reviews without much coherency; both longer form writings after contemplation and journaling & shorter form immediate thoughts after sitting with the work for a day or two
reviews without much coherency; both longer form writings after contemplation and journaling & shorter form immediate thoughts after sitting with the work for a day or two
battan is brilliant at composition, the panels carefully depicting the flow of time, the longing that comes with having deliberately pushed something away. there are breathtaking moments of a first in one's life experienced, enlargened and centered to give it focus, bodies stark and hesvy with their emotions against droll backgrounds. i love how she makes use of vertical panels to slowly urge away distance or to push a certain across a page and narrow it all the while. yet, despite the glimmering beauty of the manga, narratively it falls apart, or never really comes together from anything and neither to anything -- perspectives are changed again and again yet there is always a distance from everyone's interiority and even when they express something, it curves back to the same emptiness. when there's an emotion explored, it's ups and downs, it's attachment to material, it's arrangement around obscurity, there is nothing that it's grasping for or pushing against, there continues a passivity of acceptance that perhaps battan was going for, the dulled dismay that comes with queerness. and yet i found that disconcertation to be attached to something much beyond it that could not be read into, which at the end frustrated me. the story cracks open into an exploration of memory, one which neither looks back nostalgically nor has enough room to plough ahead with its force; it's perpetual oscillation within itself becomes it's own downfall.
in gogo monster there are times when all these shadowed things seem to make an impression from a high angle, above the panels, disappearing somewhere, narrowing as if they are gradually ascending somewhere. there is a sense of the immense dimension of dimness that comes with the distinction already having been made between the imagined and the real by yuki's classmates who both shun him and keep a distance from him. but even with that uneasiness at times, the dark permeation of what is resisted against, there are moments of deep clarity, a relation explored through the kids' desires to stay unmitigated and stubborn, believing their own uncertainties, their own lonelinesses that they cannot escape, the persistence for their own version of reality -- one which while yuki believes he is losing, has a want to lose it at his own time.
matsumoto is deft at creating these situations of claustrophobia -- rooms changed, expressions unneat, something unnerving hidden behind the scratches of his pen. i am always left amazed at how he simultaneously writes and illustrates with such earnestness and delivers a story without seeking to minimize any experience. the narrative drenches the kids in fear and supervision and from it they find their way towards their own liberation, with and through each other -- the height of the walls focused on when surrounded by rumors, the closed door without anyone in sight, same expressions on different faces, minor cruelties, gems of connections.
there's a speed to the movement of this work, one which keeps the distance from collapsing and yet the stories reach across a vast amount of time -- bewildered and exhibiting caution, yet the curiosity keeps jumping from one panel to the next, as it takes a leap from reality to imagination, and back and forth.
the spaces and their occupants in natsu no shuuten observe everyone, the nooks and crannies of the school classrooms, the brilliant light from the train windows, the flowers neat and straightened on their beds. but the lines of everything constantly keep losing their tenacity, trembling open and close against the backdrops envisioned away upon a new visitation, an emotion flickering across close, bashful or bewildered movement of extremities after the eye has moven and registered something, natsukawa's body at the edge of a panel signifying the tension that lies within the panel's containment, the white that her starkness is a contrast against, her eye always a focus of the narration, subtle movement made intentional and almost willful -- all these moments that come and go in silence.
as natsukawa struggles to escape her own solidity, her hesistance that keeps interrupting her need for clarity from herself, aihara has given into the whiteness around him, invisiblizing whatever presence he could hold - his white t-shirt, light colored hair, posture all blend into everything he cannot struggle against, or has been refused to move against. yet even within simultaneities there is always a new entrance or opening that is realigned in another context, the same hallway, the same walk across it, the chairs aligned, a window that sees into the train by itself. a lack that is clearly a part of natsukawa and aihara is reflected in their surroundings, often visited by each other in their quivering capacities. i loved the clearness of the manga, its almost engulfing whiteness comes off the page and stands in contrast to anything left to be opened up, it relocates each character's emotionality, the flash of everyday life that lulls past, the dulled resonation of a hand touched and given and pulled away. everything closes in once the white of the page has left, whether its a park or a hill, or a cluster of houses and buildings, a crowd.
