NIJIGAHARA HOLOGRAPH by Inio Asano, published by Fantagraphics.
One of the hosts of my favorite comics podcast – Jeff Lester
of Wait, What? – extolled the wonders of Nijigahara Holograph, by Inio
Asano, published by Fantagraphics Books, in an episode a number of months
back. So, I put it on my “to-read” list,
an ever-expanding document that threatens to become overwhelming if I don’t
find a way to subvert time. [calling on
the “Guardians of Forever”] I finally
got a chance to read it, and it is some kind of an amazing book.
Revolving around a group of former classmates at a local
elementary school in Japan, the story is told through flashbacks that enhance
and reveal the contemporary narrative, roughly ten years on. In a tunnel beneath the school, a legend has
grown that a monster dwells there, and its ascension into the light will summon
the end of the world. This fear is
cemented in the children’s minds when one of the students’ mothers, Arié Kimura’s
mother, is found dead there. This is the
catalyst for a series of events that touches everyone in this class and
reverberates across the years.
The dead woman’s daughter gets pushed down a well into the
tunnel and is hospitalized with a coma for years. The bully who was sweet on her goes over the
edge and becomes a prime suspect for a murder in the present-day narrative, a
suspect pursued by a former classmate whom he cut with a knife, when they were
younger, after Arié, the dead woman’s daughter, was injured. And the links between the present and the
past – like strands of webbing hidden in the harsh light of a summer’s day –
intertwine more sharply, as the narrative pushes forward. Tangential stories, subplots that appear, on
the surface, to be off-hand remarks used to explain away a teacher’s injury
(Miss Sakaki and the bandages around her head and one eye) or to merely flesh
out another character, all come back around to impact the narrative with an
importance thought to be lacking in the initial revelation.
Like a David Lynch film, plot threads revolve around one
another, like mists on a cold Halloween night, closing in on clarity, only to
pull away at the last minute. It leaves
a reader (or it left me, at least) feeling as if one had managed to glimpse the
answer from the corner of one’s vision, only to find it gone once one turns
toward it. Throughout it all the images
of butterflies hovers at the fringes of the narrative, a metaphor of the
fragility of life and its transformational nature, evidenced by characters we perceive
in one way, only to have them veer off in chillingly unexpected directions,
making choices that affect others in permanent and devastating ways. And, in the end, Nijigahara Holograph
wends its way through a magical realistic climax – if it can be called a proper
climax – that is terribly satisfying, while also offering more questions – questions
that feel as if they might be answered with subsequent readings.
I should also note that the art by Asano is intricate
without being claustrophobic. The inkwork is very precise and the use of
shading throughout enhances the mood of this book. But scenes and images and figures never feel
cluttered – it all feels “just right.”
And the art is beautiful. At
times, photographs are used (or appear to be used) as backgrounds, with the
figures and other ancillary aspects drawn over these filtered images. The first time I encountered this technique,
it was a bit jarring, but as I moved through the book, I became accustomed to
it and, since it was used only sparingly, found that it worked quite well and
even added to the overall feel of the book.
If you enjoy manga, or you just enjoy good comics – the more
quirky and offbeat the better – and are not easily offended (because there are scenes
in here that are unsettling, for the violence or the sexual tension involved),
then I cannot recommend Nijigahara Holograph enough. It’s a fairly quick read, for a 300-page
graphic novel, but a book that would certainly be rewarded with multiple
re-reads. Check it out here, from
Fantagraphics.
