<-- Click the picture to get to a page where you can download and listen to our show! So..Where have we been? Here, but not updating the blog! Today is a new day and I will be updating for this past show, episode #6. Honestly, the chances of Arzach or I ever updating about shows #2-#5 are small, but maybe it will happen someday. So, this week we talked about the Manga "Solanin" by Asano Inio. It is a great book about a couple who is coming of age in Tokyo. They have been out of college for a few years and are trying to navigate their new found adulthood selves in the big city, as well as deciding the future of their love and relationship. The book is great because it is a coming of age story but a different time frame: the delicate time between becoming an adult not only in age or because you are in college, but because you are actually done with college and by all standards, shouldn't one be adult after the hell of higher education? Inio does a beautiful job at making the relationship of the two main characters, Meiko & Taneda, the nucleus of the story, but does not allow this to overwhelm the reader. He doesn't allow the characters to be defined by the relationship and does a beautiful, precise job at illustrating and writing the experiencing each character deals with in also not letting themselves be defined by their relationships. The characters created are whole and I believe very well rounded...mostly because they deal with the big life questions and respond to them with action: they quit their jobs, they wander through the city, they bicker with their mother, and they fight with the people the love. I, Ruby Red, give this book 5 stars. Here are some links for you to check out! Look out for this story to gain more prominence as it is currently being made into a live-action movie! Yay!!!!!!! http://www.onemanga.com/Solanin/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inio_Asano
Arzach here, I just wanted to post some of the incredible images from Asano th
at we were talking about so you can see for yourself his amazing talents.With this panel I just love the tight composition of the drawing. We have this point of view from the ground up that just draws you the reader in to it, and it features pretty much the entire cast in this shot, and the emotions that is shown in their faces is very well depicted. And look at the detail of everything, look at the mic and mic stand look at the way he draws those drums, even the strap of the bass is rendered so smooth and so well.
Another pic I want to share with everyone is one of the scenes where Asano illustrates landscape and the outdoors and the such. With this one in the first panel we have this very picturesque shot of the a Japanese city/lake scape. In this panel also you
can see what me and Ruby Red were talking about with a photo realist look to it. The other panels on the page are more descriptive illustrations I was talking about before in the band scene, the level of detail here is really quite amazing.I just wanted to throw in one more image to get a sense of a really awesomely intense scene in the book. To show an example of the amazing flow of the words and pictures that makes this book one of the best you could read.
