Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: K

Posted: February 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Attempts at dividing Jirō Taniguchi’s († February 11, 2017) oeuvre into earlier ‘genre’ manga and later ‘mature’ manga are perhaps futile, as his two works in the mountaineering sub-genre show: K was first published in the late 80s, i.e. around the same time as Chikyū hyōkai jiki (Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth), but his other mountain climbing manga, Kamigami no itadaki (Summit of the Gods) – much longer and not written by Shirō Tōzaki – did not begin serialisation until 2000, long after Aruku hito, Chichi no koyomi, and Harukana machi e. Maybe this means that Taniguchi had a special fondness for the topic of mountaineering.

K
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Authors: Shirō Tōzaki (writer – credited as “Shiro Tosaki”), Jirō Taniguchi (artist)
Publisher: Schreiber & Leser (originally Futabasha)
Year: 2021 (originally 1988)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: ~290
Price: € 17
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/n4smoew/k
ISBN: 978-3-96582-053-1

Simply “K” is what the protagonist calls himself. A Japanese climber living near the Himalayan and Karakoram* mountain ranges, his identity and past are unknown, but his mountaneering skills are famous. He is the one to go to when a near-impossibly difficult expedition needs to be undertaken to the highest peaks of the earth, no matter how steep the walls of rock and ice, or how adverse the weather conditions.

And that’s how each of the 5 chapters plays out, more or less: someone (or something) goes missing in the mountain, then K is asked to rescue him. After some hesitation, he agrees, ventures out to the mountain, almost dies there in the rescue attempt, and – spoiler alert – always succeeds in the end.

For such a repetitively structured story to remain interesting, a great deal of realism and clarity in the depiction of the action is crucial. When conveying the spatial situation the climbers are in, their gear, movements, and the effects of the weather, it needs to be made clear to the reader what is at stake. Is the character about to fall off a cliff? Is he about to be hit by an avalanche? Is he in danger of freezing to death? In this, Taniguchi’s highly detailed drawings succeed. Particularly his landscapes – normally bleak, uniform masses of rock and snow, but rendered here in a great variety of techniques, such as different kinds of hatching and screentone – almost appear three-dimensional.

Then again, it should also be mentioned that Tōzaki and Taniguchi rely a lot on captions to tell the story. In a kind of solemn past-tense voice, the narrator often tells us what K is doing exactly, and why. As a result, K is unusually wordy for a Taniguchi manga.

The five chapters are self-contained, and there is little overarching development in the manga. In the final chapter, we learn a little bit more about K’s past, but he still remains an inscrutable character. Perhaps it is just as well that the series ended there, instead of dragging on and becoming boring. Consequently, what we have here is an action-packed, exciting little oddity that shows how Taniguchi could draw pretty much anything.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

* Some reviewers of this manga only speak of the Himalayas, but apparently, Himalaya and Karakoram are two different mountain ranges. The K2, which the first chapter is about, lies in the Karakoram range, not in the Himalayas.

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Tomoji

Posted: February 11, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

One of the greatest mangaka of all time passed away five years ago. Today we’re going to look at another of his late works, created after Furari and before The Millennium Forest.

Tomoji (とも路; German title: Ihr Name war Tomoji)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Authors: Miwako Ogihara & Jirō Taniguchi (writers), Jirō Taniguchi (artist)
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Futabasha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2012)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: 166
Price: € 17
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/softcover/ihr-name-war-tomoji/978-3-551-76104-0 (German); https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=119718
ISBN: 978-3-551-76104-0

A very short summary of this story would be that it tells the life of Tomoji Uchida (1912-1967), who, together with her husband Fumiaki Itō, founded a Buddhist sect. But that would be misleading. Instead of a hagiography, Taniguchi (together with co-writer Ogihara) does what he is best at: telling a story of ordinary people living ordinary lives. He is able to pull this off by having the story end in 1932, after Tomoji had married Fumiaki but before they became religious leaders.

p. 60 from the French edition

What makes this story interesting nevertheless is that it’s also a portrait of Taishō and early Shōwa era Japan. We see Tomoji as a young girl in the countryside of Yamanashi Prefecture, helping out at her family’s shop, working in the rice paddy, going to school, and later going to town to attend a sewing school. Some dramatic events in Tomoji’s life are also shown – e.g. her father’s death, or how her mother abandons the family – but the only historic one is the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which is mainly depicted from Fumiaki’s perspective in Tokyo.

