The protagonist of the series is a shy young girl named Shizuka and her outgoing male friend Mamoru. The series revolves around Shizuka's high schoollife after she contracts "Translucent Syndrome", a mysterious condition which has only one symptom: The victim's body randomly turns translucent, but is otherwise left perfectly normal and healthy. Unfortunately for Shizuka, there is no known cure or treatment for Translucent Syndrome, other than it is tied to the emotional state of the person affected; positive emotions like happiness and love cause it to retract, negative emotions like stress and sadness cause it to accelerate. Initially Shizuka's condition only affects her arms and legs, and only partially, at seemingly randomly times and durations. However, as it worsens it begins to affect her entire body, leaving her increasingly more translucent and for increasingly longer random periods of time. Shizuka is also in danger of gaining "Fully Transparent Syndrome", or otherwise having her translucency become permanent, which will occur if she spends too long a stretch in her translucent stage. Fully Transparent Syndrome is marked by complete and permanent invisibility, rather than the temporary partial invisibility of the normal syndrome. The fictional condition is used in the series as a metaphor for the common childhood anxiety of feeling lonely and disconnected from other people, as well as—through the threat of the condition worsening—a fear of growing up.
In a post on the , Philip Simon, the editor behind the US translation of Translucentannounced an ETA of Translucent, Books 4 and 5—Vol. 4 on sale July 2009, and Vol. 5 on sale November 2009. Anticipating a reaction due to the extreme delay, he said ""Why the wait with some of these?" you may ask. Well, I had to find new translators after three great teammates had to bow out of their projects. Tried out several possibilities, found two amazing new translators, and now we're on our way to finishing these series off!" A later reply notified readers that the translation is on hiatus, with Mr. Simon expressing a desire to get the series back into production at some later date.
