meets again as an adult, only to find out he's been in an accident that left him unable to walk (I don't remember the specific details and I don't really want to re-read the series to find them)
It's a fine romance series, if a little heavy on the drama, it's not great but not terrible either, however it does feel a lot like a manga about a disabled guy written from an able-bodied perspective for able-bodied readers. It's clearly well researched when it comes to the logistics of being wheelchair bound, but... well researched is exactly how it reads. Each time some issue or another comes up we get an introduction of 'this is what that term means, this is what disabled people go through' like you're reading from a therapy guidebook with no or very little perspective from the character affected how it's actually affecting them personally. There are so many sympathetic scenes of the able-bodied people, including ones that have done some really shitty stuff and crossed boundaries they should not have crossed, crying about how hard it is to care about a disabled person but almost nothing about how the disabled characters feel about this, other than 'how could I date someone if I'm disabled, it would be unfair to them!' which, even if that point is always challenged, felt shitty that that's the only thing ever brought up. This is even more extreme towards the second half of the story where the main couple separate for a while and we see a lot of the female protagonist agonizing over how hard it is to date a disabled guy and 'is she up for the herculean task that is????' with once again. nothing from the guy. There's also a lot of 'I don't need medication if I have love' and the scenes that perhaps felt the worst to me - the guy having no agency over his care. Not even getting into the love rival care worker that fully acknowledges taking advantage of her position... The female protagonist constantly makes decisions on her own about what she should be doing to help the guy, a scene I remember in particular I think they're at hospital, the guy had bed sores and a nurse is cleaning them? or something along those lines and protagonist decides 'I'm grossed out by this but if I love him I need to know how to do this! I'll get past how gross this seems and do it myself! also I don't like another woman touching my guy!' and she just. takes over for the nurse. No one asks the guy if this is ok. I don't think they even tell the girl what she needs to do?? there's SO much of that. and it's constantly emphasized how much the female lead is working to overcome her initial negative reaction to things, which could be handled with nuance but once again, with soooo little on the guy's perspective it just feels. not great.
