shonen manga – Contemporary Japanese Literature

北国ゆらゆら紀行

May 3, 2025May 9, 2025 KathrynLeave a comment

Ryōko Nagara’s Kitaguni yura-yura kikō (北国ゆらゆら紀行) is an episodic travelogue manga that follows a young woman named Tsukiko who left her job to return to her hometown of Sapporo.

Tsukiko is too burnt out to resume full employment, and her savings are running low. Her friend Chitose invites her to move into a Shōwa-era sharehouse co-rented with her flatmate Kensuke and Kensuke’s girlfriend Miwa. Their landlord, a world traveler who no longer lives in Japan, says that Tsukiko can stay if she can manage to clean up all the junk in the spare room.

As Tsukiko recovers from her recent life changes, she and Chitose explore Sapporo at a leisurely pace. Chitose is a writer who aspires to create a magazine celebrating the city’s regional culture. For the time being, she posts articles on her blog and creates zines. Chitose brings Tsukiko along while she scouts for material at small local stores and restaurants. When they’re not out and about, the two women dig through the cardboard boxes left behind by the landlord and uncover all sorts of treasures, from vinyl records to unique Hokkaido woodcrafts.

In my review (here) of Tomoko Shibasaki’s short story collection A Hundred Years and a Day, I touch on the phenomenon of “analog nostalgia,” the fascination with tangible media and the objects of an earlier era. Shibasaki’s collection dwells in a gentle sense of decay, but Kitaguni yura-yura kikō is marked by its youthful energy. As they stroll through beautiful streets lined with old houses and enjoy lively conversations over local cuisine in charming restaurants, it’s clear that Tsukiko and Chitose are thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Despite the fun she has with Chitose and her friends, Tsukiko suffers from depression and anxiety. The tiny apartment she occupies at the beginning of the manga is filled with trash, and she loses track of time while doomscrolling late at night. When Tsukiko considers the possibility of finding a new job, she imagines herself as a defenseless egg yolk sweating and apologizing while surrounded by menacing shadows.

When she invites her friend to move into her sharehouse, Chitose gives Tsukiko something tangible to hold. The manga’s emphasis on analog media, from Chitose’s printed zines to the old Walkman and cassette tapes that Tsukiko digs out of the landlord’s cardboard boxes, isn’t just simple nostalgia. Rather, it’s a concrete solution to a distressingly amorphous problem.

As the anonymous author of one of my favorite video game blogs writes (here) regarding the appeal of retro media, “We weren’t meant to live in an endless feed.” The rituals required by analog media once “gave life a shape that wasn’t constant images on a screen to choose from,” and these rituals serve as an anchor in the flow. Kitaguni yura-yura kikō doesn’t glorify the past or fetishize commodified nostalgia. Instead, tangible objects serve as a visual shorthand for places and relationships that don’t vanish when you close an app.

I don’t mean to suggest that Kitaguni yura-yura kikō is an introspective character study. More than anything, it’s a sweet and gentle travelogue, and it’s very charming. This manga makes me want to visit Sapporo and take long walks and eat delicious food. Still, I appreciate the subtext of the story, which is about readjusting to life lived at a slower pace while relearning how to have a meaningful connection with the place you live, the people who share the space with you, and your own embodied existence.

Higashi Tokyo Machi Machi

February 22, 2025 Kathryn1 Comment

Keita Katsushika’s manga Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi (東東京区区) is a leisurely walking tour of East Tokyo. As suggested by their pen name, the artist lives in Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward, which is known for the retro ambiance of its Shibamata district and its green and pleasant riverside walking paths. Keita Katsushika is keen to show the reader the quiet charm of the area while exploring the depth of its history and the diversity of its communities.

Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi follows the adventures of three focal characters. 21yo Sarah is a college student majoring in Urban Studies, and 8yo Selam is the daughter of an Ethiopian immigrant who runs a small restaurant near her university. While Sarah and Selam are out on a walk one afternoon, they meet 13yo Haruta, a homeschooled student pursuing his interest in Tokyo’s history. The friendship between these three characters is sweet and uncomplicated, and their personalities facilitate different approaches to urban exploration.

The trio’s first walk together takes them to the Tokyo Skytree, where they’re able to look out over the neighborhood while studying a reproduction of an Edo-period artwork that depicts the region as it appeared in the past. Another adventure takes them to the former site of the Venice Market, a postwar black market that was created by laying boards over a drainage canal. Since then, a normal street was built over the water, and the area hosts a number of stores and restaurants catering to Tokyo’s immigrant populations. If you’re interested in the history of the Venice Market, you can check out a two-page preview of this section of the manga (here).

