Category: Reviews

Manga of the Month: Solanin

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Solanin (ソラニン) by Inio Asano

Solanin is the type of story that sticks with you long after you’ve read it. It has a personal feeling to it and grounds itself quickly as true to life.

I would call Solanin a coming-of-age, the kind that comes when you are in your 20’s and transition from college student to working adult. “Real life” hasn’t quite kicked in yet for our characters; they aren’t sure where exactly to go next creating a sort of holding pattern. The journey that occurs, that journey that you can no longer avoid, doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone. Solanin is about that road that you follow without knowing where it will lead.

The story follows Meiko in her early 20’s who up and quits her boring job, then instead of finding a new one spends the next couple of months deciding just what she wants out of life. A part of this journey is her long-term musician boyfriend Taneda and her collection of college friends all at various stages in the same road. It touches quite poignantly on Japanese youth culture and a difficult economy, which also makes it quite relevant to today’s American 20-somethings, too. Music and friendship dovetail wonderfully to create a hopeful story spurred on by tragedy.

I recognized these people, the relationships, and their questions; it will certainly resonate for anyone out of college. The emotions, reactions, and thoughts seen through the characters of Solanin are utterly genuine and honest. Plus, the ending felt right without grasping for a concrete conclusion to lives that have only just begun.

Manga of the Month: 7-nin no Shakespeare

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7-nin no Shakespeare (七人的莎士比亚) by Harold Sakuishi

One of the reasons people are usually drawn to manga is the sheer diversity of topics it can touch upon. It often seems no matter how wacky the topic there is at least one manga about it. There is salaryman centaur manga. A manga with a half man half horse creature who works in an office. Erin from the Ninja Consultants does a panel just about unusual manga genres and some of the strangest titles within. So when compared to competitive wine tasting or dissociative identity disorder death metal a comic about Shakespeare would appear to be down right mundane. But as usual there is some unexpected twists to this formula.

It is almost impossible to truly know of Bard of Avon. He is one of the most famous western authors of all time. Although there are countless books about him there is still much of his life we know little of. 7-nin no Shakespeare starts at the Globe Theater with politics swirling around William Shakespeare with everyone including Queen Elizabeth. But it seems that much of these shadowy conspiracies also involve an unusual Chinese woman named Li. Li has the seemingly cursed ability to foresee the future that has haunted her more than it has ever helped her. How does the life of this fantastic woman tie into the fortunes of England’s national poet?

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Major: The Ball of Friendship

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I really enjoyed the first season of Major and so now we’ve finally continued on with Goro’s journey. Though this film actually didn’t come out after the first season, it takes place in between seasons one and two so we’ve decided to watch things in chronological order as best we can. That also means this isn’t a movie for jumping into the series, it makes no introductions.

Also, while there is a specific baseball that starts Goto thinking about his past at the beginning of the movie, calling it The Ball of Friendship is just odd. This movie doesn’t really have anything to do with making friends and being there for each other. Friendship doesn’t get Goro through in the climactic last game.

The ending of the first series was a whirlwind of changes at the end. The first season ends with the huge bombshells that are dropped on everyone in Goro’s penultimate year of elementary school. When the second season begins they have jumped ahead to junior high and there are even more significant changes that took place. This movie bridges the gap by explaining how many of those changes came to be from the first season to the second. In a way this is the secret history of Major: The Little League Years.

But as Narutaki said there is not pity for anyone who is not a Major fan. Heck the movie starts in the middle of Goro’s professional career. There is just a little refresher material at the beginning to bring you back up to speed after the intro but it is only there to jog the memory of people who already watched the first season. But other than that your on your own. This movie was made for the hardcore to see what happened in that missing gap. It is more a gaiden than anything else. But a vital one in reflection.

Just a quick note: The movie starts with a lot of awkward English to the point where you might assume you got an old dub. The story just starts in America with native English speakers who are clearly not voice actors. They jump back to Japanese quickly enough but I know it threw Narutaki and I for a loop at first.

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