Tokyo Is My Garden
By Frederic Boilet and Benoit Peeters
Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 152 pp.
No rating (Mature content)
To give full disclosure, I was a little reluctant to tackle this comic after crying my eyes out after a nineteen-volume Banana Fish marathon this week. After that kind of an emotional joyride, an arsty-fartsy nouvelle manga did not sound like a panacea. But fortunately I was pleasantly surprised. Boilet and Peeters’ moody tale of a Frenchman living in Tokyo is the perfect thing to quiet your worries and carry your imagination to Japan.
If you’re at all familiar with the duo’s previous work, such as Boilet’s Yukiko’s Spinach or Mariko Parade, it should not come as a surprise that the story revolves around a Frenchman in his thirties and the Japanese love of his life. You get the feeling after a couple of these nouvelle manga that there is at least some connection between this ongoing theme and Boilet himself, but I digress.
What truly fascinates is Boilet’s perspective into Japanese culture as a gaijin who has lived there for years. On page 113 the protagonist David says: “That there is a fundamental between the Japanese and the rest of the world is a lie… Hooey for lazy journalists… The Japanese are like us in every way. What changes is there way of being identical.” This is really a brilliant insight that smashes through the oft repeated BS in Japanophile circles that the Japanese somehow have an insurmountable culture barrier. But to David, who has lived in Japan for years and lived his life like he would anywhere else, this fallacy is revealed for what it truly is: a crutch.
In Tokyo Is My Garden, the protagonist David starts things off by breaking up with his model girlfriend. Turns out he’s a boutique French cognac salesman trying to expand his company’s market into Japan. Soon after his breakup, David meets a new girlfriend and prepares for his boss’ imminent checkup on him in Tokyo. The truth is, he’s sold only one case of the cognac in his years in Japan! And he left his last promo bottle on the train by accident! Whatever is he to do? Fate and chance actually factor heavily into this story as David’s career future is determined by strangers even as he focuses completely on his love life. The way his future is determined is beautifully depicted in a way that only clicks in the reader’s mind when things come to head in the comic’s conclusion.
The art’s minimalist comic-manga fusion style is a nice change from the pop manga that inundates our local bookstores. Boilet has outdone himself once again. What exemplifies his art for me is when David and his Boss go to a dance club and most of the people with in have very sketchy and minimal facial features. But when David and his lover are sharing intimate moments, the detail is jaw-dropping. The scene where David is photographing his love is one of the most iconic in Boilet’s work, a theme echoed from his earlier Mariko Parade. We are also treated in this work by brilliant shading by Jiro Taniguchi of The Walking Man and The Ice Wanderer fame.
Though this comic is unlikely to appeal to the vast majority of casual manga readers who drop in for their monthly fixes of Fruits Basket and Naruto, it’s definitely worth checking out for manga fans, comics lovers, and art enthusiasts alike. Its not one of my favorite manga of the year, but it certainly was nice to have a break from all the standard manga fare. Try out this nouvelle manga stuff, and you’ll sound as pretentious and crotchety as I do in no time. And while you’re feeling smug about being a part of real in-the-making comics history, take the time to give Tokyo Is My Garden a good long read. It’s worth it.
Tokyo Is My Garden is available now.
Related posts
