Boat Lifereturns in Volume 2, with novelist Tsuda Kenta continuing to meander between home life, the family jeans shop, and days of solitude on the river. Among thisgraphic novel’s colorful cast of friends, we meet a former manga artist who dives for curiously-shaped stones and sells them from a riverside hut, and an eagerproducer intent on a film adaptation of one of Tsuda’s novels. Unfortunately, Tsuda’s health is deteriorating. He learns from the doctor that his liver was damaged by working at a blood bank when he was young. But Kenta continues his dream boat life, while obsessed by an enormous fish. Don’t miss the raucous night of Tsuda and his buddies boozing at a local temple. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more honest account in comics of how Japanese felt about life during and after WorldWar II. While fans ofTrash MarketandSlum Wolfwill enjoy this late-career elaboration of apres-guerre themes Tsuge has been exploring since his debut in the legendary alt-manga magazineGaroin the late 1960s, fans of his brother Tsuge Yoshiharu’sThe Man Without Talentwill appreciate the more relaxed and optimistic take on middle-aged reclusion and the grind of work and family.
