The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

The Moon on a Rainy Night

What's It About? 

One rainy night, Saki is rushing to a piano lesson when she crashes into a beautiful, long-haired girl, dropping her sheet music in the process. Saki stutters an apology, but the girl simply hands back her sheet music and leaves without a word. Saki begins her first day of high school the following morning, only to find the stranger from the night before sitting at the desk next to hers. She learns that the girl's name is Kanon and that she is not quite completely deaf, but very hard of hearing. Though Kanon needs to be close to people to read their lips, she tends to push people away with her icy demeanor. Through one kind gesture, Saki slowly begins breaking down the walls around Kanon, even as she feels something new blossoming within her.

The Moon on a Rainy Night has a story and art by Kuzushiro. The English translation is by Kevin Steinbach, with lettering by Jamil Stewart. Published by Vertical Comics (November 7, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Starring one character who is hard of hearing and another who's trying to communicate with her despite that barrier, it makes sense that a manga like The Moon on a Rainy Night would excel at expressing itself. The book makes clear early on, through references and asides, that this will not be something like A Silent Voice, nor will it be trite inspiration porn. Kanon, the hard-of-hearing lead, is a very different kind of disabled character than you might expect in that latter type of story. She's confident in how she presents herself and communicates. While we later come to understand that some of the cooler aspects of her personality are down to experiences with her comparatively recent hearing loss, it's also made clear that much else of it is simply how she naturally is.

While author Kuzushiro has put in the research work to depict Kanon's condition with sympathetic accuracy (this yuri manga has footnotes!), the true strength of The Moon on a Rainy Night is the way it lets its characters and their actions speak for themselves. As we follow the other lead, Saki, we grasp how she chooses to follow and befriend Kanon instead of the other girls she's directed towards, with no dramatic declarations apart from Saki's admission that she's not the sharpest tool in the shed. We pay attention to Saki's reactions and reflections on others to realize that her precocious crush on her previous piano teacher was her real driving reason for keeping at that craft and how her closeted state informs her new growing, pining relationship with Kanon.

This is primarily a story driven by dialogue and conversation, and even then, it's remarkable how it can say so much with so little. A confrontation Kanon has with an estranged friend in a bookstore and the choice of words she uses to talk to Saki about it paint an incredible picture in just a few pages: It expresses Kanon's outsized guilt at needing a helper, an attendant, and the extremely complicated relationship that must arise when one winds up having to act as caretaker to someone they previously saw as an equal or partner. We get all that out of one single, awkward, cryptic encounter, and to me, it's emblematic of the strengths of The Moon on a Rainy Night. The central metaphor of that title is described as something you know is there but is hidden. And it's incredibly apt for this first volume of a manga that excels at communicating things about these characters, which we can grasp with only a few stray lines and reactions.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

There's no shortage of manga about people with impaired hearing, but The Moon on a Rainy Night stands out not only by being yuri but also by how Kanon is in control of her own disability. She's a teenager, so there's still a healthy dollop of her reacting to her peers like any other high schooler, but she's also very clear about how she wants to be treated and what she expects from others. When her teacher singles her out on the first day of school and asks the class to help her, Kanon is furious, simmering with embarrassed resentment. Yes, she doesn't hear as well as other people. But don't treat her like less of a person because of it.

This sets the expectations for the series and its central relationship between Kanon and Saki. Saki is attracted to Kanon before they get to know each other, and her pursuit of Kanon's friendship (she's not quite ready to admit that she's hoping for something more, at least not out loud) is based on a genuine wish to get to know her better. She's uncomfortable with how other people talk about her, but she also seems to realize that it's not her battle to fight – Kanon is capable of doing that on her own. Still, when their teacher reveals that she's been doing “research” by reading a manga series about a person with hearing loss, it's hard not to wish that Saki had said something, although her body language and thoughts indicate that she's aware that this is no way to learn; so much fiction about people with disabilities is thinly veiled inspiration porn.

That's one thing this book is not. Kanon's hearing loss is simply a part of her character, and while it may impact how she interacts with others socially – she doesn't like to eat with people because it's harder to figure out what they're saying – it doesn't inform who she is. The book does an outstanding job of showing how outer appearances are all classmates judge people by; one girl Saki has become friends with is shocked that Kanon reads shounen manga and light novels because she's so pretty. Interestingly, we don't see much of how people react to Saki. We know some of the girls in class are mean to her because she's friends with Kanon, and a former friend of Kanon's is dismissive because she assumes Kanon's just using Saki to help her out. But mostly, things are through Saki's eyes, and we're given the clues to figure out how she feels and how others might see her through her indirect thoughts and body language. It's a well-done book and probably my favorite school-set yuri since Whisper Me a Love Song. Subtle in the right ways and beautifully illustrated, this is worth picking up.