Solanin

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Asano Inio's Solanin captures people in a pivotal moment in their lives. The early twenties. That awful precipitous moment of our lives when we are suddenly hit by pangs of self-doubt and uncertainty about our future, our path in life, all the more pangy because we've already been forced to study subjects we may or may not give a shit about and passed college and university and have been pushed into the wide world so there's no going back.

But there is going sideways. Speaking of sideways, Asano's stories feature elements that are so out of left-field it prevents his manga from falling ... into cliché, which is so easy to do because of the subject matter. The early twenties. That awfully awkward moment of our lives when we start consuming counter-culture entertainment like The Matrix and Fight Club endlessly reciting every bit of dialogue, reading Haruki Murakami, writing embarrasing poetry, dabbling in hobbies that could reap lots of fame and riches if we were to seriously pursue them but we don’t because it’s just a hobby that we're mediocre at. You couldn’t possibly make it to the big-time...right?

The character of Meiko is an office lady in this manga and she's at this stage of her life where she's sick of routine so she takes a leap into unknown waters and quits her job. An act that is more courageous in Japan than it is elsewhere, being that the country has such a rigid social order about it. Her losing her job puts pressure and a burden on her part-timer boyfriend who's dabbling in music with two college buddies. Could he pursue his hobby and make it big thus saving the both of them from impending poverty?

Her act of quitting sets in motion a collage of choices and events that propels the two through unknown waters, and although it’s scary it’s still life-affirming as in this century it takes courage to confront your own identity and purpose in life and ask yourself outright: am I happy? Can I change my life?

Asano's stories would drip with cliché and hackneyed nonsense in another author's hands; they are so ripe for rolling your eyes at. But Solanin is fresh, adult, funny, compelling and emotional. It manages to roll up those moments of our early twenties into two volumes of heart-felt drama presented in what is now a typically Asano fashion.

The humour is random and inspired, the dialogue is witty and honest, the story is realistic in scope and execution, the art is fantastic and full of memorable imagery that, again, avoids the easy and lazy route other authors would walk.

Asano's route is straight to your heart and his purpose is to make it sing Solanin. Read the manga with Shugo Tokumaru’s ‘Exit’ album playing and sing out loud.

Stories you can relate to on a personal level are some of the most powerful ones you’ll encounter, but sometimes, they can be a bit hard to swallow if they hit too close to home.

STORY - Solanin is about the quarter-life crisis: your quarter-life crisis, my quarter-life crisis. After graduating college, Meiko finds herself working as an “office lady.” The hours and pay are decent, but she doesn’t feel any connection towards what she does, her coworkers, or her boss. So she quits. How many other graduates find themselves wanting to do the same not long after starting their first job? We leave high school ... with the goal of finding something we want to do for the rest of our lives. We spend years in college or university trying to pinpoint what that is and to collect the necessary skills to pursue such a path. We graduate and find that the real world isn’t that easy. The time and money you spent on that degree may not help you get the job you want at all. All your work could have been irrelevant or the job you thought you wanted might not be what you expected after all.

Meiko flounders around her first couple of weeks without a job. She finds her freedom to be just as boring as her job had been. Direction is hard to find. “The rest of your life” is a scary thing to consider, but this story paces through a few months of that long journey. Solanin echos the twentysomething’s fears and worries very well, but is ambiguous in the answers it offers, if you choose to consider them answers at all. They are half-solutions, partially formed, and depend wildly on the person executing them. Solanin’s narrative feels very personal though, and despite that it’s very much a slice of life in that this is only a snapshot, the story feels complete. Growing up doesn’t happen between two predefined points. Meiko spends the story growing up, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t start long before the first chapter, and that doesn’t mean she’s grown up by the end. But she’s learned something.

The quarter-life crisis is a problem of self-identification, self-worth, and self-motivation. Who are we? Who do we want to be? What do we want to do? Why should we do anything at all? What is happiness? It is a coming of age problem that stretches on beyond the teenage years. So Solanin is about growing up, long after the ages at which we thought we’d already grown up. It is about life. It is about “saying goodbye to your past self.” We spend our whole lives growing up, always trying to figure out where exactly our childhood ended and when our adulthoods began.

CHARACTER - All of the characters in Solanin feel very real. Meiko could be anyone, absolutely anyone. The things she feels towards her job, the things she thinks and feels, her fears and doubts and hopes and pipedreams — I don’t know a single person her age that doesn’t think and feel at least half of the same things. This universality doesn’t detract from her identity though; Meiko is a person sorting out life in her own way. The decisions she makes are based on her own whims, and her failures and triumphs are hers to decide which are which. They could be anyone’s, but they are hers. The rest of the cast works in very much the same way. I feel like I could personally know Taneda, Kato, Jiro, Ai, or any of the others; they are all thoroughly convincing people and Solanin could have very easily been centered around any of them. The story details would differ then, but there would be very few thematic differences, if any. It’s fascinating that supporting characters could feel so in-depth and real despite only two volumes to develop in.

ART - Inio Asano has an oddly whimsical style. His girls in particular appear very childlike, which made it harder for me to see them as twentysomethings — kind of awkward for some scenes. Most of them were also very similar in design and body type, making them less visually interesting. His men were also rather young looking, but facial hair helped set a more convincing age range and widely varying body types made them seem more like real people. Regardless of stylistic drawbacks though, Asano’s artwork is very solid and all of his characters are wonderfully expressive; there’s a good balance between silly caricatures and serious faces as well. Many of the backgrounds felt like stock to me because the straight-up realism and details clashed a bit with the character art, but as the characters often interacted with their surroundings, it would have been impossible for all the backgrounds to be stock. Either way, all of the backgrounds fit in seamlessly and help emphasize that this is the real world — that these are real people facing their real problems in their own real ways.

OVERALL - Assuming I actually manage to scrape together all my credits and do it on time, I’ll be graduating college next spring. It’s easy to see why I could connect so well with the characters and story in Solanin. It’s every twentysomething’s story, even those that think they know what they’re doing (which, for the record, does not include me). My friends and I manage to talk about the future all the time without actually talking about the future, so it’s hilarious ironic that it takes a story like this to drive things in deeper for me. It isn’t like I hadn’t realized all of those questions and doubts before, but having them presented to me so clearly is like discovering them all over again. And it’s unnerving. And terrifying. And depressing. And something I’ll have to deal with again and again until I figure something out for myself. As I said, Solanin doesn’t really offer any answers, but there’s some kind of reassurance in that too.

Stretched across the spectrum of time and addressed repeatedly within timeless works comes a subject matter that is ladled with dissonance and admiration by all those who touch it.

And why shouldn’t it?

The topic is us, as us: us as our everyday selves beneath the apathetic masks that we adorn; us as our forgotten selves tethering above the riddles of societal norms; us as our unfulfilled selves stuck between a monochromatic world we can’t color and the world we want to stain with the hues we keep locked in our hearts.

We as a collective society are frequently hindered by the very ‘norms’ we instill—an absurdity ... in the truest sense--which Asano Inio has thoroughly understood and depicted within the pages of his work, Solanin.

