On his final day as an editor, Shiozawa takes a train he’s ridden hundreds of times to impart some last advice to a manga creator whose work he used to edit. Later, he is drawn to return to a bookshop at the request of a junior editor who wants his help dealing with an incorrigible manga creator who used to be edited by Shiozawa and now refuses to work with anyone else. For Shiozawa, Tokyo these days is full of memory and is cocooned in the inescapable bonds among manga creators, their editors, art, and life itself.
On his final day as an editor, Shiozawa takes a train he’s ridden hundreds of times to impart some last advice to a manga creator whose work he used to edit. Later, he is drawn to return to a bookshop at the request of a junior editor who wants his help dealing with an incorrigible manga creator who used to be edited by Shiozawa and now refuses to work with anyone else. For Shiozawa, Tokyo these days is full of memory and is cocooned in the inescapable bonds among manga creators, their editors, art, and life itself.
Shiozawa forges ahead with an independently published manga project. But the manga creators around him are crumbling into chaos—Chosaku drinks himself into ever less productivity over worries about his career and family, a longtime creator can’t discern the difference between fiction and fantasy, and Aoki disappears rather than face the deadlines for his new hit series. Sometimes, the simple pleasure of an apple is worth more than all the fame and toil of making manga.
Shiozawa forges ahead with an independently published manga project. But the manga creators around him are crumbling into chaos—Chosaku drinks himself into ever less productivity over worries about his career and family, a longtime creator can’t discern the difference between fiction and fantasy, and Aoki disappears rather than face the deadlines for his new hit series. Sometimes, the simple pleasure of an apple is worth more than all the fame and toil of making manga.
Believing in the future of manga while never forgetting its past, Shiozawa accompanies manga creators once again through their agony to create an ultimate manga project. Is there ever joy in creation?
Believing in the future of manga while never forgetting its past, Shiozawa accompanies manga creators once again through their agony to create an ultimate manga project. Is there ever joy in creation?