Nijigahara Holograph: I don't think I'd want this comic to be three dimensional

Nijigahara Holograph
By Inio Asano
Published by Fantagraphics Books



I've been a fan of Inio Asano ever since I read his excellent book Solanin, which was a lovely slice of life story with wonderfully realized characters and lots of well-earned emotion. His two-volume collection of short stories, What a Wonderful World!, was pretty good too, but around the time that I read those series, I'd heard rumors of an excellent earlier work focused more on horror than on young people trying to find purpose.

Now that I've finally read Nijigahara Holograph, I can see some of the seeds of Asano's later themes, but here they're mixed with some really disturbing psychological stuff, possibly stemming from a sort of cultural hopelessness, maybe the same sort of thing that Kazuo Umezu explores in Drifting Classroom. But this is pretty different, being the sort of elliptical, somewhat impenetrable style of Japanese horror, with only slight hints of the supernatural and a lot of difficulty figuring out just what the hell is going on.

So, what's it actually about? The story jumps back and forth in time, alternating between following a group of kids and teachers at an elementary school and then checking in with them eleven years later as they're still reckoning with the things that happened. A lot of the details get teased out over the course of the book, so it takes a while to figure out what exactly happened in the past and how it is still affecting everyone in the present.

Much of the oddness seems to surround a spooky series of tunnels that some of the kids pass when walking between home and school, and there are also a bunch of butterflies that may or may not be supernatural that regularly appear in huge swarms. It's only slightly creepy, and the build to some eventual reveals is slow, but we eventually see that several of these kids are rather troubled. There's a transfer student who doesn't seem to get along with anyone, to the point of angrily lashing out at anyone who tries to get close to him. There's another kid who is a bully, with some of his misanthropy stemming from the way all the other kids treated a girl who he liked. And there's also a teacher who was assaulted when trying to defend a student and is slowly losing confidence in herself and feeling like she has nothing to offer the children in her care.

In the present, we check in with everyone and see how the events of their past messed them up, and the book slowly builds to some reveals that eventually show how some original sins led to a great deal of suffering. It ends up being pretty effective, if not especially scary, although there is one very disturbing scene in which someone who seemed to be a kindly character turns out to be one of the main sources of the horror that has been affecting everyone.

In the end, I'm not completely sure what to make of this story. I think I can see what Asano is going for, examining the way past sins can affect the present and looking at how small decisions can spiral out to result in larger consequences. I think there might be a bit of social commentary going on, looking at how the failure to give children the love and support they need can result in pretty severe consequences later in life.

Whatever the case, the book ends up working fairly well, but I'm glad Asano went in a different direction in his later works, trying to focus on how people can struggle to live and thrive in a difficult world. There's a place for horror and nastiness, but I think Asano is better suited for positivity and hopefulness, as well as capturing the moments of beauty in life. He manages to do that here too, even amidst all the psychological anguish:



So, I'm glad I read this so I could see some of the evolution of a great cartoonist, and I'm excited to see what Asano does next. Whatever it is, I expect that it will surprise and delight me. Don't let me down, Asano-san!

What a Wonderful World!: Ha ha ha, irony

Elsewhere: I reviewed Starr the Slayer #3 at Comics Bulletin, and the latest episode of Venture Brothers at The Factual Opinion.

Links: Brendan McCarthy! Dr. Strange! Maybe Spider-Man too! Coming next year! Awesome!

I still haven't read my copy of the Act-I-Vate Primer, so I'll probably wait to watch these videos that Michel Fiffe posted in which some of the creators did readings/reenactments of their stories, but it certainly looks cool. Notably, Tucker Stone participated in Mike Cavallaro's Loviathan, so you can see more of his "acting" "talent" if you don't get enough already with Advanced Common Sense.

This short comic by Rebecca Dart adapting a traditional ballad is gorgeous, reminiscent of Cyril Pedrosa's work on Three Shadows.

On the other hand, I don't know what the hell is going on in this longer Sam Hiti comic, but it sure is cool.

