Wandering Son is one of the most beautiful and subtle manga I've read in a long time. Most of the other manga I've seen has been over-the-top in one way or another- epic battles in shounen, soap-opera story lines in shojo- but Wandering Son takes a deliberately slow, show-don't-tell approach to building up its characters and action. It's realistic; I could see something like this actually happening, unlike just about any other manga I've read. On the business side, it's notable that this manga made it to the States in the format that it did. Fantagraphics doesn't print much/any manga, and Wandering Son came out in the US as a hardcover with some color pages AFTER the second largest manga publisher/distributor in the US
Tokyopop all but shut down. Interesting choices, all of them, but I for one am glad that they were made, and hope that they pay off. I'd love to see more manga like this, more selective importation of artistically notable manga marketed towards the alternative comic reader and packaged like an art book.
No comments:
Post a Comment