Based on the synopsis, Solanin may come off as some heavily-dosed slice-of-life revolving around a seemingly-menopausal woman having mood-swings about her boring job and her dazed boyfriend with no sense of direction in his ambition. It may just seem to be about a bunch of twenty-some year olds who are stuck in life’s meaningless rut, and it wouldn’t be wrong. Yes- It is about all those things, but what makes Solanin an erudite exploration of “us” among the plethora of similarly-minded tales in its realm is the amount of sheer humanity, the amount of sheer relatability, the amount of sheer honesty that Asano assigns to each and every frame of the manga.

Solanin collects the fragments of all of its thematic shards and pieces them together through the cast of Asano’s prototypical, flawed characters defined by their ordinariness, classical dissonance, and their inability to reconcile who they are with what they want as per their own projections and expectations. Through and through we are handed the perpetual paradox that confines these characters and unleashes their catharsis; and the root of all this is nothing grandeur, nothing fantastical, but something much more grounded in reality, that perhaps anyone who reads can instantly relate to or at least, understand--especially those who have felt the stale winds of life’s mundanity or meaninglessness.

Essentially, this is a tale of understanding: understanding one’s self in their own periphery and understanding one’s self on the grand stage. It’s a choice of will and intention, not just circumstance and consequence. Asano shows us the common struggles of common people and the potential of facing them. Through Meiko, the very ordinary “heroine” of the story, Asano highlights actions rooted in spontaneity and the possibility of changing, even past an age when personalities and “futures” are so often stated to be engraved on some meta-stone. There is nothing grand about Meiko; she is as common as the office-ladies she complains about, and so are her struggles. Yet we are introduced to something grand by wandering with Meiko and her troupe through a pivotal time in their lives and the path they embark on to find happiness and satisfaction, which may or may not manifest, but the point is that they—on their own accord—try, and there’s an inherent value or ‘happiness’ in just that.

Where Solanin perhaps deviates from Asano’s other works is its defining moments of balanced optimism that doesn’t override the hard-cut realism that Asano is known for, but complements it in a way that depicts life with its good and bad. This results in Solanin being lighter in substance and tone but equally as potent. It can be argued (and I will assert) that Asano’s works demonstrate an amiable admiration for humanity and its potential and are often backed up with snippets of optimism and/or idealism (not the kind found in fairy tales). They aren’t just clouded by straight-laced realism with a clear-cut cynical prognosis. We are often exposed to a cold reality steeped in tragedy, pain, absurdity, and suffering but not without cause and definitely not without the ‘potential’ to change and grow from it. This change doesn’t have to be revolutionary and it doesn’t have to invert one’s life, but the possibility of it existing and gaining from it, is what matters. Solanin is no exception and follows suit to penetrate the real world, not a cynical or pessimistic world—just the real world and the individuals within that world trying to find themselves.

The sense of self, search for individuality, and personifying this innate disillusionment are all extremely important themes for Solanin and can also be largely found in Japanese literature and culture (but Asano’s style can be considered unequivocally universal). Japanese writers often prefer actualizing emotional conveyance through simple, yet resonating imagery over perceptive or didactic-ridden forms, plots, and ideologies. Formless and endless: numerous renowned Japanese literature/works aim to preserve the natural flow of life without any real beginning or real end, unfazed by standards of plot-driven or philosophically-rich or structurally-sound qualities of ‘good literature’. Now, where Asano sets himself apart, is his uncanny ability to intertwine both in a manner that gracefully bridges the two poles by eternalizing the ebb-and flow of life in all of its unglamorous candor while providing powerful insight on the human condition as-is.

Solanin is simply an extension of that congruity. The sentiments, the reality and its by-products, the world, and the artist are all mirrored within the ink-laced pages with an unmatched finesse.

And then there’s the art.

What really stands out about Solanin’s (and most of Asano’s works) art are his characters, both in design and action. Graced with the plainest of faces and the most humblest of attires, the cast is physically reflective of their situation and mindset. Physical gratuities or aesthetically-pleasing faces and/or anatomies will not be found here.

Yet, there is something absolutely stunning about how the art comes together. Perhaps it’s the way the backgrounds are erected with a life-like quality and always providing a subtle but in-tune accompaniment to the forefront dialogue and/or mood. Or perhaps it’s the overarching integral quality that the art plays with the words that makes the two inseparable. Really, when it comes to Solanin, there is no way to talk about the art detached from as a sum of its parts for everything works as one- as a bigger ‘machination’ to tell a story worth telling (and feeling).

Asano Inio is an artist by virtue, not by trade. His works are a resonation of all that surrounds him, all that he surrounds, and as a product, works like Solanin are incepted. An artist whose thoughts are as tangible as the reality that imbues them. An artist whose art is inconceivably clear in what it wants and undisputedly awe-inspiring in what it achieves. An artist unbound by escapist fantasies or uninspired optimism. An artist of “us” and you can easily trace “us” in the pages of Solanin.

"What now?" is the dilemma some fresh graduates experience. On the surface, the issue seems extremely trivial and somewhat privileged. The graduates who experience this must have the luxury to hesitate and question the world around them instead of just plunging headfirst into the cool and foreboding waters of society to make ends meet and survive. Which, I acknowledge, is fair criticism. However, that does not invalidate the legitimacy and emotions felt by those graduates. There is actual meat to what they contemplate over. It is a question of meaning. And it's a personal question. Feeling trapped in a dead end situation because the path ... you chose wasn't the one you were passionate about; it was the practical decision. How does one deal with that feeling? That's what Solanin is all about.

Enter the main character, Meiko. She's the girl who's looking for an answer. She's not happy with her job, her coworkers suck, and her boss hits on her in his spare time. The story starts in the critical moment when Meiko realizes that she needs to get out of her ditch, which she does. The problem is that living in a big city like Tokyo doesn't come cheap and this puts pressure on her boyfriend, Taneda, who hasn't really gotten into the habit of integrating himself with society yet.

That's because Taneda also suffers the same blues Meiko has except there's a sense that he's been ignoring it. He lives in a nebulous state where he's only working part-time and still jams with his college band. He's got one foot in the "real world" and another one in the past, reluctant of letting the easier times go. He has a hint of passion for music but isn't all too sure about himself, which is why things go topsy-turvy once Meiko breaks it to him that she quit her job. Now, it's a question of whether he goes for a stable job or risks it all on music.

It's a search for some faint trace of fulfillment in the face of such an unflinching world. Yet, this alone does not make Solanin good. That's just the set up; the heart of the story lies in the way it ticks. How the characters interact and speak with each other feel natural and real. There are enough quirks to differentiate when someone is talking to a friend or someone they're not too close to. There are moments when the dialogue is a bit too contemplative for casual talk, but it never comes off as out of place or pretentious. All their actions and conversations organically flow with their personalities.

The typical Asano visual flare is also there to spark enough absurdity and kookiness to give the manga some levity to balance out the overpowering rawness of the emotional scenes. In those scenes, the emotions rush and pulse feverishly without restraint as if to burst out in an explosion of anxiety, melancholy, and frustration. But then, the manga also knows how to step back to let you breathe and allow the heavier moments to sink in.

All of these factors give real depth and power to the endeavors and experiences of Meiko and Taneda. It allows the audience to relate, or at least empathize, with the struggles and heartaches in this manga. Whether or not Meiko and Taneda find an answer--whether or not any of us find an answer--we can find solace in the fact that these emotions and struggles are not artificially strung. They're real. The pain, the hardships, the loses, they all stand as evidence that we feel and our feelings are real. If anything, this manga gives us something genuine to anchor ourselves on.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a college student, a fresh grad, or a high school student, as long as you’re looking for meaning, give this manga a read. It doesn’t have the answer you’re looking for, but it’s going to be with you until you find it.