This is actually one of the more unusual aspects of the manga: Tomoji and Fumiaki don’t meet until 1932, but the perspective shifts several times from her to him, and it is strongly implied that they are somehow destined to be together. For instance, on p. 111, Fumiaki in Tokyo looks out of the window; the next panel shows a bird of prey in the sky; the one after that shows Tomoji looking up from her work in the rice paddy near her faraway home village – as if they were both watching the same bird – and then on the next page the sequence is reversed until in the last panel we’re with Fumiaki in Tokyo again. The caption on the page after that reads: “Fumiaki was 18 years old, Tomoji 12. Both were looking at the same sky, but some more years would pass before they met.”

With the knowledge of how Tomoji’s life story continues after the end of the manga, one is tempted to look for other hints in the story, apart from her fateful meeting with Fumiaki, as to how and why she became a religious leader. And indeed there are many little episodes which one can read as examples of young Tomoji’s kindness, compassion, humility, studiousness, piety and spirituality, all of which are probably appropriate prerequisites for a future temple founder. That being said, Tomoji remains a charmingly ‘ordinary’ slice-of-life manga.

colour page from the French edition

Art-wise, Taniguchi is once more at the top of his game, which shows particularly in the many landscape panels and the endless variations of the page layout. Thankfully, the German edition also includes all the watercoloured pages (22 including chapter title images) in colour, and I have already sung Taniguchi’s praises as a watercolour painter before. Then again, the colour pages are probably German publisher Carlsen’s reason to charge the hefty price of € 0.10 per page for this book.

If Tomoji can be considered required reading for Taniguchi enthusiasts, it’s because it bridges two gaps in his oeuvre: as some people have pointed out, it is one of only two of his manga with a female protagonist (the other being Sensei no kaban from 2008, adapted from Hiromi Kawakami’s novel). And, chronologically, Tomoji is another piece in the puzzle that is Taniguchi’s manga history of Japan, as it were, as the time period that it covers fits nicely between the Meiji-era Bocchan no jidai (1987) and Harukana machi e / A Distant Neighborhood (1998), small parts of which are set in WWII.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Furari

Posted: February 11, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

One of Jirō Taniguchi’s († February 11, 2017) last manga to be published in translation during his lifetime, Furari has been called (even by the mangaka himself) ‘The Walking Man in Edo’. But is Furari really a masterpiece on the same level as Aruku hito?

Furari (ふらり, lit. “aimlessly”; German title: Der Kartograph)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Jirō Taniguchi
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2013 (originally 2011)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: 201
Price: € 16
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/softcover/der-kartograph/978-3-551-75102-7 (German); https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=60670
ISBN: 978-3-551-75102-7

Some similarities can’t be denied, as both manga are about flaneurs, men walking around and exploring their urban surroundings. One difference is the protagonist’s motivation: while the nameless Aruku hito has just moved to a new home and wants to get to know the neighbourhood, Tadataka Inō, the protagonist of Furari, is a pensioner who has taken up pedometry – measuring distances by walking with a constant step length – as a hobby. (Only at the end of the manga does he officially become a surveyor; thus the German title, “The Cartographer”, is a bit misleading.) Also, Furari is a lot wordier than Aruku hito with many thought balloons, as Taniguchi must have felt it necessary to have his main character explain more things to the reader, as it were, and bridge the 200-year gap.

The biggest difference, however, is that Furari is really about something else. In 7 out of the 15 episodes, Inō has dreams/daydreams/visions in which he transforms into an animal (or a tree in one instance) and sees Edo from its point of view, e.g. from the river as a turtle, or from above as a dragonfly. And also some of the other episodes feature such a change of perspective on the town- and landscape, e.g. on a boat trip on the river: “when I’m on water for once, I realise that things come into view that you can’t see from onshore.” Thus I’d argue that Furari is at least as much a meditation on geography itself as it is a portrayal of historical Edo.

