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larryhammerSolanin by Inio Asano - Meiko and Narou are 24-year-olds a few years out of university still trying to figure out this adulthood thing -- she has a full-time office job she hates while he's a part-time freelancer with a band that has never gotten serious about performing (who moved in with her as much for financial as relationship reasons). Prompted by his chance remark, she quits her job to work out what she wants to do with her life -- which sends their relationship into a rocky patch, especially once she displaces her own goalsetting by pushing the band to get serious.
The story is not the strong point here -- the melodramatic twist is all too predictable, and once it happens you know exactly what the climax is going to be. The strength is the small moments that make up the characters' drifting lives, buoyed on Asano's beautifully imperfect art. This is one of those works of sequential art that uses the contrast between inkdrawn characters and photoreferenced backgrounds to good emotional effect. There is also a lot of 20-something doofbarrity and some awesomely weedy Japanese facial hair. And the music scenes are both excellent and moving.
This may not be the best work of art ever about young adult disaffection, but it's a worthy example in the genre. And has been haunting me since reading it two weeks ago, which suggests it's doing something right.
Published in English by Viz in an oversize omnibus volume. Recently made into a live-action movie (trailer) which hasn't been licensed yet, darn it, but the band's song written for it using Asano's lyrics has been earworming me.
---L.
The story is not the strong point here -- the melodramatic twist is all too predictable, and once it happens you know exactly what the climax is going to be. The strength is the small moments that make up the characters' drifting lives, buoyed on Asano's beautifully imperfect art. This is one of those works of sequential art that uses the contrast between inkdrawn characters and photoreferenced backgrounds to good emotional effect. There is also a lot of 20-something doofbarrity and some awesomely weedy Japanese facial hair. And the music scenes are both excellent and moving.
This may not be the best work of art ever about young adult disaffection, but it's a worthy example in the genre. And has been haunting me since reading it two weeks ago, which suggests it's doing something right.
Published in English by Viz in an oversize omnibus volume. Recently made into a live-action movie (trailer) which hasn't been licensed yet, darn it, but the band's song written for it using Asano's lyrics has been earworming me.
---L.