Manga Review: Solanin

[Jason]

Title: Solanin
Mangaka: Asano Inio
Genre: Seinen
Scanlator: Entropy
Ran in: Young Sunday (Shogakukan)
Vintage: 2005

Solanin is about the lives of two young people in Tokyo, trying to make their way between surviving and reaching for their dreams. Inoue Meiko is working as an OL, living with her boyfriend, Taneda, who has a part-time job and a band that never performs.

While Solanin was only two volumes long, it was quite literally epic in scope. Not "epic" in the way everyone misuses the term, but in a literary sense. A protagonist descends into darkness, fights demons and eventually wins a new place for herself and her people. It's the story for this generation. The generation who was brought up with dreams and high expectations but who've had to submit to soul-crushing jobs and been humiliated into calling their passions "only a hobby".

Like this generation, from the outside, Meiko and Taneda and their friends look like a bunch of losers that Big Cities all over the world chew up and spit out every day. But they have passion and love -- instead of the expected disaffected, disillusioned relationship between the two lovers, when it comes right down to the wire, they know that they love each other. Asano-sensei knows that without love dreams mean nothing, and that "freedom without purpose feels a lot like boredom." Meiko wants to be free, like the rest of her generation. But free for what? To do what? She doesn't know...at first.

Entropy is a very large scanlation group and this can, at times, lend some uneveness to their output. Not in this case. Their best people have worked on Solanin and it showed. The translation shows a delicate touch for nuance and the editing was consistently top-notch. Some chapters seemed slightly over-leveled, but I suspect this was due to using magazine raws, which are difficult to level well in the same way that Everest is difficult to climb.

Entropy's catalogue is simply huge, but it's well-worth the browse, especially for gems like Solanin.

Reviewer: Eric Turner
Proofer: Eduardo Menendez
Editor: Jason Punda