Under the guise of postmodern human life lays an undisputed mystery, searching for a straight answer to living a good life. This mystery would be the purpose one has to endure to escape adolescent life and try to cultivate under harsh conditions of the financial needs of surviving in the adult world. Do I stick with the status quo and live a stable life with hardly any trouble despite the boredom that goes with it? Or try to luck out by giving a big middle finger to it and indulge me in a lifestyle that will practically make life difficult but will make my experiences ... more interesting? Welcome to the stage of young adulthood.

There have been manga that delved into this subject matter with their storytelling. What many consider to be one that encapsulates this in the slice of life genre is Solanin. Written and drawn by the much-beloved and arguably the most cynical Inio Asano, it is considered the most accessible manga in his bibliography. In Solanin, it is a relatively simple story of a young adult couple who want to pursue their dreams of being musicians and try to cope with any hindrances that prevent them from accomplishing that goal. There are no abstract or obscure plot structures in Solanin, unlike in most of his other works. If there are people interested in starting in Inio Asano, this would be the best one, both in quality and attainability.

In discussing the quality of Solanin’s story, one has to fully acknowledge the amount of depth Asano puts into its realism. It is prevalent in the atmosphere it portrays from the dialogue that involves numerous monologues from the character Meiko. What also helps is the panels that are colored black with soliloquies describing Meiko’s despair or confidence that she says to herself. This eternal blackness helps give the atmosphere a sense of dread and vulnerability to the reader by feeling what the character is feeling at that exact moment. The significance of their reason for existing in the manga is to represent despair itself in a minimalist interpretation of it; that it is pure nothingness in physical and mental form.

These subtle and distinct measures that Asano incorporates into the story and artwork help with tremendous effect in establishing a pathos to the emotions that the characters portray. Realism is what he wants to be seen as a prominent backdrop. There are no sudden apparent inclinations of a miracle being pulled through the tragedy because that would not correspond fully with how real life is. However, that is not to say the whole story is filled with angst-ridden anguish. It can be conceived as a tone that is neither happy nor sad, just in the middle ground of both emotions where you can’t feel one-sided about either feeling. This emotional manipulation makes Solanin unique in that regard. Although there are notable moments that entail tragedy, it isn’t overbearing to the where it feels overly bogged down by it. Asano knows how to invoke realism into a story like Solanin and achieves it with great care and precision.

Pacing comes at a slower and methodical speed in each chapter, with most of them ranging at a 14-page length. This length, I would argue, is where a few of the big problems Solanin has from it becoming a masterpiece. Because of the short pages from each volume, some plot arcs feel a little rushed, especially near the latter portions of the story. For instance, we see Meiko wanting to become a guitar player for Taneda’s band, who, as far as we have seen, had no experience with the guitar. However, Meiko plays it with no problem. She knew beforehand how to play without Asano telling us so, or there was not enough to build up even a montage of her trying to hone her craft. Nevertheless, when the chapters focus more on how Meiko and Taneda rekindle their relationship and their internal struggles, the pacing is nicely done the way it is.

Our two main leads, Meiko and Taneda, make up most of why Solanin’s story is fascinating. As I’ve said before about the manga’s realism, Meiko and Taneda feel like actual human beings rather than pure caricatures of one. People may criticize Meiko for calling her idiotic for her actions in leaving her job to lounge around doing nothing to find her purpose. But that really should not be characterized as an actual criticism based on actions characters make that are rooted in their intentions. They make our leads more empathetic for us to relate to, and that should be important for a writer to invoke from the story they are portraying.

Another aspect to be admired by them is how their romance is depicted pragmatically, without any superficial tropes you typically see in any romance story. Young love usually does not bode well because of the difficulties that couples face through fear of where their relationship might go in the future. Here in Solanin, we see one madly in love with each other, yet they are afraid of each other as well. Almost as if they are hesitant about wanting to give up on being in a single life and relying on the anxieties of being a couple. Asano has excellent knowledge of youth culture, and there is no question that he puts that in great detail when constructing Meiko and Sanada as characters.

Asano has a distinct style in his artwork. At times it can be seen as your typical manga character drawings, and then later, it would transform into something abstract and almost unidentifiable. His work for Solanin is one of his less obscure creations since it’s more inclined to give us an actual depiction of life in Tokyo. Although there are notable scenes drawn very beautifully, not a lot of it was drawn with simple awe-inspiring aesthetics. Sure, on the one hand, it can be construed as Asano invoking minimalist aspects to fit the tone, but even with that in mind, it never resonated entirely with me.

Realism, when done right, can be an impacting literary tool for readers who want to experience a story that feels close to home. In many respects, Solanin hit the right notes to be given a high recommendation for anyone who has yet to encounter work by Inio Asano. Not many people can stomach realism in stories in a continuous sitting. But once you have read one that captures the true nature of human life, only the word “triumph” can describe its impact.

Grade: A-

When I finished my senior year of high school and began my freshman year of college, it hit me that I was on the threshold of the so-called "real world" and I was plagued by anxiety over the fact that I knew not what the future would have in store for me. To this day, that anxiety still haunts me and I don't think it'll ever truly leave me. At the same time, Inio Asano's Solanin managed to put me at ease (for the most part) when it comes down to my uncertain future. In the past, I've come across many works that were empathetic ... to a large degree like Fruits Basket, Oyasumi Punpun, White Album 2, Koe no Katachi, and the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, but Solanin is the only work to date that had such a profound impact on my way of thinking. I know it sounds ridiculous, lame, and cheesy but hear me out.

I came across Solanin after finishing Oyasumi Punpun, another one of Inio Asano's works that was also incredibly taxing for me to read at that point in time. Oyasumi Punpun is a manga deeply entrenched in soul-crushing cynicism and whilst I absolutely adore Punpun, it didn't really do my anxiety any favours after I finished reading it. In fact, it kinda made me feel worse about my own situation and no amount of Ouran HSHC or Fullmetal Alchemist could get me out of that pit. When I went over to the library to meet my friends for a game of Yu-Gi-Oh! like we always do, I came across the first volume of Solanin and after around an hour of reading, I was hooked so I ended up finishing the rest on my phone whilst my friends were busy having a Shaddoll mirror match.

Surely Solanin must've hit home a LOT harder than Punpun did, right? You'd be right on the money with that assumption but Solanin's nowhere near as painful to read as Punpun was. Don't get me wrong, Solanin is full of Inio Asano's signature style of painful realism but it's also full of cautious optimsim as well. This is what really made my experience with Solanin all the better. I'm not a particularly optimistic person and I don't particularly care much for overly-idealistic works. Solanin has just the right mix of painful reality and cautious optimsim that just makes it hit a lot closer to home than it would've been otherwise if it were more idealistic. Because of this, Solanin teaches some rather important lessons without getting preachy and in-your-face about it like a battle shonen/magic girl manga ordinarily would.

Solanin reaches out to those of us who are uncertain of our own futures and reminds us all that we're ultimately responsible for what we make of our lives. We don't know what will come our way if we decide to abandon the conventions of society in order to pursue our inner desires, but it's better to go out there and try to live life the way you want to than to succumb to society's demands and live life wondering what could've been. Well, that's the lesson I got out of it anyway. Whether or not you'll read into Solanin the same way I have is another story, but you get the general idea (well, I hope you do anyway). For the record, there IS more to Solanin besides the whole "uncertain future" shtick but this review's covering what stood out most to me. If you want to know what else lies, just read the damn manga and write a review about it if you're so inclined.

