Yukiko’s Spinach by Frédéric Boilet
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is a manga recommended by Daphne a million and a half years ago. I read it in one single-hour sitting on my Kindle, surrounded by unknown Bulgarians in a hotel in Sandanski. They were sleeping in different beds.
I’ll be brief and to-the-point: this was self-reference taken to the extreme. I like it when artists play around with these things, when they break the fourth wall, for example, or whatever the equivalent for texts might be – I’m not feeling creative enough to come up with something better than the incredibly lame “burning the press” – but Monsieur Boilet went over the top. You did, Frédéric. I admit: it was interesting in a way, but in the end I couldn’t help but get the feeling that, were the veneer of pretentious self-reference, such as the sketches, supposedly the inspiration of this comic book, to be removed, there would be nothing left.
No. There would be something left: the small details that made me want to visit Japan (yawn, right?); the cute observations the artist made of Yukiko and masterfully put onto paper, most memorably the mole on her face that reminded him of the geography of some islands in the Pacific the name of which escapes me right now, and its art style, which had me wondering all along: “How did the guy actually make this? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” The answer came at the end as part of the story itself. Or did it?
And to think I usually like this kind of stories… Alas: while reading it, I made the shuddering realisation that, if I chose to write a story or make a comic about something that took place in my own life, a few years ago or maybe even today I might have chosen this oh-so-mysterious-I-wonder-what-really-happened! style of self-reference. *looks around uncomfortably*
But seriously: this looked amazing on the Kindle (see above). Even though I didn’t enjoy the story so much, I would still recommend checking it out if you have one.