This is all quite fascinating, but there is one aspect in which Furari might be inferior to such Taniguchi classics as Aruku hito, Harukana machi e, or Chichi no koyomi: in these, the main character is pretty much a ‘nobody’, or an ‘anybody’, a ‘man without qualities’ from the contemporary real world with whom readers (particularly from Japan) can easily identify. Inō and the things he sees and does, in contrast, feel very distant to the reader, and thus the experience of reading Furari is more detached.

That being said, Furari is a must-read for any Taniguchi enthusiast, especially for those with an interest in historical Japan. Too bad the German publisher Carlsen once more overpriced what is essentially a regular tankōbon.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: The Millennium Forest

Posted: February 11, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

One of the last manga Jirō Taniguchi had been working on before he died (on this day, three years ago) was The Millennium Forest. Designed to span 5 volumes, the small fragment that he was able to complete has been published posthumously.

The Millennium Forest (光年の森 / Kōnen no mori, lit. “light-year forest”; German title: Im Jahrtausendwald)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Jirō Taniguchi
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Rue de Sèvres / Shōgakukan)
Year: 2018 (originally 2017)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: 78 (comic: 43)
Price: € 20
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/hardcover/im-jahrtausendwald/96224 (German); https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=152591
ISBN: 978-3-551-72810-4

The publisher(s) clearly intended this book to be more than just another manga. Almost half of the pages are editorial texts, layouts, sketches and other preparatory drawings, and obituaries. Whether this 20 € book (albeit in full colour and hardcover) is a cynical rip-off or a dignified tribute to Taniguchi is a matter of debate. It may be tempting to extrapolate from the information given in the afterword and the bonus material and imagine what a manga series The Millennium Forest might have become. But let’s look at what it is.

The protagonist is 10-year old Wataru. One summer, he leaves Tokyo to live with his grandparents in a remote village situated in mountainous woodland. The story is set in an unspecified past – if we take Wataru for Taniguchi’s alter ego, the year would be 1958 – but it could just as well take place in the present day. After all, relocating from town to country or vice versa is a timelessly popular topic in Japanese fiction. At first, Wataru doesn’t get on with his schoolmates. When wandering in the woods one day he walks into them, and they dare him to climb a tall tree. To everyone’s surprise, including his own, he manages to climb higher than any of the local kids before. The kids are impressed, they make friends with Wataru, and he makes peace with living in the countryside.

That’s one way to summarise this little story. Another would be to speak of the forest as the actual protagonist, or at least as a character in its own right; a forest which mysteriously appears out of the ground as a result of an earthquake, and which is populated by fantastic creatures that only vaguely resemble birds, rabbits, and maybe serows. One could also mention that Wataru possesses the gift of speaking with trees and animals. And that that the tree he climbs saves him from falling down by catching him with a twine.

Are these supernatural elements really necessary? Of course it could be argued that this was meant to be a much longer story which would have placed more emphasis on the fantasy aspects and integrated them more tightly into the seemingly mundane setting, and ultimately conveyed an environmentalist message through them. But as it is, The Millennium Forest would have been a simpler and perhaps stronger story without any supernatural bits. The most powerful of Taniguchi’s manga had always been the firmly realistic, semi-autobiographical ones, such as The Walking Man or Chichi no koyomi.

But we haven’t even talked about the art yet. Over 40 oversized pages (22,5 × 28 cm) painted in watercolour are quite a treat. Taniguchi’s impressive skill in this medium shows in all the subtle modulations, particularly on characters’ faces. At the same time, distinct outlines retain the clarity that is evident in all of Taniguchi’s art. As for the landscape format of the book – the afterword emphasises the difficulties of launching such a product in the Japanese book market – it doesn’t do much for me; a square or regular portrait format would probably have worked just as well. If anything, it obscures the reading order of the panels on some pages, but that might also be due to the flipping by the German publisher.

