Boku wa Mondai Arimasen

Someone once said the reason we enjoy reading stories is because, unlike real life, stories have endings. This is perhaps why I finished「Boku wa Mondai Arimasen」feeling unsettled - its 7 odd, surrealistic one-shots (the final story is split into two parts) left more loose ends than satisfactory closures. Having read Miyazaki's other collection,「Yume kara Sameta Ano Ko to wa Kitto Umaku Shaberenai」, though, I find this one more accessible by comparison, its overall tone more hopeful, if not exactly optimistic. It's illustrated in the same artistic style - glassy-eyed doll-like figures, male characters often odd-looking, the younger ones confusingly effeminate in appearance, buildings and landscapescarrying a hint of mecha/steampunk influence, climatic scenes dissolving into a sketchy or watery mess - and set in the same dream-like, isolating world. Imagine the happenings of a Raymond Carver story taking place in a Borgesian setting - that's more or less the vibe of this manga. The stories are loosely threaded together by few common themes: the over-protectiveness of loved ones, the longing for a human connection, the conflict between inner desire and outside expectations, etc. There's a fragile beauty in the narration that treads the fine fine line between normality and lunacy, solitude and romance, captivity and freedom. At times enigmatic, often unexpected, and always poignant - much like the human experience itself. This is a sobering read, worth reflecting upon beyond the last page, that will make you sadder but wiser.