Page 45 Review by Stephen
From the creator of SUNNY, TEKKON KINKREET, CATS OF THE LOUVRE, NO 5, PING PONG etc, Taiyo Matsumoto's TOKYO THESE DAYS vol 1.
"I don't know where I'm going."
Creativity burn-out in the intensely pressurised world of oppressively deadline-driven, performance-monitored manga publishing.
All the creators and most of the editors are tired, lost, struggling, burnt out, underappreciated, rudderless, over-reliant on others' judgement, falling back on old habits, on bad habits, and settling for second-best - except Mr Shiosawa, who's quit on pricipal: the principal that he's fallen out of touch with manga's readership and so unfit to edit any longer.
Each chapter terminates in a silent, city-scape pull-back. Why? Is it because life goes on, around you, necessarily oblivious to any individual's predicament?
Some of the most revered manga creators have already quit - ahead of and independent of Mr Shiosawa - thoroughly sick of the manga business. For, make no mistake, that's what it is, first and foremost: a business. Nevertheless, they remain conflicted.
"I fled that world in disgust, but... I never lived so fully as when I was drawing manga."
So why is Mr Shiosawa, freshly retired, visiting his favourites? And what lessons will be learned?
I relished every panel of the balletic TEKKON KINKREET, but this is the Matsumoto art approach I love most: full of quietly troubled, individualistic humanity, the environments warped to each person's actual, experienced perspectives as we meet in the street, stroll round at night, or peer out at the rain, wondering.
For more on this series' triumph, please see my review of the third and final volume.
