MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Living with a physical handicap can be difficult. Specific accommodations need to be ed for, and not everybody can follow them. Often, books with a premise like this one tend to play things up for more dramatic effect, incorporating a lot of social commentary. But the story of You Talk Too Much, So Just Shut Up Already seems mindful of the issues it's showcasing to deliver a lighthearted and comedic experience.

It manages to accomplish this by never making being deaf the punchline of a joke. Instead, it is used as the build-up for comedic moments. Much of the humor comes from our non-deaf male lead counterbalancing our more reserved deaf girl through overexaggeration. He wants to be respectful and kind, but he's all of that to a complete fault. He wants to understand sign language right away, but instead of learning it, he tries to go off context and trust his gut, which leads to many misunderstandings.

If anything, the whole book is structured like a comedy routine. A character will see or do something that seems out of the ordinary, and then we get a straight man's reaction to that situation. Every chapter has about two or three moments like that, and it leads to a relatively brisk pace. There weren't any moments that made me laugh out loud, but I was smiling and giggling consistently till the end. There are some brief moments where it feels like the story is setting up something more, particularly regarding the romantic nature of our two leads, but I think even without that caveat, there is enough here to recommend. If you're looking for a comedic series that respects and is mindful of the anxieties that come with being deaf, then I think this is worth your time.

Dee
Rating:

Thank heavens You Talk Too Much is set in middle school. Taiyo's “heart full, head empty” confidence that he can understand sign language would be insufferable in an older character, and his general pushiness would come across as insensitive. But from a well-meaning but immature middle-schooler who took a teacher saying “your ion to communicate can overcome language barriers” a bit too literally, it manages to be consistently funny and even a little endearing.

It also helps that Taiyo is frequently the butt of the joke. This is a comedy of misunderstandings with a playful approach to its subject matter, but the humor never comes from belittling Tsukino's deafness. She's sympathetically portrayed throughout, and the volume's few serious moments involve her worrying about fitting in or connecting with others. When Tsukino does play the clown, it's centered around more general teen concerns, like getting flustered over new friends and crushes.

It's honestly pretty refreshing to see a manga about a d/Deaf character that's (1) a comedy instead of a drama and (2) less about disability and more about language barriers. In a lighthearted way, it argues for a cultural model of d/Deafness, depicting Tsukino as part of a linguistic minority and encouraging her friends to learn her preferred language, just as she learned theirs. There's a normalizing undercurrent to it that I quite enjoyed.

That said, You Talk Too Much is still a comedy, so it plays fast and loose with realism and tends to skirt broader issues of accessibility, particularly at Tsukino's school. It also relies way too much on lip-reading, a common misconception (and fiction trope) about people with hearing loss. I'm not claiming it's a revolutionary work or perfect representation—that's not my call to make, anyway—but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the characters and how well the jokes landed.

The running gag about Taiyo thinking he knows sign language worked better than it should have, but I could also feel it wearing thin, especially as the rom-com elements became more prominent. This volume establishes that Taiyo has a talent for languages, so I hope he s Tsukino's friend Sakura in learning sign language. That way, he and Tsukino can properly communicate as their puppy love blooms. There's plenty of space for You Talk Too Much to fizzle out or leap off a cliff, but consider me cautiously optimistic.