The characters are what really made Solanin all the better for me. Meiko Inoue has to be one of the most relatable lead characters I've ever come across in anime and manga at large. Whilst she's certainly no Punpun in terms of empathy, she's got more than enough going for her so that virtually anyone who's been in a similar situation can connect to her and want her to succeed in her endeavours. The rest of the cast is also pretty damn good and they do more than enough for you to remember who they are and what they're all about. Whether or not you'll like all of them is a different story, but I was quite fond of everyone so who knows? Maybe it'll be a similar situation for you.

As for the aesthetic side of everything, I have no complaints. Inio Asano never disappoints whenever it comes down to artwork and Solanin showcases more of that awesome artwork that we've all come to know and love. This is also a minor thing on my end, but I just love seeing artwork by Inio Asano that's 100% grounded in reality. As much as I loved Punpun, the surreal imagery got somewhat taxing after a while and not knowing what Punpun actually looked like was rather frustrating to say the least. Let's be grateful Meiko isn't a bird or a regular human but with a black mass with horns for a head. Backgrounds are beautifully detailed, the characters actually look like humans, what more could you want? A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with extra bacon? If you want that, go to the deli and get it instead of expecting a manga to give that shit to ya.

Final thoughts? Solanin is a manga that should be read by all at some point in time. It really is a shining example of what slice-of-life stories are capable of. If you're the kind of person who's been mulling over what you'll make of your life or whatever the situation may be, I highly recommend you read it. I wish I talked more about the story, the characters, and how everything plays out but I really don't know how to do so without spoilers. Maybe at some later date, I'll re-read the entire manga and then re-write this entire review to better reflect my thoughts but for now, I'm cool with this review being the way it is. By the end of it all, Solanin is an amazing story that almost anyone can connect to and get something out of. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback is always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

One of my favorite mangas ever! Asano effectively captures the true emotion and thoughts of modern young adults. He tells it like it is without adding any "Hollywood" glamor or unrealistic plot characteristics. The characters are sincere and believable, and the reader can fully sympathize with them. Being intricately weaved throughout the characters' memories and thought, Solanin focuses much on the restlessness of youth and what happens to get there.
Asano also pays close attention to detail, making the art very exceptional. The character design is unique; each of them has their own physical, realistic depiction very different from the huge eyes and spiked hair typical ... of many other manga art.
Overall, this work is excellent!

Solanin by Asano Inio tells the story of a group of young people in their early twenties and their everyday life. Most of them have already graduated from college and are trying to handle the responsibilities of adulthood, but at the same time they still don't know what they should expect from life.
The main characters, Meiko and Taneda, make a great, but also really realistic couple. They have been together for around six years, so they know each other pretty well. Even after Meiko quit her office job because she didn't want to fall into a routine, Taneda supports ... her uncoditionally. But naturally, they had their differences and after some time, things seemed to be falling apart.
Their friends were all great, from Billy to Katou and Ai. The focus of the story shifts to all of the characters, but even if most of the story is centered on Meiko, it was really interesting to see how all of them went through life.
Since this is a seinen and drama, the mood is pretty serious and heavy around the middle of the story, but it also has some enjoyable comedy moments that lighten the atmosphere. I didn't think I would like the art as much as I did, because I haven't read anything similar to this before, but, in my opinion, it's really beautiful and suits the topic.
At the end, I have to say, that this manga probably couldn't have come my way at a better time. I just started college this year, but just like these characters, I felt lost and wasn't sure what I should do with my life. As the mangaka himself said, there is nothing special about these characters, but I think they show, in a realistic way, that you don't always have to strive for an extraordinary life or settle for an everyday routine to be happy. Sometimes we need to make decisions that are out of our comfort zones, because we never know where life might take us.
I'll definitely read more of Asano's work and especially can't wait to read Oyasumi, Punpun.

Inio Asano’s Solanin through Narratolgy; an academic understanding of the devices in the manga

Solanin’s story at it’s core is the clichéd, or perhaps universal, account of a group of friends uncertain about their future. The spectacular accomplishment in how the story sets out in achieving its purpose through the skillful use of narration techniques enables it to be a successful and acclaimed manga. In a Japanese context, manga are varied in genre and the artists and writers have a history of being able to create exceptional literary works through skilled artwork and narration. Inio Asano’s work of Solanin can be analyzed by identifying Aristotle’s key ... elements in plot and Gerard Genette’s questions regarding the act of narration itself. Through the use of varied focalization, narrators, packaging, time, and representations Solanin is packaged together as a meaningful work of art and literary accomplishment that many people are able to thoroughly enjoy and relate to.

According to Aristotle’s interpretation of the narration of a typical story, the character goes through the stages of having a fatal flaw, a moment of self-recognition and finally a reversal of fortune. The manga by Asano could be interpreted that the protagonist, Meiko, goes through these three stages. Her fatal flaw can be recognized near the beginning of the book when she thinks, “I have no idea what to do with myself. And while I wait for my epiphany, I feel the toxins collecting in my body” (pp.7). This flaw is echoed in the other characters who question their happiness in the monotonous lives they are leading. The second stage of a moment of self-recognition can be found at several points including when she decides to quit her job, and Taneda telling her she doesn’t know what to do, so does nothing and forces everything on him (pp.173). Then the reversal of fortune comes when the band rejects the offer to become the band for the swimsuit model, without any advance in their lives. The general familiar flow of the key moments of plot serve to connect it to other narratives that the reader understands and identifies with. It establishes a strong framework that is not overly obvious and is enhanced through narrative devices in both words and art.

According to Gerard Genette, the importance of a story can be found in how it is told through the act of narration. The process of telling the story Solanin uses both mimetic and diegetic narrative techniques to portray the plot with both vivid details of specific conversations and imagery, coupled with overviews of the situation, which summarize and capture the overall idea. The mimetic style shows events while they are happening throughout the story with images of people interacting, speaking and includes specific details. For example, the story brings in the element of vegetables with specific details related to them. The opening image of the deliveryman, with Meiko’s reaction to receiving them and Taneda also noticing and reacting gives the reader a sense of comfort and familiarity with the characters. The vegetables may also serve as a connection to home and symbolize a different lifestyle, which the reader is left to contemplate. On page 181, Rip and Kato dramatically reveal a potato that has been neglected and growing due to Meiko’s emotional state. The mimetic portrayal of small details such as the vegetables tie the story together, which gives the story significance through substance. Further, the use of language such as random common phrases also adds to the story with particulars, which make the characters easily relatable to the reader. For instance, when Rip asks Meiko, “did you curl your hair”, it is giving the reader details that later are revealed to be that he has a crush on her. The details of the story tie together the overall theme and make it a worthwhile read.