Here are some pages from a manga adaptation of Jaws. Awesome.

And now:

What a Wonderful World!, volume 1-2

By Inio Asano

For those of us who absolutely loved Inio Asano's Solanin, his newest release on these shores might be something of a disappointment, since it seems to cover the same ground (that is, young people unsure about the future), and as a collection of short stories, it doesn't provide the same satisfaction that comes from seeing characters defined and developed over the course of a longer narrative. But while it might suffer in comparison to that earlier work (which was actually published later in Japan), What a Wonderful World! is still a good read, giving Asano the chance to explore a wider variety of characters and tell some fascinating little vignettes that chronicle urban life. And he adds to the experience by interweaving the characters from story to story; sometimes a bit player in one story will get his own tale, while others might show up in the background here and there, or characters will be linked by something as simple as passing each other on the street. It's a good way to make everything feel like it's happening in a cohesive world, with everybody united by their common striving to survive, joined together by invisible authorial strings. It's one big city, and there are a million stories within it.

As in Solanin, a common theme seems to be that of depressed young people, although he covers a bigger age range here, sometimes checking in on "ronin" who are waiting to pass entrance exams before then can get into college, or looking at middle-schoolers who are in much the same situation, already beseiged with life's pressures to succeed. Other points in life's long span make their appearance as well, including fatherhood, a woman on the cusp of being an old maid, and a striking chapter in which an old man tries to reconnect with his estranged brother at the end of his life. But the majority of the tales are about youth, whether it's young adults enjoying the excitement of rock and roll:

Or a schoolgirl risking her life for acceptance from her peers:

Kids bicker about the viability of their future, or how well they're living up to their parents' expectations, or whether they're doing anything worthwhile with their life. It's a varied look at modern life, and while Asano avoids being maudlin, he seems to be emphasizing the necessity of not giving up, of finding some worth in the life you have.

And so it seems, until somewhere around the middle of the second volume, when all of all these sad/hopeful stories (which have occasionally seen the encroachment of fantastic elements like talking birds that are also death gods) take a turn for the morbid, focusing more on death and the end of life. There's a bit of the message that you should live for today, because you never know when life will end suddenly, but at the same time, there's an emphasis on continuing to move forward and not trying to dwell on one great moment in time, or live in the past. In the end, Asano's viewpoint seems complex, embracing of the full possibilities of life. But he undercuts that at the same time, showing that hope and promises don't always last. Life is a complicated thing, and millions of people end up in millions of different situations. That's the thing that Asano does so well, showing this huge, multifaceted thing that is modern life, and making it look like a beautiful jewel.

And the art, of course, is what really sells the whole thing, with Asano's delicate line gorgeously detailing a ton of different characters and bringing their emotions to life, along with the beauty of the world around them:

He nails such diverse moments as finding the inspiration to do your best in the eyes of your child:

Or a depressed, angry kid almost giving up on life, but not quite:

And he really delivers on the occasional moment of hilarity, whether it's the sun glinting past the scrotum of a hopeful young man:

Or a girl dreaming about how even frogs have it tough:

As a collection, the series works wonderfully to detail Asano's theme, and one can see how he could go from something like this to the more expansive Solanin. While this might not quite reach the emotional heights of that earlier/later book, it's still full of great moments and well-realized characters. One can see Asano's growth over the course of the books, and it should be amazing to track that development over any further releases, by which point his powers should be beyond comprehension. Now if only someone will import Nijigahara Holograph...

Solanin: I think it's safe to say that I liked it

A note before starting: I've noticed that this book has been an object of discussion around the comics interblogs (Jog, Chris Butcher, and David Welsh, for example), but I've avoided reading any of those until I was able to finish the book and write my own take.  So stay tuned around these parts, I guess, in case I end up feeling like I need to react to others' opinions.  Discussion is good!

Solanin

By Inio Asano

Why don't we have more manga like this in English?  For that matter, we could use more comics like this in general, but the fact that this book, which isn't about young boys fighting, vampires, or dudes making out with each other, got published in the West at all is not only noteworthy, but quite hopeful for those of us who want to read more manga geared for adults.  

