What adult hasn't looked back at their adolescence and thought, "Man, if I knew then what I know now...."? What would it be like to have a "do-over" for those awkward moments from the past?
Jiro Taniguchi answers this question in his mid-life crisis manga, A Distant Neighborhood, a two-volume series from Fanfare-Ponent Mon. Middle-aged businessman Hiroshi Nakahara finds himself back in his hometown thinking about his now deceased mother and his father, who left the family when Hiroshi was in middle school. In a blink of an eye, Hiroshi is transported back to the days when he was 14 with all of his adult memories and knowledge intact. Can he, should he try to change the past?
Since A Distant Neighborhood is a very special kind of seinen (men's) manga, I thought it'd be interesting to get a male point of view on this one. So today's guest reviewer is Kevin Church a.k.a. @BeaucoupKevin, comics creator, writer and raconteur extraordinaire. Read Kevin's review of A Distant Neighborhood Volumes 1 and 2 and see where he thinks Taniguchi got things right, and where he took a wrong turn or two.
If you haven't read some of Kevin's writing and his comics, you're sooo missin' out. Here's a little intro:
Kevin Church writes comics for print and the web. You can keep up with him on beaucoupkevin.com and agreeablecomics.com, the home of his comics The Rack, The Loneliest Astronauts and She Died in Terrebonne.
A Distant Neighborhood was my pick for the best new underappreciated gem of 2009. You can also get a peek at some pages from A Distant Neighborhood at Fanfare - Ponent Mon.
Image credit: © Jiro Taniguchi / SHOGAKUKAN
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