A few years ago, Viz Media published Inio Asano's manga Solanin and What a Wonderful World to great critical acclaim. Set in present-day Tokyo, they show the lives of twentysomethings trying to navigate their place in the world.
Now Fantagraphics Books has announced it will publish another Asano manga, Nijigahara Holograph, but it's not a slice-of-life manga; it's a horror story. Matt Thorn, who has translated the other Fantagraphics manga titles, including Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories and Shimura Takako's Wandering Son, will translate this one as well. The story is complete in a single, 200-page hardcover volume, which will retail for $26.99. Here's what Fantagraphics President and Co-Publisher Gary Groth has to say about the book:
Inio Asano's Nijigahara Holograph is both a departure from and entirely consistent with our growing line of manga graphic novels. It is considerably and consistently darker than either Moto Hagio's or Shimura Takako's work, using a much more deliberately involuted literary structure, but it's also in keeping with our editorial imperative to publish unique artistic voices. We're proud to make this landmark work available to an American readership.
As it happens, Shaenon Garrity just wrote a column about Asano's manga; here's her take on Nijigahara Holograph:
Asano blends character studies of directionless young adults with shocking violence, supernatural horror, time travel, and the end of the world, creating a work that's sort of half Magnolia, half Donnie Darko, with a splash of Stephen King.
Solicitation text and sample artwork can be found below:
A DECADE-SPANNING JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS
Fantagraphics is proud to welcome the great Inio Asano (Solanin, What a Wonderful World!) to its acclaimed literary manga line next to Moto Hagio (A Drunken Dream, The Heart of Thomas) and Shimura Takako (Wandering Son).
Even as butterflies ominously proliferate in town, the rumor of a mysterious creature lurking in the tunnel behind the school spreads among the children. When the body of Arié Kimura’s mother is found by this tunnel’s entrance, next to apparently human traces, the legend seems to be confirmed. Is the end of the world coming? In order to appease the wrath of the beast, the children decide to offer it a sacrifice: The unfortunate Arié, whom they believe to be the cause of the curse, is shoved into a well that leads to the Nijigahara tunnel — an act that in turns pushes Komatsuzaki, the budding thug who has carried a torch for Arié for a while already, entirely over the edge.
But this is only the beginning of the complex, challenging, obliquely told Nijigahara Holograph, which takes place in two separate timelines and involves the suicidal Suzuki; Higure, his stalkerish would-be girlfriend; and their teacher Miss Sakaki, whose heavily bandaged face remains a mystery; and many more — brothers, sisters, parents, co-workers, teach- ers, aggressors and victims who are all inextricably linked to one another and all will eventually — ten years later — have to live with what they’ve done or suffered through.
Asano, whose Solanin was nominated for the 2009 Eisner and Harvey comics awards (and which was made into a feature film in 2010), delves into disturbing territory with this Lynch-ian horror story, told in his unnervingly crisp and detailed panels.
INIO ASANO was born in 1980 in the Ibaraki Prefecture. The Japanese national Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper described him as one of the voices of his generation.
