A Drifting Life (劇ç"»æ¼‚æµ, Gekiga HyÅryÅ«) is an autobiographical Japanese manga written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and chronicles his life from 1945 to 1960 when he began submitting and publishing manga. It was released in Japan as two bound volumes on November 20, 2008. It is licensed in North America by Drawn and Quarterly and was released as a wide-ban volume in April 2009. The work has been adapted into an animated feature film, Tatsumi, directed by Eric Khoo and released in 2011.
Reception
A Drifting Life has won the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2009. It was nominated for three categories for the Eisner Award: Best Reality-Based Work, Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Asia and Best Lettering for comics creator Adrian Tomine. It won two Eisner Awards in 2010: Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Asia category and Best Reality-Based Work of the year. In a spate of About.com online user polls in 2009, it was voted 7th most recommended manga for grown, ups. 11th most anticipated manga, 6th best new seinen/josei manga, 3rd best one-shot manga and best new edition of classic manga. Shaenon K. Garrity votes A Drifting Life as the 10th best defining manga. It won an award at the 2012 Angoulême International Comics Festival.
Anime News Network's Casey Brienza commends the manga for "a magnificent presentation, well told and wonderfully illustrated, of an important historical document" but criticises it for "the specialized subject matter may not appeal to readers who do not share similar, specialized interests". New York Times's Dwight Garner commends Tatsumi's art saying "is more sophisticated, retaining the form’s strange sparkle even at gloomy moments; he definitely does write manga that isn’t quite manga. The genre can be a difficult one in which to portray aging. Mr. Tatsumi looks just about the same here at ages 10 and 25". he further comments "a book like A Drifting Life is fairly easy to pick apart on a drawing-by-drawing or line-by-line basis. Don’t make that mistake. Its pleasures are cumulative; the book has a rolling, rumbling grandeur. It’s as if someone had taken a Haruki Murakami novel and drawn, beautifully and comprehensively, in its margins". Manga Worth Reading's Johanna Draper Carlson criticises the manga saying, "I was also sometimes uncertain as to the depth of the emotion the lead character was feeling. The obvious reactions were there â€" determination, for example, to finish a work for a publisher â€" but the more subtler feelings were missing". Comics212's Christopher Butcher comments "At its heart A Drifting Life is a memoir, filled with a density of details to give it a setting and place that will be immediately familiar to Japanese readers of the last generation but that will largely evade North American ones. This is not a bad thing, if anything the unfamiliarity of the time and place of this story will add to the experience of the lead drifting through his life, tied only to the comic that I hope you’ll be holding in your hands". Comic Book Resources's Chris Mautner commends the manga for its "basic bildungsroman qualities. At its heart, A Drifting Life is the simple story of a young man discovering his talent and by extension his place in the world. It’s told in as direct and plain a manner as possible, but still full of energy and passion".
References
External links
- Drawn and Quarterly
- LA Times's 3 page review
- About.com's 5 page interview with Tatsumi
- Paul Gravett's article
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