Disclaimer: I am not deaf myself. If any deaf people have a different perspective on this show, I would love to be informed about it and am open to changing my opinions in that regard.

It’s important to have stories with disabled characters that aren’t ABOUT their disability, but you can’t just pretend the disability doesn’t exist.

When I read the summary for this show, I was expecting it to be about Bojji proving to everyone else that his disabilities don't prevent him from being able to rule effectively. Instead, this show barely addresses that, and when it does, it's done so badly that I wish it wasn't.

Bojji is shown to be physically weak and small. I think this was actually handled alright. We see that it's a setback for him, but he's able to work around it by learning a fighting strategy that requires precision rather tan pure strength.

Where the show truly fails is in Bojji's deafness. Studies show that even in the best conditions, only a max of 40% of speech can be accurately lip-read. Bojji is somehow able to read lips with complete accuracy, even when the other characters aren't looking at him or when the lighting is sub-optimal. I could maybe excuse these things if magic was being used to enhance Bojji's lip-reading abilities, but it's not. He's just somehow able to do it perfectly with no assistance. It seems likely that Bojji is capable of hearing a little, as evidenced by his ability to speak (he's definitely trying to say real words), but this is never clarified. It's presented as if Bojji is relying completely on basic, non-magical lip-reading to understand those around him and that is simply not possible. This reveals to me that the writer did not do even a little bit of research on how to write deaf characters.

Additionally, Kage is able to understand Bojji's speech perfectly for reasons that are never explained (Kage states he doesn't know why he can do that). Bojji's deafness doesn't effect the way he navigates the world at all. The show is written as if he isn't deaf. It honestly feels like he was made deaf and unable to speak because the writers thought it was childish/cute, not because they actually wanted to explore how that would effect a king's rise to power. It's perfectly fine if they wanted to write a story about a disabled character where the disability isn't a major setback or even a part of the plot at all. In fact, I'd love to see more stories like that. But don't make a character disabled if you're going to write them as if they're not disabled. At least give us an explanation for how Bojji is able to communicate despite his deafness. Without that, it comes across as if the writer wanted brownie points for writing a disabled character, but didn't want to put the work into actually doing it correctly.

I haven't even gone in to the utter stupidity that is the plot and character motivations, especially in the second half, but there's plenty of other reviews that do go over that and I don't feel the need to repeat what they've already said.

Overall, it's a typical shonen so if you like that type of show, you might enjoy this. But if you want even semi-competent character writing, skip this one.