Diegetic narration in Solanin is visible in several ways, both graphically and through dialogue. The use of diegetic narrative throughout the story may follow a character but does not necessarily follow realistic pacing. For example, while following Naruo’s thoughts, he is riding on his bike thinking, followed by an image of him standing next to the river. The thoughts would not have taken as much time as was provided in the images, and therefore the scene had cut out and moved ahead in time without any specific mention or explanation of it. This narrative style functions to cut out unnecessary unrelated images that do not have importance or follow the plot, and provides smooth transitions from locations and situations.
The narrator is primarily Meiko as the central character that alternates with the secondary characters, who are all homodiegetic narrators that are present in their own stories being told. The story combines internal and external narratives as the thoughts of the characters provide internal focalization while dialogue and images constantly provide external focalization. However, the internal focalization is sometimes illustrated to provide the reader with a more detailed understanding of the characters mind. For example, Taneda’s inner monologue is amplified through the detailed depiction of his nightmare and his “Me Summit” with each version of his emotions wearing a labeled shirt of “negative, positive, suspicion, apathy, and so on (pp.118-119). The importance of his thought process was brought to the readers’ attention in a highly dramatized and graphically interesting way that could not be achieved through text alone. Further, to a lesser extent throughout the story, Rip’s dreams of himself are represented in thought bubbles, which provide a more comedic effect rather than insight into the plot like Taneda.
The story contains a central frame narrative, which constitutes Meiko’s point of view for the majority of the time, with the embedded narratives of Taneda, Rip and Kato to a lesser extent. Meiko as the main narrator constitutes the majority of the story, with the lives of the other characters deeply connected to her and serving to reinforce the overarching theme of the story. The intermingling of the stories with the frame narrative and meta-narratives creates variation and fills in different perspectives for the reader to gain a closer understanding and deepen their connection to each of the characters. This narratological device is implemented intermingled with strategic flashbacks and jumps in time to generate an appealing story line for the reader to follow.
In identifying Genette’s acts of narration, a central feature is the strategic use of time, which Asano uses effectively in a non-linear fashion. Time is handled in several ways, including use of analepsis and jumps in time such as characters narrating the time difference by stating how time has passed. For example, Meiko narrates that “it’s been five days” (pp.181) after Taneda leaves, creating a sense of prolonged waiting for the reader to understand that following a steady timeline could not achieve. Coupled with the diegetic storytelling device, the jumps in time serve to omit assumed information while the flash backs serve to fill in important situations in the past that enable a deeper understanding of the plot and the motives for the characters. The flashbacks of the Music club deepen the relationship the characters have with each other and the readers’ perception of their current circumstance in the stories timeline. The time shifts serve to give information to the readers at varied intervals to create a more interesting and revealing narrative.

The story is told by depicting aspects of these peoples’ lives in several ways including speech, thought and visual representations. The story itself is told through thought and speech are both included throughout the story from the main characters. A square box characterizes their inner thoughts that provide a narrative throughout the manga, and sometimes also small ‘thought balloons’ for short thoughts. Spoken words in Solanin are shown with speech balloons, and other less important thoughts and sound effects do not have a shape and are written freely next to the character they are related to. The reader understands these conventions as an established method of conveying speech and thoughts in a graphic form. The mimetic speech coupled with the transposed thoughts conveys the characters interaction and intention for the readers’ optimum understanding of the situation. Further, as it is a graphic novel, the characters thoughts are echoed or reinforced through their facial expressions and through the scenery. As repetitive images of cityscapes can reflect a characters feeling of being trapped, the repetitive sky scenery symbolizes their freedom.

Narratological techniques in the manga are used to show how emotions are represented such as happiness and uncertainty show through in the artists’ illustrations. The facial expressions, angles, lighting, poses and backgrounds all serve to enhance the emotional portrayal of the situation. The humor intermingled throughout the story in the artwork also adds to the mood of the story, as Asano creates a world unto itself which the reader can feel a connection to. When Taneda and Meiko are discussing how the band doesn’t pay the bills and Taneda suddenly throws up in the middle of the conversation, it breaks up the seriousness of the situation without taking away from the importance of it (pp.34). Meiko’s internal grappling of her own sense of what is going on constitutes the layout of the story, establishing an ongoing questioning and uncertainty that makes the story worthwhile.

Solanin uses narratological techniques that enable the story to come together as a functional and flourishing story. As the protagonist goes through the stages of fatal flaw, realization, and self-recognition, the plot develops meaning through her actions. The elements used to narrate the story, both visual and written, stop the story from becoming a clichéd story of a group in their early twenties struggling to find their place. The realistic portrayal of the events of significance is accomplished through allowing different embedded narratives and internal focalization of each character. The use of time flowing at different speeds and the inclusion of analepsis highlights essential situations and thoughts without overloading the reader. As a psychological realist novel through a narratological understanding of how the complete story is put together, Inio Asano moulds together a prime example of a richly created narration through artwork and writing, without it being a conventional literary novel.

Inio Asano's Solanin struck such a chord with me. I had picked up the manga initially but forgot about it after a few days only to jump right back into it once I continued it. The best part about this manga is the fact that you feel it could be real - the characters, the settings, the situations, basically everything.

Other than that, the manga is easy on the eyes as all the drawings are crisp, clear and neat. It's a fast read too as the chapters are relatively short. Every once in a while, there is something that a character says, be it main ... or side, that will hit home and even after completing the manga for a couple of days now, the manga's characters, plot and lives still linger in my head - to me, that is a given fact that a series is good if it makes a reader think about it even after it's completed.

I would definitely give Solanin a re-read and I suggest whoever's reading this manga to give it a shot. If you like anything slice of life, you'd definitely enjoy Solanin.

Solanin poses questions I’m willing to bet most people above a certain age have asked themselves. The first is whether it is better to pursue an unlikely dream or to face reality and resign yourself to working 9 to 5 so that you can survive and enjoy your hobbies in your free time. This question becomes more difficult to answer when nothing drives you and you don’t know if there is anything you can be passionate about. The second is the question of when the right time is to leave your childhood behind and join the world as an adult, possibly giving up on unrealistic ... dreams. And so, this brings us to Meiko Inoue, our main character, who decides to quit her boring and thankless job for a while to chase something else and finds herself in a predicament of not knowing what to do with herself. She is joined by the friends she made in university, who, employed or unemployed, also find themselves in that same state of uncertainty.

Solanin doesn’t try to make grand statements about the meaning of life or what it means to be human, and it doesn’t need to. All Solanin aims to do is show the reader the lives of a group of people in their early to mid-twenties, lost, aimless and generally unsure of themselves and their futures. This is a story about a difficult transitionary phase of life and what people do when confronted with this situation. Most of the story, divided into relatively short chapters, is seen from Meiko’s perspective, but occasionally another character will receive a chapter to show a different side of the central problem, as well as whatever unique challenges and insecurities each character may face. This structure works very well, as each chapter is succinct and valuable, both on its own and as a part of the whole.

The characters don’t display immense growth over decades or anything like that; no, they simply experience life, just like you and me, and Solanin shows us a year of it. There is not a great deal of easily noticeable character development to be seen, but what subtle change is there is significant: that slight change in mindset for each major character involved learning a valuable lesson, making for a satisfying conclusion to the story, even if on the surface the characters’ personalities haven’t changed much at all. By the end of it, they are still unfulfilled, but have at least decided on a direction in which to head. That, in my view, is what marks the beginning of their transition into adulthood.

Meiko and the others may not be the most complex, but their reactions to the events that befall them, as well as the details of their body language and facial expressions, make up for that somewhat, and sell them as unmistakably human. This is helped greatly by the artwork: Asano doesn’t exaggerate character emotions in his art, but it is always easy to tell what a character is feeling in any moment. In addition, the large amount of narration present allows the reader an even closer look inside the mind of the perspective character for that chapter. All of this serves to add more realism and relatability to the story and its characters.

