Jar's (hopefully weekly) Review

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Review 2: Palepoli by Usumaru Furuya

I'm finally back (strangely I've been able to mantain my writing schedule and I'm posting this 1 week after the previous review) and I'm talking, again, about Furuya's mangas. I have to be honest: I haven't read a lot of stuff by Furuya, but some of his works are extremely well made and I absolutely recommend you to read them! I finished Palepoli two weeks ago and I really enjoyed the format of the manga: it doesn't follow a single storyline, but it's a collection of different stories that gradually progress together (every "chapter" contains various yonkoma -4 panels short stories- with different storylines and characters from different yonkoma interact with eachother during the progression of the book). I've probably explained this very badly, sorry lol. Anyways, the comic strips mostly discuss themes such as religion or social/institutional/juridical issues, while some of them are actually just intelligently displayed meta-yonkama (4th wall breaking kinda stuff, y'know). There are LOTS of pop culture references and, gotta be honest, I didn't get some of them (especially the ones from Japanese songs or cartoons). My favourite parts of the collection were the Takashi ones: they're about a child called Takashi that tries to discover the world; the ending panel always shows Takashi's mother telling him to hurry up because he's getting distracted: I really liked this, because it kinda resembles my own experience with the discorvery of life. I think society (which Takashi's mother is an allegory of) forces individuals to a very sudden and fast growth: "immaturity" and childlike behaviours are often stigmatised, even in literal kids. I've always believed that an attitude towards life that doesn't encourage distracting and "wasting time" is inhuman: it's simply impossible, at least for me, to live without the joy of not having a purpose, just discovering things and wandering around. Idk if this makes sense and, again, I can't fucking speak English, but you get what I'm saying, right? I totally recommend Palepoli, go check it out! :)

Rating (out of 5):