A Drifting Life
It is very hard to try and review an autobiographical manga. I cannot say at a point that the story went wrong and some character was better to be portrayed differently and so on. No one can review a life. I can review the art, but not this story.
Yoshihiro Tatsumi was born in Osaka, Japan, in the year 1935 and he is one of the most influential manga artists alive and a model for generations of artists and cartoonists around the world. He is widely known as the grandfather of the Japanese alternative comics. In the late 19050s, Yoshihiro Tatsumi created an original manga style, the gekiga (dramatic pictures), a manga darker and more violent than the usual, that was aimed at adults. Gekiga, dramatic pictures with people facing daily difficulties… that is A Drifting Life.
You should not buy A Drifting Life if you are a perfect consumer and you just like to read manga and you dont care how it is brought to life and what stands behind the stories. But if you are avid of knowledge, and you like to know all those little things that are involved in the production of a manga grab your wallet and buy this book now. It is intensely fascinating and it will grab a huge chunk of your time, depending on how fast do you read. A This book is as much a book about manga as it is an autobiography. Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s life (or Hiroshi if you like), his passions and his artistic career evolve on a path that directly intersects with the recovery of Japan and the rebirth of the spirit of this country after WWII. The book is filed with little and fascinating details, varying from manga drawing techniques and panel organization, to prices of various food during that period and major cultural events in Japan, like Japanese and American movie releases.
Hiroshi and his brother, Okimasa, grew up fascinated by manga and artists, always trying to get their works published in a magazine or another. The path is difficult and full of ups and downs. There is a tense relation between the two brothers at times, a situation that evolves from their will to compete and succeed in their dream career, that of a successful manga creator. The two kids have this ideal dream in a bleak post war country, growing up in the center of a family with its own problems. They get to see their dream come true, after an adventurous road through the young japanese manga industry of the 50′s. The journey focuses on Hiroshi, his constant movement from publisher to publisher, his maturization as manga artists and as a man, the creation of legendary manga magazines, his first love affairs and so on. I don’t think Tatsumi left anything out, not even things that may be embarrassing for him, like when he peed in a bottle and a guy from a publishing house saw him. Whatever is the fascinating life of Hiroshi, the development of post war Japan, the inside peak in the manga industry… or just the manga itself, there is something for every passionate in this book.
What about the art? Clean, at the point, funny, functional. The manga style that Yoshihiro Tatsumi created and his art style fit perfectly. I adore the faces of the characters. I wished this book had more pages, or for me to be a slow reader. Because at the end of the book you realize that it has an end. There will be no more from Hiroshi’s life to be discovered, and it is like you are losing a dear friend. I didn’t want it to finish. It took him 11 years to complete this marvelous recounting of the early years of his career and in 800 pages it only covers a small part of his life. I’m in debt to Drawn & Quarterly for publishing this extraordinary piece of manga in English. And thank you Yoshihiro Tatsumi for creating it. It was a great experience. No wonder it won the 2009 Tezuka Cultural Prize award.
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