Those questions I mentioned at the beginning of the review never receive a clear answer. However, this is for the best; the dilemmas might have been cheapened had definite answers been provided, and there is no “one size fits all” solution. The closest thing to a moral or message that I could find was “appreciate the little things in life and where you can, do what makes you happy.” It’s a simple message, but no less valuable because of its simplicity. If any part of what I’ve described sounds like your own life, then I urge you to read it, because Solanin is a story that will resonate with anyone who is or has been in a similar situation.

Solanin tells an intimate story about the trials and tribulations of love, loss, and grief centered around people in their twenties who often slip between the cracks of society.

History: a very human story in the sense that it is very real. The protagonists have just finished high school and have to adjust to adult life, having to leave behind their childhood dreams, in this case, playing in a band, to earn a living as an old person. It is a well-structured story that is quick to read but that you enjoy a lot, also very beautiful in all aspects, with touches of humor, and at ... times sad and raw. I emphasize for the last time that it is a very human story and that everything feels real, as if it could be the story of an ordinary person. In this aspect, Solanin takes a 9

Characters: the group of protagonists is very well structured, all being connected by the passion that music transmits to them despite the fact that they are different from each other. Well, more or less, because at every moment the boys in the group are laughing at nonsense. After the end of the first volume, in the second and last volume, there is a great development of characters to these after this final event, further developing the protagonist. In this small time skip from the first volume to the second, you can appreciate very well the development of characters and, although you can predict how the plot will continue after this development, believe me that it does not decline. In the character section, I'm going to give it another 9, I loved them all (even the mother of the protagonist hahahahahah)

Drawing: although Inio Asano, creator of the manga, specializes much more for his moving stories (e.g.: goodnight, punpun) than for drawing, he makes some very beautiful landscapes of Japan and characters that look simple but beautiful and cute, although they are not crazy either. And that resource that he always uses of black panels with a bit of text is something that I like in person, but I also think that he could represent those texts in a different way than a black background since there are pages that are vignette, black, vignette, black... and I don't like that. In the drawing section, an 8 I think is enough, although I could even lower it to 7 but... nah

Entertainment: I read the manga in two days but still enjoyed it a lot. The story and drawing style make you very calm and keep you reading. Although at first I didn't have faith in it, with all the nonsense in the end I loved it, making me think about the manga until days after finishing it. Entertainment 8 out of 10.

Conclusion: a moving and relaxed story with a great touch of realism in it that will make you fall in love with it almost instantly. Adding up all my previous notes, it gets an 8.5, but as Myanimelist seems to still be in 2005 and doesn't let you put decimals, the final grade is an 8, since it's very nice but a 9 I already see it very high having works by the same mangaka that are better.

Solanin is one great piece of work. It isn't your regular slice of life manga, not by any means. The story is not that original, but yet, really heart catching. The "cast" is composed of your regular teenagers, each one of them in that part of life where things start to get hard. The story is about them guys, struggling here. Did somebody ever claimed you had talent in anything? WELL NOPE. You're a regular person.
You'd like to become the greatest guitarist in the whole world? You'd like to become a famous lawyer? NOPE. Slap in your face. Everything is not neccesarily going to ... go that well. You're going to struggle (at least, in most of the cases).
I personnally think almost everyone knows or has know that feeling, when you're suddenly growing up and everything gets darker and harder. Still, there's light beyond the darkness and life isn't going to be THAT harsh. You'll have great moments. Solanin is exactly about that, at least I think.

But that's not everything you need to know about. There's plenty much other reasons why Solanin is a masterpiece. The characters development is great. It's not about stupid "kawaii" girls and their amazingly random problems like in some mangas/animes. It's about, as I said earlier, teenagers who are going to discover about the difficulties of life. Taneda, Meiko... those two are going to have a bad time, and good times here and there.
The art is stunning, simple but stunning. I'm not a confirmed artist whatsoever but I really liked the art, it looks amazing to me. It's isn't OMG KAWAII DESU NEEEEE-like, and that's what I loved most about it! The characters are realistic. Not like true humans, but there's no big round unrealistic eyes and such in Solanin.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but I guarantee you are going to feel something after finishing Solanin.
Sadness. In the other side, happiness. I personally think it's going to be a mix of those two major feelings. Don't expect it to be an overly dramatic story like some other manganimes (which I'm not going to name), though. It's just about... life.

Thanks for reading, and I apologize for any (probably too many) spelling or grammar mistakes, since I'm not a native english speaker and don't have amazing skills (sadly).

Solanin – Spoiler Free – Recommended

TLDR
Story – 9/10 – 9 x 0.275 = 2,475
Art – 9/10 – 9 x 0.2 = 1,8
Characters – 8/10 – 8 x 0.225 = 1,8
Enjoyment – 8/10 – 8 x 0.3 = 2,4
Total: 8,475 -> 8

“There’s a war being fought somewhere today. Many people are being killed. But it’s hard to believe that kind of thing when you look at this peaceful scene. I thought it would be nice if it went on forever…”
... Solanin

Story – 9/10
Solanin is a small gem in the world of SOL (slice of life). Its author, Inio Asano, the creator of the legendary Goodnight, Punpun, shows once more that his skills are nearly unmatched in the genre. Solanin tells a very human story – as any SOL should – around two characters in their 20s, facing their ambitions and hindrances in Tokyo. The story develops well and is structured around their lives. The end result is a story that is humane and sweet, although short. It becomes a swift read for its quality. The ending – the epilogue – also adds a layer of complexity to everyone who needs to “move on” from something or someone.

Art – 9/10
The art style in Solanin is of the same impeccable quality as in Goodnight, Punpun: it is pristine and very detailed, with flowering panels of unestimated beauty for the sight to behold. The landscapes and scenarios are done with shadowing worthy of awards, and the characters are incredibly expressive: one can easily read a character’s face and emotions. Character design is also well done, making it easy to recognise characters from one another. Panels have a good fluency and make it easy to follow the story along.

Characters – 8/10
The characters are very likeable and believable, being a SOL with a firm grasp of the human condition. We feel their pain and agony, as well as their hopes and dreams, and the art helps convey all these feelings in singular panels. This is central about Solanin’s characters: they are human, like ourselves; they face the same challenges, they face grief and loss, they fall in love, etc. All of this is done in an extraordinary fashion.

Enjoyment – 8/10
Solanin is a joy to read from start to finish, although the second half of the manga is slightly better than its first half. With excellent characters and an emotional story about grief, loss, and overcoming obstacles, Solanin also offers good reflections on the human condition, as the quote above shows. This one has meant a lot to me in recent times. It is a beautiful consideration in such troubling times of longing for peace and harmony over war and chaos. Solanin is just as precious as the quotes it produces, more than deserving of a Recommendation for such a work of art.

Solanin is refreshing. And when I say this, I mean that Asano has truly made something beautiful. Meiko Inoue, a 23 year old young woman, is living her daily life and fighting on her own in Tokyo. Along with Naruo Taneda, a wannabe rockstar, they decide to revive a long time band, called Rotti. With some college friends, they try their way in the music industry.

The fascinating point about Solanin is its simplicity, it is somewhat touching to the young adults, but also beautiful in a general scale.

