From your first glance at its volume cover, it is clear that one of Witch Hat Atelier’s great strengths is its lush illustrations, which delight in both their whimsical form and detail-rich content. Even the chapter index is adorned with herbs and baubles, speaking to the love of tiny mysteries and scene-setting details attendant in this realm of old woods fantasy. A pinch of this rare herb, a shaving of root, and something bright and glittering from the high jars of the atelier; the magical artisan at work is this story’s quintessential image, capturing both the wonder and the skill of true creation.
Category Archives: Essay
Hope and Wonder in Girls’ Last Tour
Since its beginning, Girls’ Last Tour has been a story about coming to terms with the end of things. Its very title points to the finality of this journey, preemptively putting to rest any thoughts of surviving beyond the apocalypse. Most stories find their characters rallying against fate with all their might, hoping to change their very destiny. There is no such hope of upending fate here; Girls’ Last Tour knows its characters’ destiny, and is instead focused on the more intractable conflict of how you comport yourself when you know things are ending. When the hubris of assumed immortality is stripped away, what defines us as fundamentally human? When we cannot be comforted by the endurance of our legacy, what else do we have left?
Tending the Fire in Outer Wilds
Standing on the crumbling surface of a dwarf planet, you watch as tendrils of light dance across the earth, chasing shadows as the sun creeps over the horizon. Daybreak sees a glow briefly rising and crashing upon these ruins, the sun their only visitor since times unknown. Camped beside your spacecraft, sifting through the wreckage of a dead civilization, you feel a loneliness more acute than that of total abandonment; the loneliness of absence, of the empty spaces where life once thrived, but no longer. As the light becomes too bright to bear, as the sun reaches a terrifying fullness of form, you think back on your journey, hoping to at least find companionship in memory.
Then, from your scanner, a gurgle of static resolves into a sharp tone: the mournful song of a harmonica. Somewhere out there, someone is watching the same sight you are, feeling that same tug of homesickness, fear, and awe. Even in the darkest recesses of space, you are never truly alone.
Endurance and Inheritance in Girls’ Last Tour
Snow falls gently on a disused battlecruiser as we return to Girl’s Last Tour. In the years since the anime adaptation’s release, our world seems to have spun significantly closer to the future as posited by this story, with climate change, the revival of economic serfdom, and an ascendant far right all pointing towards mankind’s self-inflicted decline. Given our increasing proximity to apocalypse, I can appreciate all the more the lessons provided by Chi and Yuu: Chi’s industrious, pragmatic preoccupation with immediate tasks, Yuu’s zen appreciation for whatever life offers her. Like the heroines of Girls’ Last Tour, we possess no way of directly challenging the conditions informing our lives; whether it’s through busying ourselves with what we can do or learning to “get along with the hopelessness,” this manga seems to increasingly be providing a blueprint for navigating our modern age.
Narrative and Consequence
Imagine, for a moment, the tale of Johnny Protagonist. Johnny is the son of a great martial artist, and is determined to uphold his father’s legacy. With a grand tournament approaching, Johnny sees his chance for glory at last, and trains hard to perfect the skills his father once instilled in him. In round after round, Johnny demonstrates cunning and courage, deftly defeating his opponents with one after another of his father’s legendary techniques. At last, Johnny reaches the final round, and faces off with the student of his father’s old rival. At this point, Johnny pulls a pointy hat out of his gi, says “I was actually a wizard this whole time,” and turns his opponent into a newt.
In your mind, does Johnny’s tale qualify as a satisfying story? If expanded to the length of a novel or television series, would you feel like Johnny’s wizard reveal was a meaningful payoff for the time you’ve invested in this character, and the challenges you’ve seen them overcome? Do you feel satisfied by that relationship between exertion and result, and are you sufficiently hooked on Johnny’s world to wish to follow his continuing adventures?
Buckle up, folks. Today we’re talking narrative and consequence.
Chainsaw Man and the Poverty of Our Dreams
Chainsaw Man commences with a grim litany of prices paid, as our hero Denji recounts all the body parts and organs he’s sold to winnow down his overwhelming debt. Having hacked off all expendable kidneys, eyes, and testicles, he announces he’s reduced his debt to a mere thirty-eight million yen. It’s not a price he could reasonably pay, not a price he expects to pay with all the fruit of his desperate labor. It is a death sentence, executed by way of a thousand financial cuts, and it will follow him until the day he finally gives up.
Seeking the Ineffable in Otherside Picnic
When I set out to write up Otherside Picnic’s first volume, I figured it’d be best to first investigate the story’s formal predecessors: the original novel Roadside Picnic by brothers Arkadis and Boris Strugatsky, as well as its acclaimed film adaptation, Stalker. The context seemed vital for really digging into Otherside Picnic’s approach, but more importantly, both Roadside Picnic and Stalker are beloved works of fiction, and fit squarely within my own preferred genres. I’ve read countless works of weird and speculative fiction, forever captivated by stories of humanity at the fraying edge of reality, meaning it was only a matter of time before I dug into the Strugatskys’ vision on my own time.
When Bleach Was Great: The Ballad of Ichigo and Rukia
Hello everyone, and welcome to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re going to be engaging in a somewhat unusual exercise, as I’ve been assigned a unique request: expand this tweet on Bleach characters’ Ichigo and Rukia’s suitability as a couple into an entire article. I was initially intending to decline, because it was a tossed-off tweet about a series I hadn’t fully read in decades, more intended to be an emotionally charged stab of nostalgic resentment than a critical thesis. But upon further reflection, it does feel like there’s a bit more meat to this feeling than “the couple I liked didn’t get together.” Framed more generally, the narrative failings of Bleach stand as a handy example of the narrative pitfalls of shonen storytelling altogether – so let’s dig into this topic a little, and see what we can suss out.
Dead Dead Demons and the Banality of Apocalypse
Late in Dead Dead Demons’ first volume, its boisterous heroine Ontan stares out over the city of Tokyo, a vast alien mothership hanging silently above. In spite of the imminent threat, the city is quiet. After months of frantic news reports, the mothership has become just another feature of the skyline, an accepted feature of the modern age. Ontan has news for her complacent city. “Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened that day, and are living their peaceful lives as if it’s a given. But I have something I’d like to tell them: there’s no such thing as an endless summer break!”
Blue Flag – Volume 2
Blue Flag’s second volume starts off with a reminder of the first thing that struck me about the first volume: the careful attention this story pays to the way clothes hang on the body, and project confidence, insecurity, or any manner of other emotions purely in the fit of the fabric.
It’s fitting for a story about adolescence to be preoccupied as well with the awkward physicality of our outfits – how some of us seem to exude natural confidence at all times, while others seem perpetually uncomfortable in their own skin. It’s also fitting for a story by KAITO, who is so capable of conveying emotions through presentation, as with their masterful use of paneling. Gaining comfort with both our bodies and our feelings is a circuitous learning process, and though some of Blue Flag’s leads seem more confident in their clothes than others, they all struggle with the difficulty of presenting an authentic self.