Frezno's Comics Challenge: One More Final? (Tokyo These Days)

Well, here we are. The end, I think. It will be very embarrassing and there will be egg on my face if Sean in fact had more comics planned after this, but those are the breaks. That would almost be a shame, though. Not because I would be grumpy about doing more comics critique, to be clear, but because this feels like a true and fitting ending place for the Comics Challenge. A comic about making comics, with this elegiac finality to its proceedings. Taiyo Matsumoto's Tokyo These Days isn't our first dance with manga, or even the longest: I actually think it's the shortest manga I had to cover, considering that I covered mammoths like Pluto or Kamen Rider. Let's go for one more burst of brevity, then. Let's talk about the vibe of this comic, and what it's bringing to the table.

That self-reflexive nature is at the heart of Tokyo These Days. It is a manga about the making of manga, and all of its wide cast are involved in that industry. The manga industry is quite famously unforgiving and grueling, perhaps more so than Western comics, and though Japan broadly promotes such a workaholic nature (consider the well-worn nature of the salaryman), it makes it no less draining on the very soul. Tokyo These Days, then, is a poignant and heartfelt conveyance of that... but that does not mean that this comic takes the stance that working in manga sucks. All the characters, from the manga artists to the editors to everyone else, clearly have a love and passion for the artform of making Japanese comics. Matsumoto clearly has a passion for it, and I love the way that's conveyed in the art. It's got that rough pencil sketch quality to it, and though it uses the manga Grid, take a closer look at the construction. The panels themselves are arranged orderly, but their borders are not neatly drawn. You can see the sketchiness of them, the rough edges of the penmanship behind them. You can see the passion behind this work of art, before you even look inside the panel and at the actual art itself. That's something to behold. I love as well that just about every issue ends with a wide shot of the city of Tokyo itself; it gives the town as much character as the people in it. 

There are some great tricks used, like how the style completely changes when we get glimpses of one author's manga about ancient Romans in the heat of battle. It's a cute little stylistic choice, and where another visual medium like film might use editing or lighting to accentuate the difference, here in black and white sequential images all we have is style. That style is nailed, however. In the end, though, those kind of moments are fleeting, What truly matters are the down to earth/slice of life elements. All across Japan we see our main POV protagonist, editor Shiozawa, meeting with old friends and colleagues from the industry, discussing life and manga and everything in between. For them, though, there is no need for in-between. Manga is life. It's self-expression and creativity, all bundled up into the sequential image, worked on laboriously day by day for a purpose. For the businessmen, that purpose is to have something to publish continuously. For those artists and editors, the purpose is that self-expression. It's a beautiful thing to see, here at what I assume is the end. This is why they do it. To express themselves, to get something of the human condition out there. This is why Matsumoto made a manga about manga, and it's why I do my own writing and critique in my field. To get the idea out there. To let it spread its wings and fly.

Is it worth it? Is it worth the hardship and turmoil, the endless grind and sleepless nights in such a harsh industry? Is it worth soul-crushing moments and lost time with those you love most? Is it all worth it? It is. It's worth it because you are putting something out there in the world. It's worth it because you can see your daughter holding a toy of a character you created, and know that it brings her a comfort. It's worth it because you can get all of your old friends together for one last compilation, a moving mix of creative voices all united together in their old age just for the love of telling one more story. It's worth it to use your talent as an artist and storyteller to mesh those two together, the picture and the written word, into a unique unflattened form that will make the world just a little bit brighter for your having expressed it. Kind of like what I'm doing here. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. The brevity hits here, and the vibe hits more than ever. This is a manga about making manga, and in the end it shows the human side of why we keep doing this. It's a thing of beauty.

I think that's it. Unless there's more, in which case you'll see more. If that's not the case, then I have a videotape in my basement to watch. The final David Lynch film I have yet to see, itself a story about a very human thing. Supposedly the best Star Trek movie ever made, and that's why I did all of this. To find out why. Maybe I'll find out, very soon. Maybe I won't. In the end, let me answer the question one more time. Was it worth it to talk about comics for 14 months to get the answer? Yes, it was. I opened myself up to new ways of critique, in a medium I only casually peeked at and could only casually analyze. I learned how to do it better, with the guiding hand of Sean, and I'd wager that just about anything I wrote for this challenge is better than an old comic review I would have done for the Halloween blog some years past. So, thanks for that, Sean. Thanks for broadening my horizons just that much more. To the rest of you, thanks for following along on this journey. It may continue, it may not. We'll see.

As for me, I've got to watch an old guy on a riding mower and cry a lot.