With this book, Inio Asano has crafted a beautifully realistic, down-to-earth slice of life that most adults should be able to identify with intimately.  Haven't we all been aimless youths struggling to come to grips with the responsibilities of adulthood?  Here, Asano focuses on a group of young twentysomethings, led by Meiko, a girl who recently graduated from college and lives in Tokyo with her boyfriend Tanabe.  She hates her office job, and ends up abruptly quitting after being assured by Tanabe that he can take care of them.  But he's not in much better of a position, only working part-time as an illustrator.  Meiko has what she figures is enough savings to get through a year, so she figures she has that amount of time to figure out what she wants to do, or resign herself to boring office work for the rest of her life.

It's a realistic, if not everyday, situation, and Asano nails the details, from the boredom that soon strikes Meiko when she has nothing to do but sit around her apartment all day, to the strain it puts on her relationship with Tanabe.  In fact, that relationship is kind of the centerpiece of much of the story, and one of Asano's triumphs here.  They way they interact with each other is so complicated and lifelike, they feel like real people.  While Tanabe initially supports Meiko's decision, he soon comes to resent her and worry that he won't be able to provide for both of them.  They end up fighting a lot, but also demonstrating a lot of tenderness toward each other.  It's a beautifully, achingly real depiction of two people struggling to figure out how to become adults.

Part of the reason this all works so well is Asano's gorgeous artwork, which captures the characters and setting with a wonderfully true-to-life, lived-in feel.  Meiko, Tanabe, and their friends don't seem like perfectly clothed and coiffed manga heroes; they look like somebody you would meet on the street, with messy hair and normal outfits.  And they aren't all blandly good-looking either; Meiko in particular is kind of plain, but Asano still manages to capture her beauty while making her look fairly average:

Asano's environments are also perfect for the story, looking like the normal streets, shops, and dwellings that we see every day.  But they're so detailed in their normality, that it's almost like looking through a window at a scene playing out in front of you:

This aspect gets emphasized in occasional chapter-heading illustrations that show some of the backgrounds without any characters, demonstrating the amount of detail that Asano put into every image:

It's amazing stuff, beautiful in its mundanity.

As the plot progresses, Meiko and Tanabe begin to pin their hopes on Tanabe's band, which he started with some friends in college and still continues to mess around with.  In what is either a last attempt to hold onto youth or an effort to keep dreams of artistic success alive, Tanabe quits his job and decides to put all his energy into music.  For a while, the theme of the book becomes the struggle between artistic integrity and being able to put food on the table.  But man, if Asano doesn't make the fight seem worthwhile, with performance scenes that capture the energy of making music (or observing the process from the outside):

But, this being a realistic book, sometimes dreams don't work out.  Eventually you've got to put away those fantasies and be a grown-up, unless you're one of a very select few.  So while the thrill of rock and roll grips the characters for a while, eventually real life seeps back in, and the young lovers have to figure out what they're going to do.  Highly emotional exchanges result:

And, in one of the less realistic, though no less effective, twists of the book, something tragic happens, and the book heads off toward another theme: dealing with loss and grief.  It ends up being some powerful, emotional stuff, and Asano can handle it as well as he could everything else.  He has a great grasp of character, from both a writing and artistic perspective, and he really puts you right in the scenes along with his characters, making you feel the emotions along with them.

It's just beautifully done, with the entire thing building up to a wonderfully cathartic moment that will bring tears to your eyes (unless you're made of stone).  But lest you think it's all serious scenes of emotional breakdowns, there's plenty of moments of comedy that keep things from getting too heavy and introspective:

It makes for an exquisitely complete package, assured in its storytelling from the first page to the last.  This is exactly the kind of book that fans of manga who want to read mature, adult work have been hoping for, and if there's any justice, it will lead to much more in that vein being released.  But for now, let's celebrate what we have, and that's an excellent comic that satisfies on every level.  I'll be impressed if a better example of comics comes out this year.

This review was based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.