Shinjuku Swan

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Shinjuku Swan is a gritty manga series about the nightlife business of Japan. This includes all the shady things involved from prositution, drugs, rape, brutal violence, and the yakuza who overlook it all. I mean it when I say that none of this is glorified and it has made me sick to my stomach at times. For example, Wakui Ken’s style is one that doesn’t focus on violence at all. He is amazing at drawing initial panels of a conflict, the impact of hits, reactions and the like, but as soon as it’s started it cuts to the end and shows ... the resolution. How things have changed and it focuses on the ramifications of that violence. One of the climactic beat downs is purely sad and disgusting and nothing more, and there’s times where you’ll question if you want to root for the main characters.

However, despite all of this the story keeps a vaguely positive tone. The main character Tatsuhiko Shiratori starts out as a naive scout for the company Burst with the job of getting girls to work for them. Tatsuhiko ends up going against the dark seinen themes and feels like a shounen protagonist. He has ideals of justice, he is incredibly empathetic, he loves his friends and a simple life, he tries to protect the girls in the system, and he tries his best to give his all and fight for what he believes in. The thing is, as the first paragraph would suggest, things don’t work out like in a typical shounen. Fights are won by sheer number, if a bigger group fights a smaller group they take them out. The world doesn’t go the way Tatsuhiko wants it to. He loses more than he wins, his morality and sense of justice is constantly challenged. A major theme in the story is asking if he will break and become as dirty as everyone else in his world, if a man like him can even exist here. So, why then do I say it has a positive tone? That is because a core theme is how we deal with such a cruel and evil world. Tatsuhiko loses the things he cares about, he needs to be saved a lot, and when he does his best it’s hardly ever enough. He must learn to better himself, deal with loss, and find a way to make an impact on the world regardless. He has to find ways to not break and this can be deeply inspiring and deeply sad.

If you are familiar with yakuza films the story follows a similar form. Scouting companies like Burst fight for territory and they are controlled by Ketsumochi, yakuza who deal with their problems. This creates a push and pull of manipulating how things look and trying to get the yakuza families favour onto one companies side so that they can end up winning a dispute. This can be through trickery or bribing or simply using the better resources one has over another. The thing is like a yakuza film, no one is “good”. Everyone has their own goals in mind, everyone is seeking their own interests, and there is betrayal everywhere. There may be allies in an enemy group and enemies in one’s own group. Everything is messy and colliding with each other. The first arc starts with Tatsuhiko integrating into the company, the second deals with the way the company runs and their inner problems, but after that it starts branching out and becomes a turf war with some serious curve balls thrown in.

As my discussion of the story may imply, no character is good or bad in this manga. In fact, I’ve never felt so conflicted before regarding whether or not I like a cast. Even Tatsuhiko who I described as good guy has his downsides, he can be brutal and unfair. He can be a hypocrite. The executives at the business are some of the most brilliant characters I have ever read and more than that this series has some of my favorite antagonists. But why? It is because of Wakui Ken’s writing style. He writes minimally yet gives his characters immense nuance. Every single character in this series feels so many things and thinks so many things, they feel like human beings. They all have strengths and weaknesses. They all have likable and unlikable traits. In a single chapter through the expressions, the actions, the words of a character, they can feel as though they have endless thoughts going through their heads. I have never seen another mangaka write such nuanced characters even in such small ways. For a criticism however, this can be a downside. Although this series has what I consider to be some of the most nuanced and conflicting characters I have ever seen with much respect paid to them, the minimal writing style can fail. In particular because Wakui Ken writes his characters to show their depth and not tell it, he can at times write characters without showing enough of their depth which can lead to developments that feel uncalled for or contrived. It can lead to a certain antagonist that feels so shallow he can take away from an overall great arc.

The art of the series is some of the most unique and detailed I’ve seen. It is beautiful stuff, every character looks diverse and the clothing and textures have ridiculous amounts of detail put into them. The detail Wakui Ken puts into this series makes me understand why his style in later stories developed to be more simplistic. However, it’s not just the backgrounds and clothing and realistic character art that stands out. It’s the expressions he depicts. I can’t explain why they are so strong in technical terms but the emotion that is expressed can make any moment feel heartbreaking or introspective. Instead of depicting emotions in an extreme way like some of my other favorite mangaka’s, he often uses a reserved style to do so. It paired with semi-frequent textless pages makes us contemplate on what someone is feeling, it doesn’t tell us, and it leaves a mark no other artstyle has hit me with. That said, the art starts out rough. It can turn many people away, although I always found the realistic characters and the subdued but expressive details and the clothing and everything as great, the early chapters can be troubling for some. The background characters feel wonky and weird, the detail that is put in is there with some great hatching shading but a lack of consistency can come off as uncanny or weird. That said, if you hold out until as early as the 20 chapter mark you will see an endearing progression of art. One of my favorite parts of the manga is that you can see the art develop drastically from endearing to utterly impressive and consistent.

If any of this caught your attention I recommend trying the series. It’s made me feel more intensely than nearly anything else. I own figures of the characters and that’s rare for me. It’s left a serious mark on me. But, it is dark, disgusting, a depiction of a cruel and unfair world, and one that the happy ending rarely comes, if ever. If these things may disturb you like they have me and if perhaps you like a more clear cut story, one without so many gears and parties constantly moving, or if the art troubles you, this could not be the series for you. Nonetheless I recommend trying it!