Recommended if you can check it out from your local library, or for those who wish to complete their collection of Taniguchi’s manga (although there always seems to be ‘new’ material by Taniguchi getting translated).

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Icaro

Posted: February 11, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

When Stan Lee died in November last year, I was reminded of Silver Surfer: Parable again, his collaboration with Mœbius. Another collaboration of similar titanic proportions was Ikaru/Icaro/Ikarus by Mœbius and Jirō Taniguchi.

Ikarus (イカル / Ikaru, English title Icaro)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Authors: Mœbius, Jean Annestay, Jirō Taniguchi
Publisher: Schreiber & Leser (originally Kōdansha / Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha)
Year: 2016 (original run 1997)
Number of volumes: 1
 Pages: 284
Price: € 24,95
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=1169
ISBN: 978-3-946337-06-5

One memorable line of dialogue in this manga is: “Often the most brilliant ideas are bigger than the man who conceived them. And they can be no longer controlled.”

Who knows, maybe Mœbius thought the same way about Ikaru. According to the interview included in this edition, Mœbius created the initial concept, then wrote a script together with Jean Annestay. As with some others of his comic projects, Mœbius didn’t have time to draw it himself, and in this case he wanted this story to be drawn by Jirō Taniguchi. Taniguchi, however, heavily re-wrote and above all radically shortened the script. Furthermore, the magazine serialisation in Morning was not popular enough with the readers to warrant a continuation, so that instead of the 10.000 pages written by Mœbius and Annestay, these less than 300 pages is everything that has ever been drawn of Ikaru.

The premise is simple and striking: in the near future, a child is born with the ability to levitate and fly through the air. The Japanese government takes the boy away from his mother and locks him up in a remote research facility to study (and ultimately weaponise) him. Twenty years later, Icaro, as he is named, rebels and breaks out of his captivity.

Ikaru could have been (and to some extent is) a fascinating science fiction mystery thriller, with great moments of psychologisation associated with the ‘Kaspar Hauser’ motif of a child growing up in isolation. However, Taniguchi didn’t cut enough from the original script so that the manga is bogged down with unnecessary subplots, such as a rebellion of supernaturally powered clones, or the lesbian relationship of the villainous minister of defence.

There is a lot of Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira in Ikaru (even though Mœbius downplays this in the interview), from the theme of the child with mysterious powers that is experimented on – reminiscent of Tetsuo, Akira, and the ‘numbers’ who also depend on a regularly administered drug – to the depiction of the clones’ psychokinetic powers. Ikaru also shows Taniguchi excel as a draughtsman with subjects not commonly depicted in his other works. The highlights of the art in this manga are the backgounds that show Icaro’s prison, which looks like a huge old greenhouse, and the scenes in which soldiers try to entangle the fleeing Icaro in ropes.

One more particularly clever little scene needs to be pointed out: in the beginning, one of the scientists is told on the phone that a levitating child has been born. The next panel shows him wide-eyed and speechless holding the phone. The panel after that shows him in the same way (from a slightly different angle), but the whole panel is turned upside-down! Then the phone call continues depicted in the usual orientation. This one panel could be interpreted in many different ways, e.g. that the scientist’s world has just been turned ‘upside-down’ through this discovery, or that ‘up’ and ‘down’ are relative directions for someone who can fly.

Within Taniguchi’s oeuvre, Ikaru takes an odd place as it was made in 1997 in between two masterpieces that defined his style: Chichi no koyomi (1994) and A Distant Neighborhood (1998). Both of these are semi-autobiographical, so a science fiction story like Ikaru, at this time in Taniguchi’s career, seems like a throwback to the 1980s when he made Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth, and if I’m not mistaken, he never took on another science fiction project after Ikaru.

So is Ikaru required reading for the Taniguchi enthusiast? On the one hand, it is certainly interesting and relevant given the circumstances of its creation – the rather peculiar nature of this French-Japanese collaboration – as Taniguchi is often said to have been strongly influenced by French comics in general and Mœbius in particular, and also to have been more warmly received in Europe than in his native Japan. On the other hand, this is also a flawed manga and definitely not one of Taniguchi’s best, and not every reader might want to spend € 25 on a 290-page manga.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

More Jirō Taniguchi memorial reviews on this weblog: Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth, Chichi no koyomi, Trouble Is My Business.

