A Song to the Sun, Volume 1

By: Kenji Bandou
Genre: Drama / Josei / Romance / Tragedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of the short life and final days of a girl called Kaoru, who suffered from the rare disease Xeroderma pigmentosum, which basically makes it impossible for her to be outside during the day. Unlike most tragedies I’ve read Kaoru has a wonderfully supportive family who try their best to make her as comfortable as possible. She spends her days gazing though her window at the world of light and falls in love with a boy whom she eventually meets and becomes involved with. Kaoru is a plucky girl as evidenced by the way she approached Kouji that night after recognising him, her rapid confession/ introduction made me chuckle and left quite the impression on him.

But then she botches explaining her illness to him and tries to break it off by avoiding him, something which managed to hurt him and almost kill her. This incident is the turning point for both Kaoru & Kouji; as she declines both mentally and physically, he becomes a more mature version of his original self, that of a somewhat idiotic, earnest and straightforward boy. He encourages her musical talent and manages to get her to record a song, making her dream come true and when she was no longer there brought comfort to those she left behind and hope to those who heard it.

The story deals briefly with the rapid decline and her eventual demise, which had initially led me to believe that perhaps the author rushed it too much but in retrospect (this situation is very similar to the way my father died) sometime diseases act swiftly, leaving no room for anything but numbness,a feeling that Bandou has captured quite effectively.

There were a few elements of this volume that really bothered me. You can’t get a sense of how much time passed at all and the disease itself isn’t dealt with very well in my opinion, the scenes where Kaoru’s at the hospital are so rushed and the explanations so brief, that it makes it difficult to empathize with what Kaoru’s going through.

This was a good book, the story is cute yet sad, the characters likeable and even though this is just a one-shot you get a lot of character development overall something that rarely happens with one-shots in general. While I am no fan of tragedies I’m glad I made an exception as this was not much of a tear jerker.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick read with a decent storyline.