space ushers in lithely, the imagination takes on a wider form: a flight of stairs, a shadow that intricately weaves across the bed. the friction of dialogue keeps on going -- it feels like none of the characters are talking to each other, but rather at an object of affection, or hatred, or intimidation.
children in zettai anzen kamisori build up tales, so large they seem to get lost in them, something takano fumiko expresses so delightfully yet with a certain melancholic loneliness across the short stories -- the dramatic zoom ins, the twisting trees and beds and bedrooms and dolls taking a shape of their own, the heads hinging away from the bodies, the indifference of adults mutating into cruelty. these children forget and remember, are forgotten and remembered, sometimes they're sketched out violently, sometimes they move across so much negative space its wonderous to see them stand on their own, at other times their imagination verges on swallowing them up as that same space twists around them.
there are teenagers that are muddled in their confused love and hate for the world, what they believe to be their obstinate difference in feeling and being from everyone else, they resist to an abrasion that revisits them, an evocation of what could have been had the resistance not been seen through, an unyielding expression that carries through the panels until it explodes and quitens into regret. takano fumiko takes all that space -- to let the characters climb, move, push and sit, leave behind and contemplate -- and merges it with the characters emotions, the form of the panels becomes the characters. space gathers into its own and around the characters, almost like its handing them their emotions. someone takes a shape they shouldn't, someone is misrecognized and disorients the reader yet the characters see them as perfectly situated in their world; so the stories linger somewhere between imagination and magical realism.
death staggers across the white-spaced apartment, as if it has left a trace everywhere and with everyone but is being hidden by the bold expressions, bodies and objects which stay in the apartment - a spiral staircase contained within a tumbling panel, a seemingly high-contrasted photo of a graveyard, bodies stilled yet hiding something in plain view. k no souretsu takes a simple act of murder and the incident is mired into each mind, differently, or strangely, or defensively ... each person carries with them a trace of k, and throughout the story there is an attempt to surpass that death by keeping it distanced and yet an unsaid question. kusumoto also has an unusual, and terrific, hand at incorporating colour into the story, its jarring yet simplified, an object falls, and the entire plot with it, an object is revealed, and the entire plot with it. she works tightly, without stringing any character along the plot-thread, each character unravels by their own assumptions and declarations. death is the last thing on everyone's mind except the protagonist and the reader's, or so it seems.
more than anything, i love the silence which the space of the apartment lends to the story, it makes the characters feel as if they are suspended within a place where they aren’t purposefully touching anything around them, which can become a revelation to what they have done. in its silences, the architecture stares across at death, and the dead right back at what has been emptied of him, or believed to be; suspension of disbelief as experienced by the characters moreso than the reader.
while i love the idea of sentient robots and building affective connections with them, this one is brimming too much with american sentimentality, despite it not being necessarily so ... specifically this line: "not that i think violence is the solution to anything, but we dont have near enough patrol bots thanks to how tight our budget is" (which i wouldn't particularly box within the north american sphere but rather as a symptom of high surveillance societies, in which japan is not much different) -> so it sits more in the 'cozy scifi' genre (?) because of how it keeps placing these simple human acts totally ignorant of the violent institution they are working for ...
many stories start to feel under-written because they all keep revolving around the same plotlines with only the characters or scenarios exchanged or changed -- a girl's envy, a girl's mask, a femme fatale, a witch ... they all accumulate and keep spinning around in different stories ... i also think that while the horror truly grips you at some points, the horrifying-ness of each act lessens with each story because they're all either too short to leave an impact, or pull the same stylistic techniques to depict a horror, or were not meant to be read in 3 sittings
lingers too much on some supposed interiority that does not really come across because of it being overwhelmingly saccharine and also the clunky translation. i love her paneling, and how she can draw out intimacy for so long without it losing its foot, but its too far into fulfilling every character's each and every wish that the characters lose any sense of individuality that they could have had ...
clear and sharp, something that i think stayed consistent with itself throughout the narrative & yet i am still lamenting the sharp but sparse and looser art style of the earlier chapters, it let the haunt of coloniality & it's interaction with gender & class proximate to the text's exposition of it; somewhere along the way it loses it's edge; perhaps because of its much more liberal and sentimental elements [one which becomes obvious at the part where guerrillas have hijacked their train, and yet exist as a way to propel the narrative forward with the last words of one of them].