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth

Posted: February 11, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

Jirō Taniguchi passed away on this day last year. Here’s another review of one of his lesser-known manga which was published already 30 years ago in Japan but only last year in Germany.

Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth (地球氷解事紀 / Chikyū hyōkai jiki)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Jirō Taniguchi
Publisher: Schreiber & Leser (originally Futabasha)
Year: 2017 (original run 1987-91)
Number of volumes: 2
Volumes reviewed: 1
 Pages: 270
Price: € 16,95
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=44314
ISBN: 978-3-946337-05-8

For readers who only know Taniguchi from his later works such as A Distant Neighborhood, it may come as a suprise that not long before that he created a straightforward science fiction (or ‘science fantasy’) manga. Chronicle is set in a future in which Earth is gripped by a new ice age. Takeru is the young manager of an arctic mining outpost, and when the climate suddenly gets even harsher and the mining facility is about to break down, and all aircraft to and from the mine have either crashed or been ambushed by pirates, he decides to lead a small team on ground vehicles south to seek help.

Near the end of this first volume there is some supernatural mumbo-jumbo about an ancient prophecy and aliens that are revered as gods by the native tribesmen, but until then, Chronicle is almost pure ‘hard science fiction’ with impressive, detailed depictions of the mine, machinery, and vehicles. Considering the time it was serialised, it’s impossible not to compare this manga to Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira (1982-90). Like Ōtomo, Taniguchi placed relatively cartoonish figures – sometimes almost caricatures – on minutely drawn backgrounds, and occasionally he zoomed in on his characters to portray them in marvelous naturalistic detail.

The main difference between the two is their storytelling: Taniguchi seems to have aimed for a conventional adventure story, but threadbare plot devices such as a shaman’s prophecy fail to create much suspense. Perhaps the unorthodox, erratic plot structures of Taniguchi’s later masterpieces such as Chichi no koyomi or The Walking Man were his true forte. Strictly visually, however, Chronicle may well be Taniguchi’s most accomplished work.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Chichi no Koyomi

Posted: March 22, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

One blogpost is not enough to pay homage to the recently deceased Jirō Taniguchi, so here’s another one.

Another noteworthy but largely overlooked manga by Taniguchi is Chichi no Koyomi (My Father’s Journal), of which there is no English translation either. The reason for its negligence in the Western world is probably a different one, though: it might be too similar to Taniguchi’s magnum opus A Distant Neighborhood – which was originally published four years *after* Chichi no Koyomi. Reading these two manga in the ‘wrong’ order makes Chichi no Koyomi feel like a compressed, less daring (no supernatural time travel) and more episodic (thus somewhat haphazard) rip-off of A Distant Neighborhood, when in fact the latter was more of a logical continuation or evolution out of the former.

Die Sicht der Dinge (父の暦 / Chichi no Koyomi)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Jirō Taniguchi
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Shōgakukan)
Year: 2008 (original run 1994)
Pages: 278
Price: € 16,90
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/softcover/die-sicht-der-dinge/20582 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-551-77731-7

Yōichi Yamashita (i.e. not Taniguchi himself but an autobiographically influenced fictitious character) is a middle-aged salaryman who lives in Tokyo with his wife. When his father dies, he needs to return to his native Tottori for the funeral, for the first time in 15 years. There he meets his uncle, his sister and other characters with whom he reminisces about his father’s life, Yōichi’s own childhood and how the rift between the two came to be.

The events in the past are shown as flashback sequences, although they take up more space than the events in the present. I wouldn’t call the present-day sequences a framing narrative, though, because several chapters begin in the past, then switch to the present, before they switch back to the past again, so that the past frames the present. There is some structural variation and jumping back and forth in time. The most strikingly structured episode is the one in which seven-year-old Yōichi runs away from home to his uncle in search of his mother: adult Yōichi begins to tell this episode on pp. 19-25, but doesn’t pick it up again until 130 pages later.