Considering that the whole industry is completely centered in teenage protagonists, Solanin truly stands out not ... for being like some far-fetched work, but for depicting the delusions and relatable life of young adults who still don't know what to do with themselves. It also shows how the music enterprise actually works, and that sometimes having a good band is not enough to please the industry.

I won't spoil that much, however the story gets even better after a certain point (if you read the whole thing, you know what I'm talking about). It's the beauty in the tragedy, or even in life itself. My issues with this manga are mostly in the first chapters, but it turns around to something entirely different. Meiko's life change completely, and the event that divided the whole plot is as striking for her as for the reader.

The art is very good, and lively. I consider some characters facial traits are a tad equal to other ones, but this didn't bother me that much.

All in all, Solanin is a special manga, that strikes the young and lost hearts with impact and might.

Thank you for reading.

This was my first time reading Inio Asano's works. And it was a pretty good journey.

Story 8/10

The message of the story to me is to do what makes you happy even if it's a big risk. For example, quitting your job to focus on your passive income or something. The story is very realistic and relatable. Either tho I'm not a big fan of the ending it was good but I thought maybe it could have been a happier ending.

Enjoyment 7.5/10
I had a pretty good time with this manga. It made me feel I wanted to do something out in the world. And reminded me ... about what life is going to be after I'm done with school.

Character 7.5/10
The Characters were pretty good. My favorite characters are Billy because he's a lot like me (don't a gf too) and Taneda because he's a lot like my brother. The way he thinks about life and wants to find happiness doing the things he wants to do.

Overall 7.7/10

Solanin by Inio Asano
Long-Winded Review #3 [Sleep Deprivation Edition]

This is, in my opinion, yet another masterpiece by Inio Asano. This is a lot more grounded than some of his other work, and as such a lot more accessible. This manga focuses on capturing the fragility of life for someone in their mid-20s. Asano explains it best in his afterword:

"[...] In my anxiety and impatience, I felt that all I could do in my manga was try to get a true depiction of the times as experienced by my generation.

Lovers, friends, money, jobs, a society with an unclear future, one's own pride... ... Writhing in these multiple, entangling factors, perhaps they are unable to draw their own conclusions. Perhaps this instant now is just a small part of their futile daily lives. The only thing that's certain is that they can never return to the days gone by.

There's nothing cool about these characters. They're just your average 20-somethings who blend into the backdrop of the city. But the most important messages in our lives don't come from musicians on stage or stars on television. They come from the average people all around you, the ones who are just feet from where you stand. That's what I believe."


For me, being around the same age as the characters in this manga and the same age Asano was when he wrote it, this book really hit home. Asano succeeded in what he set out to do: he simply yet sublimely captured the essence of being in your mid-20s. The uncertainty about the future, searching for a purpose, seeking a semblance of fulfillment in an apathetic world, taking a risk pursuing an unlikely goal or succumbing to a stable but tepid life. Despite those depressing themes, the main message of the book is quite positive: treasure the small moments. Cherish the good times with friends, revel in the times when you're doing something new or out of the ordinary--the times when you truly feel alive.

On to the technical part of the review:

The writing is really good. The plot itself is fairly simple but very satisfying. The characters are nuanced, relatable, and endearing. Watching them bounce off one another felt like watching my own friends interact, and it gave me a sense of nostalgia and appreciation for those moments. I enjoyed the use of symbolism (i.e. the sandals and the bandage), and I especially liked how the titular song's lyrics take on a different meaning depending on when you read them. Everything ties together very nicely.

As for the art, it's also really good. Asano has a knack for facial expressions, so the emotional moments really hit home. He still uses a lot of his signature exaggerated body language here and there, with characters acting kooky and eccentric for comedic relief, but it is a lot less common than in some of his other manga since this is generally more grounded. His establishing environmental shots were also really good, as are his interiors. By the end of the manga, I was attached to Meiko's little house as if it was an old friend's house. In relation to some of his other work, the art is generally a lot simpler and more subdued to fit the down-to-earth vibe of the manga, but Asano still knows when to bring out the moody, flashy, or over-the-top scenes when needed. The standout scenes were generally the music performances, which were very well done, with detailed instruments, dynamic movements, and raw emotion pouring from the page.

All in all, while I don't think Solanin is as good as Goodnight Punpun or Nijigahara Holograph, I think it definitely deserves the same perfect rating of 10/10. It achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It is relatable, memorable, evocative, and emotional. Like in most of his work, I felt like Asano wrote this just for me. It is the perfect snapshot of what being in your mid-20s is like, and I couldn't have read this at a better time than now.

+This is a spoiler-free review+

Solanin is a manga by Inio Asano, who is widely known for his work in Oyasumi Punpun, so if you have already read that one you can have an idea of what to expect. Solanin is not a happy story, yet is not entirely depressing. I cried, yes, but I laughed as well. Just as life. On its basis, it tells a story about a young couple. They love each other, yet they feel heavily the pressure of what they are going to do with their lives. The manga revolves around them, their dramas, their friends and their families.

The story is ... as good as it gets. It’s not a complex story, you won’t have any trouble keeping up with all the events. This doesn’t mean it’s not well written, rather that the story is told with enough elegance to keep it deep yet concise. As I already said, the story follows a young couple trying to survive. While it begins with their daily lives, the story starts quickly unfolding about what the future stores for them. The universe is believable and fleshed out, giving the story a nice realistic and relatable feel. Whether is laughing or crying, the storytelling won’t let you go. The manga is only 28 chapters long, so you can easily read it in a day.

The characters are perfectly fleshed out, each one with their own personality and unique characteristics. In general, the cast is really charismatic so you won’t have trouble feeling attached to them, even when some of their decisions can get to the point of being irritating. This helps to the general feeling of the manga and creates lovable yet flawed characters. I can’t elaborate that much because a big part of the enjoyment is getting to know these people at your own pace, but trust me about the quality of the writing here.

Asano uses here his trademark style, a semi-realistic style that mixes well with the story. It’s a pleasure to see, especially the stunning backgrounds. The drawings are also incredibly clean, the panels are never too overcrowded or overcharged. The structure is also really neat, allowing a with-the-flow reading experience. The expressions also stood out to me, which play a big role in transmitting the emotions in the more sentimental scenes. Whether is a carefree smile during a meeting with your friends or a sharp cry of grief in the light of the moon, the expressions do an excellent job in telling you exactly what everyone is feeling. I swear to god that in one of the sadder scenes the expressions alone were enough to make me sweep.

In general, the story is really enjoyable. Sad, yes, but in a good way. The comedy is well played and the pacing is enough to keep you interested but never too heavy. There’s never a dull moment or an overcharged one, the first chapter settles a tone and a rhythm and it sticks with it. It might even steal some tears from you, but my point here is that the manga is never a torture. It gets extremely emotional but never depressing, which is my favorite thing about the whole work.

In overall, it’s hard for me not to give it a 10. The art, story, characters and general feel of the manga are just flawless. These aspects are not game changers that break from the barriers of the medium because the manga knows itself and strives for perfection in a simple way. There’s nothing that is not properly executed and so one earning a 10. Is a definitively recommended read. Just in case, I must clarify that the +18 etiquette is important. There’s nothing heavy about it, maybe a few swears and nudity like, one time. But the themes are designed to resonate with someone who’s of that age or more. The anxiety of a new life as an adult is masterfully presented and you’re probably not going to like the manga as much if you have never felt that.