i think one which stood out to me was midori's role within the story, i kept waiting for there to be a more piercing event / extent of her actions but they stayed much more mild -- especially her role as a pseudo-mother / master to sho, which could have been [i think] a deeply consequential sub-plot for not only her but also sho and younghyun; how one navigates an identity that keeps you within bounds and yet using that as a punishment for those placed lower in the hierarchy, specially and specifically at those times. in an interview, kakki states that she wanted midori to be a woman who rebels against the violent system, and while perhaps she tries to to an extent, i wish how she was held back by her own position within the imperial & colonial society held more weight within the story, not only as a pseudo-mother, but also as a person who has the means to hand over a [lucrative & exploitative] business [and power] to younghyun, and how her escape to incheon is made possible only because of her positionality.
i also wish the last chapter had not ended with stating the inevitability of such events when it has spent the entire story exploring, and deconstructing those very events that violate but also keep level with the familiarity that desire can take, making one's position historical rather than ineluctable.
this makes it seem like I disliked the story but i really did not !!! i think its contending with class conflict along with gender and capitalism under colonialism was done really well, especially younghyun's want of familiarity and yet constantly being put in situations where he has to understand his place not only as a son of a capitalist where his family can and does harm onto others but also as a colonial subject where he is constantly disturbed/displaced of his position within the colonial family / future (unknown to him) inheritor of their property+legacy+history ... especially loved how that coloniality also fits within the love triangle and yet is blurred & contested by the narrative because of sho's estrangement from colonial society and yet entrenchment within the same as an escape from loneliness ; both as forces which preclude his autonomy as a child and a teenager . . .
asami in 'birth' by yumiko ooshima goes through a series of interruptions, again & again in rapid successions where the characters do not leave her room to breathe, leave her explaining herself to everyone in those short moments where she is being argued with or made understood. the characters are absorbed in their own pasts and presents, thinking alone for themselves and how they stand in relation to asami's predicment, but never beyond what they have made their primary life-narratives -- a way of disclosing their own anguishes and a way to understand their personhood within the family that can only come through deciding what they can do for asami.while none of them remain successful or even doubtful, in the end it is the decision of asami and rei's fathers that takes precedent over any other, decisions that keeps changing again and again, from maintaining the respectability of their own families to maintaining the respectability of their daughters, for asami by 'giving' her to be married, and for rei to be fitted into society as a daughter.
it is for rei's late-realized wish to live in the world as a part of a family that brings asami the relief of keeping her child. even though the sequences sometimes were too quickly ran over with to be given depth, by placing them all together within one work i think ooshima was perhaps getting towards portraying a girl's place in the world, where everyone's insistences and expectations are piled up on her, and her own 'sanity' and 'normalcy' as a part of this world defined by the family-form can be maintained only through internalizing her role as a girl and then as an imagined woman who she has embodied at that moment of her life, who keeps the house, who wants the child, who deeply and sometimes hysterically wants what she has always been expected to have [as her mother says, she had wanted her to get married like a proper woman, a desire that comes onto her from outside but one that she makes her own through the child] ; one cannot escape the institution of marriage & a girl is only made a girl when she fantasizes what becomes of her as a mother and a wife ... abortion as the central theme is something i have to read more about as positioned in its sociohistorical context, one in which woman is tugged at between everyone such that her own desires are complicated in all the push and pull
predictable, easy [plays with a lot of tropes too, especially noticeable -- greed for the desired object that the main character recognizes too easily and thus fizzles out to a lukewarm ending just as easy] ... the enclosed spaces and tightened framing of expressions was nice though ...
the tightened framimg also [perhaps] puts into perspective the narrow-need to be exclusively depended on > desiring to see the object hurt and vulnerable [thus conflict arises only when hiroto shuts himself up from that < which is the primary desire for nagi]
when your desire comes from restraint ... very dazzling to me how mamiya's character becomes more distant the more intense her feelings get for sena, the longer she stays hesitant to express externally & to sena about the rising intensity of her feelings the more the distance strengthens but it never diminishes their connection, or the undercurrent of melancholy that i think remains enmeshed very close to the narrative.
