Bi-Zen ✨📷🖋So these past few days I read Solanin, by Inio Asano (as you might have seen by the extracts I posted here).
I finished the manga this morning, and I want to talk about it a bit here
So, I had read a few manga by Asano before (Girl on the Shore, Goodnight Punpun, ...), and they had left me with a very strong impression. I loved them, honestly, but I also didn't know what to think of them in a way.
His work is generally about depression, failure to integrate in society, and neuroatypicality. They all contain death in some form or another, but it's told in a way that makes it feel true to life. They all go into detail on their characters' feelings, and that's what make them feel so true to life.
Most of them similarly talk about sexuality, and the way it's often awkward, and can be violent (Girl on the Shore features rape)... But again, it's exposed with such truth to the characters that it feels... more intense.
Anyway, Solanin is the earliest work of him that I've read so far, and it's less 'violent' than the other things I've read from him. It talks about Meiko and Taneda, a young couple living in tokyo, who recently graduated from college and are living on their low-earning jobs, that don't satisfy them at all, and Taneda plays in a band with his college friends. They definitely feel at odds with society, and society's expectation of them (as I said, a common theme in Asano's work). Soon Meiko, having saved up a bit of money, decides to quit her job to take some time and find what she wants to do with her life. Taneda joins her in quitting his job too, and decides what they need is to get together with the band and finally try to release an album, fulfilling their dream.
I don't want to spoil what happens after that, but it's an Inio Asano manga, so let's just say it doesn't go as cleanly as they wished.
Anyway. I like his writing a lot, I relate to his characters very much, and I enjoyed reading this manga. Apparently a live action movie adaptation was released in 2010 (I'm not planning to watch it), and the band Asian Kung-Fu Generation made a song at the same time about the manga, in collaboration with Asano (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZD1B1TskXs)
Do give it a try if you're into feeling blue and sad and thinking about what you want your life to be like
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