While medicine helps people, it can be ethically dubious. Should we harvest organs from brain dead patients? Or grow them on mice? Can we really know how our loved ones would want to die? These issues come up in Breath Deeply, a manga by Doton Yamaaki, the pen name for an award-winning husband-wife team. The manga follows Sei and Oishi, two boys who loved a girl that died. Her death pushes the smart teenagers into medical careers, in which they both strive to prevent death, while always being haunted by the one they lost.
Breathe Deeply Published by One Peace Books
In the first chapter we meet Yuko, Sei, and Oishi. Yuko is slowly dying from a heart problem, and Sei, her childhood friend and the boy she loves, is visiting her in the hospital. This is where Yuko has met Oishi, another boy who has also fallen in love with the sick girl. Even while a rivalry starts up, Sei inspires Oishi to follow a new dream of being a scientist.
Yuko's death causes an inevitable rift between the boys - Yuko had told Sei she wanted to die so he has her father pull the plug, but she had told Oishi that she desperately wanted to live. This dilemma is gripping, and you can easily get caught up in the book as Yuko's truth is slowly revealed through the memories of Sei and Oishi (now grown men).
Several side plots complicate the manga in both good and bad ways. Sei has become famous and successful with his creation of plastic hearts to be used in place of organ transplants, but his opinionated and anti-social personality gets him in too much trouble. Oishi meanwhile is struggling to get his own efforts noticed, and the person who sees the potential of his research may not be his greatest ally. This helps flesh out the personalities of both men, but we also get introduced to so many villains and antagonists it becomes difficult to keep track.
The story gets a little messy towards the end. It starts with a sudden plot twist that, while actually shocking and interesting, skews the story from a character study to a conspiracy that's never fully explained. And it's ultimately unclear what happens to some of the characters - not simply ambiguous, but actually confusing due to some unexplained silent panels towards the end.
Doton's art style carries little imperfections and inconsistencies, which work in the manga's favor as some personality, and the heart of the story, shine through. Many of the panels have a blurred look, but rather than a sketchy art style, like in something like Velveteen and Mandala, this comes from the artist's shading method, which at times resembles watercolors.
Breathe Deeply by Doton Yamaaki
A dream fueled by the memory of a dead loved one is something I've seen before, but it's always interesting to read how a lost person's hopes can motivate those still around. And while the overarching story of striving towards medical breakthroughs is interesting (and surprisingly easy to digest!), I couldn't help but wish there was even more focus on the boys and their time with, and memories of, Yuko. The manga's ending is a little bumpy, and the sudden revelations could either hook readers or turn them away. And the text itself has a couple of issues, like a strange aversion to the period. But despite its roughness Breathe Deeply is a heartfelt story about loving, and learning to deal with loss.
Breathe Deeply gets 3.5/5
- ISBN: 9781935548072
- MSRP: $16.95
- One Peace Books
- 574 pages
- October 4, 2011
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