Acqua - Pianeta by 結布

Warning: cover aside, the images in this review are NOT of the actual reviewed item. There are none online, and the volume is so tightly bound scanning or photographing would actually require tearing it apart. So, yeah, enjoy some unrelated eye candy!

Lately I've been trying to shift more of my (meagre) Japanese practice into actual reading and listening. NHK takes care of the former (everything still pretty much sounds like a jumble of 'u' sounds), while the former is mostly done through manga, though I've begun to tackle bits and pieces of novels here and there.

One of the best manga I have read in its original language so far is Acqua-Pianeta (awesome Itarian title by the way) by 結布, of who I had read before the excellent ゆかりちゃん, though this time around Yuu is in charge of the story, as well as the artwork.

I admit that most of my reasons to like Acqua-Pianeta boil down to the fact that I simply love slice of life, nothing-happens postapocalyptic (is eupostapocapyptic actually a word, or just an oxymoron?) stories in the vein of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, and that's pretty much a requirement for enjoying Yu's single volume story of people stranded on a flooded, yet surprisingly peaceful future Earth: if you expect things to actually happen, you're out of luck. The biggest adventure our girls face - yes, all of the co-protagonists are girls - is finding an old sign pointing to a long collapsed Tokyo Sky Tree. The rest of the time they go to school, fish, attend some singing practice, et cetera. The backstory on what happened to Earth is barely touched upon - apparently most of people have moved to Mars - but, honestly, that's not really the point of this manga to begin with, so all's forgiven.

The artwork, on the other hand, is all but ordinary. In full color, Yu has a painterly style that is nothing short of amazing: landscapes are rendered in a technique that almost borders into watercolors, and the anatomy and layout of each scene is invariably spot-on. She has a special flair for spanning, full -page scenes that do away with frames, letting the manga approach illustration territory.

So yes, very good stuff. I understand her most recent work is some kind of Yami no Moribito adapatation, which I'll be sure to pick up as I really enjoyed the novels too.