All three characters were born and raised in Japan, and no one ever treats them with anything less than kindness and respect. As Sarah writes in the opening to her senior thesis, the formerly depopulated areas of Northeast Tokyo have gradually become home to many immigrant communities, who have revitalized the neighborhoods where they settle. Instead of resenting the growth of their communities, many older residents are happy to share their knowledge and memories with curious young people.

For what it’s worth, this portrayal of gregarious retirees is true to my own experiences walking around Tokyo with friends. Whether you’re a visitor or a long-term resident, it doesn’t matter what your face looks like or how you dress. As long as you’re willing to listen, there will always be people willing to share their stories. The manga’s scenes of immigrant community gatherings are equally warm and friendly. It’s lovely to see the diversity of people and life experiences in Tokyo shown as what it really is – not as a social issue to be discussed when something bad happens, but rather as a normal and pleasant aspect of everyday life.

In many ways, Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi reminds me of Kiyohiko Azuma’s manga Yotsuba&!, which follows the wholesome everyday adventures of a translator, his friends, and the young girl he adopted abroad. Just as in Yotsuba&!, the art of Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi places simple and stylized characters into meticulously detailed backgrounds, thus helping the reader feel immersed in the cityscape of Tokyo and its suburbs.

The main difference is that Keita Katsushika’s manga is dense with text and reads more like a collection of illustrated essays than a story. Thankfully, the writing follows the standard shōnen manga convention of glossing the kanji with their hiragana pronunciations. As you might imagine, this is especially helpful with place names.

I’d recommend Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi to anyone who’s interested in the history and culture of Tokyo. If you’ve read Jorge Almazán’s study Emergent Tokyo and are curious about how the urban design principles Almazán charted in West Tokyo neighborhoods have been adapted to the older neighborhoods in the east of the city, this manga was published for you specifically. Higashi Tōkyō Machi Machi is a treasure, and it’s a joy to explore Tokyo alongside its characters.

Dragon Goes House-Hunting

November 4, 2024 KathrynLeave a comment

Earlier this year, Seven Seas released the tenth and final volume of Kawo Tanuki and Choco Aya’s fantasy series Dragon Goes House-Hunting. This manga follows the misadventures of a gentle but cowardly dragon named Letty and his real estate agent Dearia, a massively powerful and inhumanly beautiful dark wizard. Letty is searching for a comfortable house that will accommodate his size while also protecting him from the pesky adventurers trying to hunt him for crafting materials. While Letty pictures himself in a cozy cottage, Dearia encourages him to be more pragmatic and dungeon-minded.

What makes Dragon Goes House-Hunting stand out in the “slice-of-life fantasy” genre is the consistently high quality of its art, which references the detailed monster designs from video game manuals of the 1990s while still feeling fresh and contemporary. For video game fans especially, it’s quite entertaining to look at dungeon design from the perspective of the monsters, who are just trying to make it through the day without being harassed by heroes. The manga’s situational humor is gentle and sweet, but each volume still managed to surprise me with at least three or four devilishly sharp jokes.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe Dragon Goes House-Hunting is to say that it’s the high fantasy version of the wholesome yakuza comedy The Way of the Househusband. Like The Way of the Househusband, Dragon Goes House-Hunting is designed to be accessible to all ages, but it will resonate most strongly with readers old enough to have some experience with real estate (even if that experience is limited to looking for a student apartment). For a more action-oriented and kid-friendly take on the concept of “building homes for monsters,” I’d also like to recommend the ongoing shōnen series Soara and the House of Monsters, which is a gorgeously creative celebration of fantasy architecture.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

June 6, 2015 KathrynLeave a comment

Title: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Japanese Title: ゼルダの伝説 (Zeruda no densetsu)
Artist: Ishinomori Shōtaro (石ノ森章太郎)
Translator: Dan Owsen
Publication Year: 2015 (America, new edition); 1993 (America and Japan, original edition)
Publisher: Viz Media
Pages: 196

Full disclosure: I read this manga countless times as a kid, and the game it’s based on is one of the greatest loves of my life. This review is biased, because of course it is.

My own adoration aside, Viz Media’s new publication of manga giant Ishinomori Shintarō‘s adaptation of the 1991 Super Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has been selling extremely well since it was released a month ago.

This success makes perfect sense. Not only is The Legend of Zelda a major video game franchise with its own culture cachet, but Viz has also managed to put out a handsome publication, and manga’s story is easy to follow and immediately accessible to readers not familiar with the games.