Another interesting device, albeit employed only tentatively, is an unreliable narrator: two events from Yōichi’s childhood are first shown as he remembers them, but later he learns from his relatives how he actually misremembered them. This device makes the story more dynamic; just as in A Distant Neighborhood, the past isn’t fixed but changeable. However, there is also an emphasis on a historic event in Chichi no Koyomi, the Great Fire of Tottori in 1952, which makes the past more site- and time-specific in this manga than in A Distant Neighborhood.

Artistically, Chichi no Koyomi is Taniguchi at the top of his game. Particularly the characters and their facial expressions are spot-on, which is no small feat given the number of characters, most of which appear multiple times at different ages.

However, it should be noted that the German publisher Carlsen didn’t do a particularly good job at flipping the manga so that it now reads left-to-right in this German edition: the speech bubbles and captions are often arranged diagonally in the panel, in which case the reading order is bottom(!)-left to top-right, which is awfully confusing. Furthermore, some panels are mirrored and some are not, resulting in the old problems of right-handed characters becoming left-handed and the like.

That being said, Chichi no Koyomi is a classic Taniguchi manga that one shouldn’t miss. Together with The Walking Man and A Distant Neighborhood, this manga embodies the essence of Taniguchi’s work as a mangaka.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Review, Jirō Taniguchi memorial edition: Trouble Is My Business

Posted: February 28, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Earlier this month, Jirō Taniguchi died of an undisclosed illness at the age of only 69. During a career that spanned almost five decades, he authored or co-authored a huge number of manga. However, outside of Japan, only a few of them have earned the recognition they deserve.

One of these oft-overlooked titles is Trouble Is My Business, written by Natsuo Sekikawa. Originally published from 1979–80 (not counting the sequel series), it is Taniguchi’s earliest work available in German. There are also French and Italian editions, but no English one yet as far as I know.

panel from Trouble Is My Business by Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiro TaniguchiTrouble Is My Business (事件屋稼業 / Jikenya Kagyō)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Natsuo Sekikawa (writer), Jirō Taniguchi (artist)
Publisher: Schreiber & Leser (originally Futabasha)
Year: 2014 (original run 1979–1980)
Pages: 294
Price: € 16,95
Website: http://www.schreiberundleser.de/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=33 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-943808-54-4

Unlike in many of Taniguchi’s better-known manga, there is little to no autobiographical influence in Trouble Is My Business, except that the protagonist, Fukamachi, is of the same age as Sekikawa and Taniguchi, and lives in Tokyo too. Instead of some contemplative family story, this is a collection of almost straightforward ‘hardboiled’ detective cases which are only loosely connected through the character of Fukamachi and his trouble with his ex-wife and daughter.

Rather than the crime cases and their resolution, the real draw here is the subtle humour which is usually based on the hapless, amateurish, down-and-out, small-time detective protagonist and his interaction with other quirky characters. But let’s focus on Taniguchi’s contribution, the artwork. Because already back then, in his early thirties, he had achieved mastery in draughtsmanship.

That is not to say his style didn’t evolve after Trouble Is My Business. The most noticeable difference to his later works is that he didn’t use screen tone as extensively back then, usually relying on parallel hatching to indicate volume and shadows. This results in an overall darker tonality, which is fitting for the ‘noir-ish’ story. My guess is that the reason for this artistic evolution is rather mundane: perhaps Taniguchi wasn’t yet successful enough to be able to hire an assistant who could take over the time-consuming task of applying the screen tones.

Another difference is the frequent display of his skill at depicting technical objects such as vehicles, watercrafts, or firearms, whereas his (too overtly photo-referenced) cityscapes aren’t as impressive as in his later manga. Something Taniguchi excelled at, back then at least as much as in the 90s, is the portrayal of a vast range of different characters. Each of them has a realistic but distinct look (with the sole exception of the barkeeper at Los Lindos, who looks indistinguishable from Fukamachi).

Recommended for fans of the genre, or anyone who wants to discover a different side of Taniguchi.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○