Category Archives: Essay

Goodnight Punpun – Volume 1

Posted on by

Solanin is a story about young adulthood, written by Inio Asano at the point when he was experiencing the feelings he was transcribing. It’s a great story, but it is very much about that moment – that specific kind of freedom, that specific kind of fear. A Girl on the Shore is similarly concerned with the specific emotions of a listless, emotionally deadened adolescence, and that story ends when its exact emotional moment concludes.

Goodnight Punpun is a work that seems to be striving for true emotional universality. And so Goodnight Punpun is about a bird.

Continue reading →

The Heroic Spirit of My Hero Academia

Posted on by

Time for a new essay! This one focuses specifically on My Hero Academia, but is more generally about a spirit of optimism in fiction that I find really compelling and valuable. It was frankly kinda tough cutting down all the various topics I wanted to cover into one editorial-sized piece (I could easily write another entire article about the ambiguous ways idols interact with this concept), but I’m pretty happy with the result. I hope you enjoy the piece, and wish you luck finding some spirit of heroism in your own life!

The Heroic Spirit of My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia

Yuureitou – Volume 1

Posted on by

There’s something ugly lurking in Yuureitou. It seeps in from every corner, lurking in too-close panels of drifter Amano savoring his darkest instincts, or his new friend Tetsuo reacting with uncommon violence or disdain. It’s there in the way the panels themselves fetishize Tetsuo, who seems uncomfortable in his own seemingly unwanted skin. It’s ingrained in the manga’s horror tones and exploitation roots, the way it crosses sex with violence so callously that you’d almost guess the mangaka thinks they’re one and the same. And it erupts in vivid, hideous bursts, as the story’s characters are made instruments of fear by lurking, bag-faced men.

Continue reading →

The Loneliness of Denpa-teki na Kanojo

Posted on by

I’m a big fan of stories about people who are in a bad place. Characters who distrust the world around them, or who have been hurt in some way that makes it impossible for them to see good in others. Stories about characters put against the wall, who struggle against difficult but understandable odds. Many of my favorite shows fall in this range, from fantastical stuff like Madoka and Evangelion to the more mundane struggles of Oregairu or Monogatari. The characters in these shows have been hurt by the world, and so they can’t trust that the world will ever extend a hand back.

Continue reading →

A Girl on the Shore – Part Two

Posted on by

“It’s so good to learn that from right here, the view goes on forever.”
– The Mountain Goats

A Girl on the Shore’s second half opens with more of its slow, wide-open panels, images of Sato and Isobe’s empty town shot from the distance it’s experienced. Sato’s tedium comes across in long sequences of repeated shots, as she slumps at her desk or stares out the window. Isobe’s self-hatred clutters pannels together, as the teacher reaches out to him and he slaps her hand away. The contrast of intimate cuts and wide-open spaces suits these characters; Sato sees herself as a willowy non-presence, whereas Isobe is claustrophobic, labeling himself unlovable and struggling to breathe.

Continue reading →

A Girl on the Shore – Part One

Posted on by

“We used to wait / We used waste hours just walkin’ around / We used to wait / All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown.”

– Arcade Fire

Inio Asano certainly has a way with words. Or it might be better to say he has no way with them. His stories seem translucent, any wisp of authorial voice appearing only in the fringes of unvarnished naturalism. He gives his characters’ interiority the drama they believe it deserves, but any magic in his stories is the magic of the world as it is. Characters interrupt each other and start again, tossing out simple observations and losing their trains of thought. You can feel the wind blowing between the staggered refrains of his mixed-up kids.

Continue reading →

Clarity and Humanity in The Beginner’s Guide

Posted on by

The following post will contain plenty of spoilers for The Beginner’s Guide. I generally don’t include warnings like this, but consider the game is only a couple hours and well worth your time if you haven’t played it, I figured I might as well let you know now!

It feels more than a little awkward to be offering criticism of The Beginner’s Guide. After all, the game’s “villain,” if you can call him that, is a figure so intent on assigning a specific meaning to someone else’s work, and giving it a solvable “answer,” that he drives that friend out of creation altogether. On top of that, the game regularly analyzes itself – even if the narrator is incredibly presumptuous in the ways he defines and redefines the work of his friend, many of the questions the game implies are so directly entertained by that one self-conscious voice that analysis almost seems superfluous. The Beginner’s Guide is a set of concise arguments laid out both in dialogue and in actual, physical game space. It doesn’t have to say “for example” as it talks about some principle of game design or the fan/creator relationship – you play the example as the theory is discussed.

Continue reading →

The Magic of the Stage in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Posted on by

My newest editorial is up over at ANN! This one very unsurprisingly tackles my favorite show of the season, Rakugo Shinju, going into it largely from the perspective of how its framing choices elevate its performance scenes. Rakugo definitely gives me more than enough to talk about, and it was actually kind of a challenge here to decide what not to discuss. The show is a fantastic work, the easy highlight of the year so far, and I really enjoyed digging into it. I hope you enjoy the piece!

The Magic of the Stage in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Rakugo

Missed Chances in Colorful

Posted on by

I really, really wish Colorful were a better movie than it is. The kind of movie that Colorful is trying to be is a great idea – a painful, intimate portrait of depression, where any slight hints of the supernatural are really just there to better illustrate the context of the protagonist’s life. A movie that fully embodies the mindset of feeling divorced from happiness, and the reality of an unhappy adolescence. Colorful works somewhat better in retrospect, but even looking back on its trials, it’s a messy, awkward movie, one too caught up in its own bitterness and too hamstrung by its conceit to really invite the audience in. But it certainly tries to be something.

Continue reading →

The Song We Heard When We Were Young: Solanin

Posted on by

“Solanin” is the correct title for this story – but I’ll get to that later. First, as these things generally go, I should lay out some context.

Written and drawn by Inio Asano when he was around twenty-four years old, Solanin is roughly as twenty-four years old as any story can be, complete with faded jeans and tacky shoes and shirts you probably should have left at college. The story’s protagonist is Meiko Inoue, a girl stuck in a job she hates a year and a half out from an aimless formal education. Her boyfriend Taneda lives in her apartment with her, not because this is a considered long-term arrangement, but because his part-time design work doesn’t pay enough to cover rent. Meiko is stressed about her work, but doesn’t see any alternatives; Taneda is supportive to a fault, but insecure about his own expectations and about what Meiko wants him to be. Together they are nervous and unsure and basically the same as any other young person who feels like this can’t be what adulthood is really like.

Continue reading →