A Manga that reads like a contemporary Leonard Cohen song.

I heard people raving about this one on the IRC channels at dasaku and AnimeBlogger, so when I saw this in Kinokuniya I decided to give this one a try. I expected a reasonable romp through the life of an office lady and her boyfriend, but what I got was this formula:

Seinen manga + J-Pop meets Leonard Cohen + Catcher In The Rye + characters who actually look Japanese = Solanin

I really haven’t read a manga like this before, mostly because I haven’t read a lot of manga that wasn’t written by Osamu Tezuka. The commentary through the Solanin manga notes that the year is 200X (like in a lot of old manga and anime, this means postapocalyptic futures) but here the narrators state that the only thing people want now is a quieter future free from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, not the wastelands of sci-fi manga and anime.

Solanin is about Meiko and her journey through life, and what a journey it is. This volume is two volumes collected into one, it’s a short series but boy is it satisfying, I haven’t been this emotionally affected by the end of a manga since Read or Die’s conclusion (and not to spoil anything, but Yomiko shares a similar fate to that of Meiko, dealing with the events of her life as she continues to get older, and a bit lonelier, but she manages).

There’s not much I can say about it without spoiling anything, as you really need to read it yourself to fully appreciate what you get with this manga. As I have said, it reads like a Leonard Cohen song, melancholic, but somewhat cheerful and accepting about it. It’s not as cheerful as Yotsuba&!, even though it has some really funny moments like at the Zoo with Tanada and the other guy who’s his friend, but it’s nowhere near as depressing as say, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Leonard Cohen analogy stands because like listening to one of his songs, you feel your heart twinge for the characters as you read Solanin but you come out of it knowing the world a bit better, from the experiences of a licentious poet songwriter, or in this case, a mangaka who is getting older and decided to document in this manga the experiences of his generation.

Reading this reminds me of Catcher in the Rye in that it’s certainly got some subversive elements to it about a reaction to Japanese society and salaryman syndrome (career focus instead of following one’s dreams and hopes). All the characters in the band who helped create the song Solanin, a song of leaving behind the boy Meiko’s boyfriend once was, feel a sense of hopelessness in their careers, clinging onto their employment hoping nothing worse will happen to them. There’s no annoying Holden Caulfield like brat to destroy the integrity of what really is a heartfelt look at the feelings of a generation of young Japanese people, so I can’t say I felt irritated by this manga.

I got a good two to three hours of being immersed in the story of Solanin, and not once did I put it down except when I was expected to talk to my parents about how my exam today went. The art style is amazing, and for once nobody can point the finger of Westernisation in manga and anime at this particular manga work, you can tell straight away these people are actually Japanese and not just funny looking blue haired and pink haired people because of the seinen art style which is more realistic than most shonen or shojo works. The dream sequences remind me a bit of Simone Legno’s tokidoki graphic designs and designer toy works, really it’s quite inventive but at the same time raising a bit of a question to the reader about how in touch with reality young people in Japanese culture are.

All in all I highly recommend this to people who might be looking for something different from the sugary loli moe hegemony or maybe if you’ve got a friend who’s a manga fan but feels a little lonely, something in this manga will remind them to hope again and learn to accept that even though it gets lonely sometimes in life, just sitting around waiting for something to happen is a lot worse than enjoying life and living it.