[guy who loves mirrors] & these feelings are almost a mirror of sena's own feelings for her sister which are confusing & lead her to removing herself from her sister's life ... so when sena reaches out to mamiya it feels so deeply fulfilling.
sena's feelings for her sister read to me as an exploration of dependency because of a lack of proper family structure [insert comment: no family structure can ever be maintained with propriety] that entangles & thus merges familial and romantic feelings; yuuna pulls away from that dependency & the loneliness and burden it causes through a heterosexual relationship [< need to think on that] while sena resorts more into closing herself up as yuuna tries to make a coherent family structure first with kiku, her and sena & then herself, her fiance and sena ... both which because of their reliance on the exclusivity of the family form do not really work [as sena's feelings become an interruption to that].
mamiya's stillness, her almost-passivity and patience then become the force which, while doesn't break the foundations of the family, creates a different space of thinking of the couple-form and family-form without drawing a line between them --> as in they both become places which circle similar determinings of endurance & tenderness without demanding the negation of sena's feelings for her sister, whatever vague or understoof but unsaid form they may take in mamiya's mind; for sena whose feelings for her sister become an abyss of confusion, it is love from outside that then brings some kind of coherent understanding to how her relationship with her sister can exist within similar circle of feelings as they do for mamiya.
In Water (wr. kiriko nananan) relationships feel muddy, and perhaps watery as the title entails -- they're devoid of anything heavy in them, they evoke a sense of the defeated, a repetitive consistency to remain in place, to not let go, to let go and ignore, to horrify oneself with the inconsistencies of the consistent. Nananan imagines the world in the everyday sense -- its sexual and social and emotional productions and happenings, they remain open to disposal and rectification, and yet are too self-absorbed to see into anything beyond their own selves. who mimics, who fights, who starts, who absorbs the other into the self. what sense of falsity and sedation invade the everyday lives of these characters, their horrors and their self-inflicted uncomfortableness. perhaps i read the works in this because of my own discomfort with intimacy, perhaps these larger emotions that dwell and are seamless are a part of intimacy which elides me. is deception intimacy? is unseeing intimacy? is belonging into each other intimacy? why do nananan's characters persist and insist into their relationships when its clear to the outsider that there's a thread in there that has fallen apart, or been broken. what form of desire keeps these people together, and keep orbiting each other despite either codependency, abuse, humiliation, dissatisfaction, depression, or anything else.
currently reading yuria-sensei no akai ito and it's such an interesting (while not new) take on heterosexuality + aging (while in a heterosexual relationship being the focus of the story) -- it's a new perspective for me since a lot of narratives focused around the woman left behind by her cheating husband focus on their mental+emotional collapse without focusing on other aspects of their lives ? and while the story stays true to that aspect it doesn't shy away from exploring other emotions - from rage, to surprise, to exhaustion and the continuous feeling of this burden when you're living in your husband's family house and the responsibilities stacked upon you are numerous and unending
i also love how it portrays these seemingly harmless misogynistic ayuriactions + comments from goro and yanai but they truly build up to show how isolated/alienated yuria is from everyone around her - and it's barely shown as some form of self imposition but rather how it just gathers up over the years; she's the one who has to take care of the household, of his mother, of everything else really while goro wanders around the city every night (and was presumably absent even in the daytime) ...
thinking about where the story will take the plot with the younger guy -- his genuineness is there, but his straightforwardness about his wife's reasons for leaving him paralleling yuria's situation is so crude and emotionally distant that it reads lackluster to me, it depends on where the story goes then we'll see how it was being framed as, currently to me the framing is just this guy feeling bad about something he's done to his wife (unintentionally but he has) and yuria feeling that someone cares for her because of the delicacy of the situation + her physical attraction (and gradual emotional attachment) to him
also thinking about cheating as a whole, to see framed as a part of life that has different consequences in different circumstances + relationships without being overly moral about "the weight of cheating" ... how much burden gets left behind on the wife when the husband cheats+is away from home most of the time / is emotionally cheating and/or providing for another family a form of cheating or is it something else / what feelings arise from how yuria is not gendered in many character's perspectives and how she is in certain character's perspectives and how that shapes her relation to romance as/and labour + responsibility