Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:17 am

Since I don't have anything better to do right now, I think I will give forumgoers a little treat by gushing about this title for a bit. Bukuwawa is hard at work editing away and we hope to have this released early this year.

What is it?
Nijigahara Holograph is a single 300-page graphic novel by Inio Asano, the author of What a Wonderful World, City of Light, and Solanin. It was serialized in Quick Japan, a general-purpose pop culture magazine for teens and twentysomethings that carries a handful of manga as well. Some material was revised and added for the book publication.

What's it about?
The book is constructed in a way that makes a concise description other than "a bunch of stuff happens to some people living the same town" extremely difficult. The main cast is a class of children in elementary school depicted in two time periods: when they are in 5th grade, and several years later as young adults. The chapters alternate between timeframes so that the odd-numbered chapters all take place in the "past" while the even-numbered are in the "present." The protagonist and narrator Suzuki has been transferred into the class from out of town. Komatsuzaki is the troubled and violent bully of the class. Arakawa is the girl who has a crush on the bad boy. Some of Asano's favorite themes in earlier works were apathy and desperation in youth trying to stave off the homogenizing effect of "growing up," and the existence of darkness lurking beneath an apparently tranquil, functioning society. Here, he takes that theme of darkness one step further by utilizing the dual-timeframe method to depict the ways abuse begets abuse further down the line, as characters who were mistreated as children as seen inflicting pain on others as adults. Every member of the sizable cast alternately receives and dishes out abuse on other people. Make no mistake, this is a dark, depressing piece of work, as the front cover will attest.

What makes it so good?
The amount of care and detail packed into this book is truly staggering. Asano's art is in a very modern style, clearly assembled on a computer, with lots of photographed backgrounds and digital tone effects. But what is impressive is not necessarily the realism of his art, but the amount of visual and contextual detail. This is a book where you really have to pay attention! Unlike many authors that stretch out their manga with simplistic or redundant scenes/panels (I'm looking at you Urasawa), he maximizes his story mileage by packing each panel with subtle details and making everything count. If you are the type of reader, like me, who zooms in on text and only gives cursory glances over the visual scene, you will be missing crucial story info! But no matter what, you will need to read it multiple times to fully comprehend it anyway. Character details that are vital to understanding motivations will be visually divulged within a single panel but never called to the reader's attention. Actions and scenes that make no sense and fade into the background on first read gain new meaning after the entire story has been digested. The cast is quite large and features a dizzying amount of intricate relationships. Every character has very specific and crucial role to play. Many of them are bound in mysterious ways that are only hinted at on first read, and arguably the most important character of all just barely appears in one 5-page scene. If you are the kind of reader who enjoys piecing together a fractured, fascinating tapestry of characters, events and chronologies, you will be in heaven reading Nijigahara Holograph. The author is still quite a young man, only 26 and in the midst of what could be a very long career, yet he is quoted as saying, "I will never be able to draw another manga like this one," and it's hard to blame him for thinking that way. I can't imagine the level of masochism it would take to produce a single book containing so much byzantine detail and mindwracking complexity, yet he pulled it off and managed to make it a gripping and eminently readable story to boot.

I'm at the point of my manga hobby where, as much as I am constantly reading, it's becoming solely a mechanical process. I can read a book and detachedly decide whether it was good or not, if the story is well-constructed or the characters were believable, then file the info away in my mental encyclopedia of manga. But it wasn't until I read this and found myself breathless and tearing through the pages before starting all over again from the top that I realized it had been ages since I had really been emotionally gripped by a manga, and it was the reminder of that feeling that was perhaps Nijigahara's most pleasant surprise of all.

myanimelist profile · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:24 am

That sounds amazing.

stephen wrote:

Make no mistake, this is a dark, depressing piece of work, as the front cover will attest.

But I liked this most of all. I enjoy nothing as much as a depressing story; call me a sadist if you will.

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:27 am

Damn fine description. Can't wait to read this baby, and kudos to you guys for taking on a project like this.

Fan Boy Joined: 21 Nov 2006 Posts: 18

Yeah, it sounds awesome, but of course it's an opinionated rant so it should. Either way, it's well timed, because I just started reading What a Wonderful World, and I have to say I'm enjoying it a lot.

The way you talk about the art gets me giddy though, considering how much of an aficionado I am of that aspect of manga. Good writing is key in enjoying a comic for me, but splendid art can not rarily be enough to justify the price of purchase.

And, well...

Quote:

If you are the kind of reader who enjoys piecing together a fractured, fascinating tapestry of characters, events and chronologies, you will be in heaven reading Nijigahara Holograph

The prospect of that makes me twice as giddy.

It being a single book appeals to me as well, because it won't make it too hard to purchase if I turn out to like it. ;o

Roadie Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 58

I'm about a third or halfway through reading this (because i'm about that far through editing it) and the pace at which i get more story is killing me. 5ish chapters in and i'm utterly spellbound.

I like odd, character driven manga, my favorites by a long shot are national quiz and ciguatera, both ms projects, but this might take the crown at the end of the day. As stephen described, the density of the story is nearly overwhelimg. I'm spending time editing each panel and i'm sure i'm not catching all the story elements along the way. The author demonstrated in solanin (his only other work I've read any of) a sort of honesty in the depiction of his characters hopes and fears that makes them believable as human beings. The same thing is true in holograph, except this time he's drawing a window on to this incredible spiritual malaise that clings to his characters like horrible, horrible taffy.

I hope the author continues to produce at or near this calibre, and I also hope he doesn't off himself.

Edit: well, ciguatera is character driven, anyway.

Roadie Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 58

also editing this would be a lot easier if it weren't for my utter, slack-jawed, pant-soiling fear of butterflies.

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 3:54 pm

Cant wait. In the mean time Ive started reading Solanin.

Roadie Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 58

be sure to check out What a Wonderful World, kotonoha picked that up.

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:43 am

Buku has finished the preliminary editing, we are now proceeding with the fine-tuning step!

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:26 pm

bukuwawa wrote:

be sure to check out What a Wonderful World, kotonoha picked that up.

Actually, it's all about Hikari no Machi.

Roadie Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 58

publically

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:08 pm

u dick

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:28 pm

You spelled "publicly" wrong.

Roadie Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 58

yeah well YOU SMELL

myanimelist profile · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:34 am

I've stated before, half-jokingly that MS projects are better than your life (yes, no matter who you are), but this manga tops even that statement. I just finished reading it for the second time and I'm completely in awe, chills still running down my spine reminiscing.
The first read is more like an introduction to get a feel for the story and meet the characters, but it's only after that you get to read what it's really about. So incredibly satisfying to piece it all together, and even after reading it twice I feel obligated to go over it again cause there's so much you can get out of it.

300 pages... NO, scratch that. You have to read it at least 3 times. Making this book 900 pages of pure fulfillment.