"Solanin" is my third contact with the works of Inio Asano, and it still manages to be a manga that exudes novelty and expresses an authorial style that has matured over the years: by proposing to the reader the presentation of events, ideas, and themes that are related to processes and psychosocial phenomena mostly common to Japanese young adults (such as conformism; entering the executive workplace; the prospects for personal growth in an economy that has been stagnant for 30 years, with sturdy deflation, and an aging society; the transition to adulthood in oppressive, hyperdynamic urban environments), Asano realizes a brutal realism in both aesthetics ... and narrative in order to ensure a substantial degree of viscerality to his work and produce the reader's identification and empathy with his story. The famous feeling of "he is just like me fr!!!".

However, "Solanin" crosses the relatability barrier and establishes itself as a mature slice of life with the ability to reach the most intimate insecurities of its target audience and generate great discussions. About this realistic approach, a preliminary observation: in one of the reviews of this manga, the user "ChouEritto" comments that the slice of life genre is "inherently flawed when not having an additional element added to have it stand out from the crowd" and brings examples like Planetes and Haibane Renmei - to a certain extent, he is correct.

Just cutting out a portion of time and space of one or more individuals without more "fantasy" aspects, responsible for delivering an engaging narrative, seems dull. However, beyond all the discussions that can be started on this subject, suffice it to say that Solanin's proposal is not confabulation: the author wants to discuss openly, with all possible sincerity, the topics that afflict a significant portion of the world's population.


A DISCUSSION ABOUT REALITY
To accomplish this discussion, Asano achieves the feat of exposing and making public the intimacy of his characters, exploring individualities as complex existences with their own longings, perspectives, certainties, and uncertainties that are inserted in a society that models them and represses their possibilities. In this context, the duo formed by Meiko and Naruto gains prominence by presenting a series of relatable questions and dilemmas regarding the future and love relationships, without losing sight of each character's characterization. In other terms, the cast not only serves as the author's tool to drive his themes about the pressures of a rigid social order, but are ambiguous and, above all, human characters.

In "Solanin", this external or self-imposed oppression is presented textually: there are lines and more lines of dialogues and monologues that gradually transmit the world view of each character about the most varied themes, personal or collective (regrets, the organizational structure of labor, the importance of financial stability, the human relationship with money, etc.). The texts are rich, sincere, and without major dramatizations about real and everyday problems, characteristics that make up the mentioned realism (as an example, there is Naruo's relationship with his father and Kotani's "old-fashioned" comments). While in other works this social aspect is lost, as in "Garden of Words" (which has converging themes), "Solanin" demonstrates a concern to discuss based on Japanese material reality.


A DISTANT CLOSENESS
Especially regarding the soliloquies, the first problem may arise. Perhaps due to the short size of the manga, the author was compelled to present the feelings more pragmatically and directly, appearing through the repetition of the literary resource of transcribing the thoughts of the framed character. Even if this narrative instrument is in harmony with Asano's approach, the monologues can tire the reader, either by (i) being too constant or (ii) occupying large portions of the frames, hindering the appreciation of the visuals.

However, I believe that this feature does not tire precisely because (i) the manga is short, constituting a quick read, and (ii) this aspect is compensated by a stable non-verbal narrative, with a sensitive arrangement of elements, angles, and visual rhymes. Examples of this non-verbal quality include the allusion to Ritsuko's backstory in only one "secondary" frame, an efficient (but rather indiscreet) metaphor with the manga's opening image, and the arrangement of objects in the scene.

In this aspect of Asano's art, photorealism is present as backgrounds and a more restrained character design that avoids certain visual archetypes. Unlike "Oyasumi Punpun" and "Nijigahara Holograph", the author presents rigid and tight frames without a great diversity of angles, which amplify the intimacy of the narrative and bring the reader closer to the events, besides reinforcing the general idea of a slice of life (a specific cutout of the time and space of specific people).

This claustrophobia accompanies all the chapters, reinforcing the author's thesis about such phenomena as loneliness, personal imprisonment, and the smallness of life. In other words, all the art is in harmony with the narrative most of the time, including the disruptive moments of ecstasy/climax, in which the drawings fill the entire page. As a side note, the Brazilian version of "Solanin" enhances this sense of closeness by being in a 17.6 cm X 10.6 cm format. Unfortunately, this format detracts from the appreciation of the details Asano draws.


A LITTLE SLIP
Up to this point, "Solanin" seems to be a very cohesive manga in approach, and it is very well organized and well executed. However, in this work, it is possible to observe a characteristic of the author that gained strength later in "Oyasumi Punpun": the presence of overly dramatic events or conflicts, which develop into real human tragedies. Without a spoiler comment, I am referring to the events that occur at the end of volume one. Even if there is contextual support that underlies the events and their unfolding, and even if this episode is revisited by the script so that, little by little, the reader understands even more about the situation, the main event at the end of the first part seems to be out of tune with the whole rest of the work.

In comparison to the previous and subsequent events, which explore everyday life at a slow pace, this event breaks with the overall tone of the project in favor of structuring a dramatic turning point. As said before, a slice of life without the addition of other elements can bore the reader, so Asano found this way out. Again, even though it makes sense with the rest of the manga, the drama aspect of "Solanin" is greatly impaired because of this event, and no other event compares to the end of the first volume in dramatic terms.


OTHERS NOTES
- yes, I cried.
- the moments when Asano fills the whole page with his drawings are so meaningful and beautiful.
- It's a very humorous manga, even if the themes are relatively difficult to follow.


CONCLUSION
Above any problems or flaws generated by Inio Asano's authorship, "Solanin" is a manga to be read and enjoyed, being a solid work that uses relatability and identification to produce essential reflections and discussions in its target audience from an ideal harmony between aesthetics, narrative, and themes.

Just some personal thoughts, don't think too much about it

Great stories don't have to take much space. Solanin is an example of that. This is a vignette of what life may be like in your 20s, aimless and unsatisfied. Primarily the plot revolves around our characters move through those types of feelings, and move forward with their lives. For our main character in particular, it's a journey of growing up and embracing... adulting. The "adult" part of life we all find kind of unappealing: the monotony of work, the looming shadow of eternal mediocrity/anonymity, all that kinda stuff. I think the story's mainly about how ... she starts from loathing those feelings and trying to run away from it, to slowly embracing them with a newfound conviction in life developed through the events of the story.

It's a rather meditative story, as expected from the Asano brand of coming-of-age stories, but that subdued tone is complemented by the colorful cast and abundance of visual gags that I think are hilarious, making everything so enjoyable to read through. Basically it's perfect material for a movie adaptation (which actually existed, and is quite good in its own right).

Reading this for the first time, I was underwhelmed because I expected a Punpun prototype, which it certainly is not. Everything only hit me when I see it as its own product on my second read. Made me think about my life and what I wanted to do with it. Solanin's brand of conviction in life is unique, one which I don't have the right words to describe yet. Much of it isn't conveyed directly, but I believe readers can sense it: almost absolutist, kind of ominous, yet serene. A firm faith in living, enduring, not really in life itself, but in living, if that makes any sense.

I feel that stories which convey things hard to describe with words are the most unique ones, and its abundance in the manga format is part of the reason I love this medium so much. Therefore this is a 10 for me.