Chad Nelson reviewed A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Review of 'A Drifting Life' on Goodreads
4 stars
A thinly veiled auto-biographical memoir of Tatsumi's early career in manga, it was an interesting peek into the early history of the medium, but not always a compelling story.
I loved Tatsumi's collections of short stories, like The Push Man and Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and expected the same kind of unsettling but human storytelling here, yet found something a bit more prosaic. He devotes himself to making manga, and that means having his boss check up on him hitting deadlines, financial strain creating interpersonal strife among friends, and constant talk about which kind of manga sells best. It is a story about growing up into an industry, a business, not really an art form.
While Hiroshi is often pushing himself towards "manga that is not manga" we never really see him achieve it because he is held back by everyday concerns of making enough money to print the …
A thinly veiled auto-biographical memoir of Tatsumi's early career in manga, it was an interesting peek into the early history of the medium, but not always a compelling story.
I loved Tatsumi's collections of short stories, like The Push Man and Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and expected the same kind of unsettling but human storytelling here, yet found something a bit more prosaic. He devotes himself to making manga, and that means having his boss check up on him hitting deadlines, financial strain creating interpersonal strife among friends, and constant talk about which kind of manga sells best. It is a story about growing up into an industry, a business, not really an art form.
While Hiroshi is often pushing himself towards "manga that is not manga" we never really see him achieve it because he is held back by everyday concerns of making enough money to print the next issue. There are flashes of future brilliance throughout, but Hiroshi never really makes the breakthrough he keeps hoping for. Nonetheless, the story is fascinating, charting the rapid changes in the manga industry during post World War 2 era Japan.