The teenage orphan Link lives peacefully in a quiet village in “the pristine land of Hyrule” when, one stormy night, his uncle is summoned to the castle. Link is awoken by a voice claiming to be the princess Zelda, who telepathically tells him that she is being held prisoner in her own dungeons. Link, fearing shenanigans, rushes to the castle in the rain only to see his uncle put to death by a powerful wizard named Agahnim (whose dark skin and Orientalist stylings are how you know he’s a bad guy, yikes). Link manages to infiltrate the castle and rescue Zelda, only to have her immediately kidnapped once more by the wizard, who intends to use her to break the seal on an even greater evil. Before she’s spirited off to wherever princesses are stashed away in such situations, Zelda manages to tell Link that it’s his destiny to save Hyrule and that he must locate the legendary Master Sword, which is the only blade capable of defeating the powerful force controlling Agahnim. Off he goes, and adventure ensues.

Video game adaptations into other media tend to be hit or miss, but Ishinomori, genius that he is, pulls off his manga rendering of A Link to the Past flawlessly. Although Link is never really alone in the game (as he is always accompanied by you, the player), his quest is a lonely one, as he bears the sole responsibility for delivering the land from a terrible fate. Ishinomori especially excels at portraying Link’s smallness in a vast world filled with hostile creatures. The action sequences – and there are a lot of them – are nicely choreographed, with a smooth flow facilitated by expert paneling. This flow is so dependable that, when it’s interrupted, the reader is instantly made aware that Link has encountered a true threat, as he does in his final battle with Ganon, the story’s ultimate villain.

The manga is also populated by friendly characters who aid Link along his journey. The most striking of these fellow wayfarers is a bird-like “mystery knight” named Roam (a classic Ishinomori archetype in both personality and visual characterization). The inhabitants of Ganon’s dark world, a mirror reflection of Hyrule that changes the shape of people based on the truest form of their hearts, are also given small roles that help raise the stakes of Link’s battle. For example, immediately after Link is exiled to the dark world by Agahnim, he encounters a talking tree who explains to him that there are many other people who, for whatever reason, followed Ganon into the dark world only to become trapped there, doomed to wander as beasts or serve an evil master until a hero can purify the land. Such accounts add layers of depth to the story that aren’t to be found in the original game, in which the player progresses from objective to objective simply to experience the next challenge.

Despite the assistance of friends he encounters, Link is still one boy caught up in a legend much larger than his own life, a theme Ishinomori emphasizes with splash panels depicting Link as a faceless dot at one corner of a daunting landscape. In the game on which the manga is based, the enemy the player must engage most frequently is the environment itself, and the artist’s translation of this element into menacing backgrounds and elaborate framing devices is beautiful to behold. Ishinomori’s interpretation of Ganon’s castle, the revelation of which is a climactic moment, is especially awe-inspiring.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are also some fun Easter eggs for Zelda fans scattered throughout the manga. I don’t want to spoil all of them; but, to give an example, Link flies to the Desert Ruins in a winged hang glider. As the villager who provides him with this contraption recounts, “They say these miracle wings belonged to a powerful bird that carried the knights of Hyrule into battle!” In retrospect, this statement seems to refer to the events alluded to in Skyward Sword. And yet, considering that this was written more than ten years ago, one can’t help but wonder how much of the lore explored in more recent games was already in place as the earliest titles were being developed. Or, conversely, was this manga perhaps a guiding influence for subsequent world building?

This manga was originally serialized in the American gaming magazine Nintendo Power from January to December 1992. The following year, it was published as a full-color collected volume by Nintendo of America and in a black-and-white tankōbon by Shōgakukan in Japan. As such, it’s an interesting slice of both manga and video game history. Manga was still relatively unknown in the United States in 1992, and Viz Media only started publishing its groundbreaking Animerica magazine the following year. Meanwhile, Gail Tilden (the marketing manager at Nintendo of America) and the editors of Nintendo Power, the first publication of its kind, were responding to the sudden appearance of a rabid gaming public in the wake of U.S. release of Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1991. (More information about the early years of the magazine can be found in Jon Irwin‘s excellent Super Mario Bros. 2.) It’s extremely interesting that Nintendo was already attempting a manga/game media mix marketing strategy through the burgeoning medium of English-language video game journalism. It’s also interesting that Viz seems to be using a similar strategy – using the popularity of a gaming franchise to promote manga – with this new release.

Even if you don’t usually care for video games or manga, Ishinomori Shōtaro is a force of nature and a credit to the human race. Since it’s difficult to find his work in English translation, Viz’s new edition of A Link to the Past is a fantastic opportunity to see a master artist and storyteller at the top of his game.