Manga Alphabet: W is for Walking Man, Wandering Son

[rainsometimes]

The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi

The Walking Man is a collection of very short stories or vignettes all featuring the same unnamed character, a man perhaps in his late twenties or early-to-mid-thirties, married but with no children. We follow him as he leisurely wanders through the streets and parks of his residential neighbourhood. We never get to find out if all the wanderings take place on sundays or if he has unusually flexible work hours. (I found myself wondering if his wife, often shown towards the end of a story, went on excursions on her own.)

Anyway. Nothing much really happens in these stories: the Walking Man tries new routes, climbs trees, repairs stuff he finds that is broken, etc etc. Small stuff, but told well invoking a calm and restful atmosphere. The stoies have titles like "The Bird Watcher", "Snow", "Around Town", "After the Storm", "A Reed Screen", "A Nice Hot Bath", and so on. There's some full frontal nudity of the main character.

To be quite honest for a while I felt what I took as the unspoken message to be a little too insistent: "Be like the Walking Man! Stop and smell the roses!" However, once I realised that, I somehow felt better about it, and was better able to enjoy these quiet,unassuming stories for what they are. It doesn't have to be perfect. <3

From what I understand, The Walking Man is an example of the iyashikei type of work in Japan - something I only learned about through TV Tropes here, but it's so neat it's got its own name.



Wandering Son by Takako Shimura

This manga is still on-going in Japan, where I believe ten volumes have been published to date under its original name Hourou Musuko. I have only read the three volumes that are out in official English translations (in large, beautiful hardcover and translated by Matt Thorn). So I can only speak for the early volumes, where we get to meet young Shuichi Nitori and Yoshinori Takatsuki who start out as ten years old and then slowly age over the course of the story. They're two kids who starts to realise they feel more comfortable dressing and acting as the opposite sex, but they don't know anything about why they feel this way and at first try hard to keep it a secret. Because of society's double standards, Shuichi needs to be more secret about it than Yoshinori, who's free to wear boyish clothes most of the time. But then they and a new friend from school find out about each other and starts becoming close friends over it.

Very low-key and slice-of-life in tone, the main characters of Wandering Son at this point (and their friends and classmates) come across very much as real kids in that age to me, full of thoughts and wishes and fears but often unable to put their thoughts in words in adult terms or just assuming it's best to quiet when everything is uncertain. The story first appears to be moving quite slowly, but then there are skips in time over weeks and months between pages, and scenes may end quite abruptly - you have to pay attention or you'll easily feel lost. It feels impressively lifelike; as a consequence it takes perhaps a little longer to get a feel for how the characters are than in other good manga, but at the same time it's easy to empathise with them and worry about them. There's a great moment in the second volume when their close mutual friend stands up to a bully on Shu's behalf: I believe I said something like "YES!!" out loud at that part. I'm much looking forward to reading the rest of it.

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Anime corner

Whisper of the Heart
- A gorgeous Ghibli movie that's based on a shojo manga I would love to read one day , even as I understand the movie diverges from the original a good deal. Whisper of the Heart is unusually realistic for Ghibli, set in a Tokyo suburb in the 1990s. But it's centred on imagination, creativity and aspirations together with young love, as teenaged Shizuku's interest in fairy tales and fantasy books leads to her realising she wants to write a book on her own when something unexpected in her daily life gives her an idea that grabs her. At the same time, the boy she's started to like is already set on following his own unusual ambitions, and she feels a need to measure up to his example and work hard to become the person she wants to be.

Great movie, sadly unusual in its focus on young female creativity (and not just passive daydreams of fantastic stories, but actual work to put them down in words). The use of music is wonderful - the impromptu playing of the Country Road song that runs through the whole movie as part of the plot is one of my favourite in-universe musical scenes. The art and animation are top-notch Ghibli - the final scene that's set just before dawn was so well-done I nearly felt cold, looking at it.


What begins with a W in your manga/anime alphabet?