(Dis)advantages

The real life Emi (except he is a man, tall and not moe), Oscar Pistorius, got the permission to attend the Beijing Olympic games as an athlete representing South Africa.

All kinds of interesting controversy has floated around the topic of Pistorius' possible attending, mostly the fear that he might actually be superior to the pathetic fleshbags. IAAF initially cockblocked him out by banning "technical aids", which would also mean prosthetic legs. I guess it is a valid worry, prosthetics don't need oxygen to run (no metaboly = no lactic acids slowing you down lol) and their energy return efficiency is significantly greater than that of biological legs. That's not to say that he is faster than completely biological humans (he is not), just that it might be easier for him to run at high speeds because of the advantage the prosthetics give him. In a word, he can run faster than he "should be able to"(what an awful choice of words) and that is be terrible. Well, Pistorius appealed and in the end, IAAF had to permit his attending. He of course still has to actually qualify for the games, but this must be a great victory for him.

It's not hard to predict that not too long into the future, thanks to the advancement of technology, the disabled people actually become more able than the "able-bodied ones". As seen here, IAAF probably won't welcome their new cyborg overlords which means the actual Olympics likely will be closed for the disabled people (damn is this the new racial segregation?). So, will we then be watching the paralympics as the supreme sports event where the sprinters run 100m in less than six seconds or whatever?

In the game too, we deal with the topic of disadvantages being advantages or at least not too limiting factors to the lives of the characters. Emi is incredibly able at the running track, Rin's prodigious flexibility makes her capable of leading a relatively normal life without *constant* help from others and the entire deaf/mute student base of the school is just talking a weird foreign language (which sign language is, even in real life). It's an interesting theme, especially when combined with the premise of the game, the school for the disabled children. To me, a school like Yamaku is an ethically unsolved problem. It's neat to have the kids to be in a school, but sometimes it feels like some kind of an internment camp. We've argued over and over again whether some of our characters (Hanako, Hisao etc) should be at a school like ours, but should a school like that exist in the first place (fictionally or in real life)?