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Wandering Son Book 1 Shimura Takako Matt Thorn Books

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Wandering Son Book 1 Shimura Takako Matt Thorn Books

This is a wonderful edition, with large clearly printed pages, including almost all the color pages that appear in the Japanese edition. The translation and localization is nicely done. (As the afterward makes clear, this is a particularly difficult series to translate because gender is quite different between Japanese and English, and gender is what this series is all about.)

Wandering Son is a very gentle story, with no politics and no drum to beat. What Shimura Takako does best is to convey the emotional turmoil of people who are dealing with being, and especially just realizing that they are, different in a way that is going to cause trouble, one way or another. If you've been in such a place, this may be something of an emotional roller coaster, but it's a good ride.


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Wandering Son Book 1 Shimura Takako Matt Thorn Books Reviews

A friend of mine told me about this series, and as a transgender woman myself, I found the book very hard to put down. Disclaimer if you have experienced any sort of fear in how other people would react to your gender identity, this book will trigger you, but it is also heartwarming. As an anime fan, it's nice to see trans representation, and the art work is beautiful. This was my first hard cover manga, which I think is a nice touch, and I plan to collect the whole series and recommend to my friends.
Very nice vol 1, I really love the hardcover very smooth and nice! The book is bigger then I thought. Nice story so far and good characters seems very realistic to me. All in all will buy more volumes^^
I was eager to read this classic, and it doesn't disappoint. The story is sweet without being saccharine or unrealistic. The art is spare; in fact, early on I had to read slowly to keep track of characters and time jumps, but I found the rhythm and familiarity I needed to get immersed. This is excellent storytelling that deserves much wider familiarity.
I'm going to separate this review into two sections, making it a little more organized and easy to follow.

Book The book as a product itself is absolutely flawless. Heavy hardcover with a brilliant cover, as well as a few colored panels at the beginning. I am an avid reader of manga and own several series worth of books and I can say that this by far is the best looking, feeling, and reading book I've ever owned.

Story The story is, for lack of a better word, brilliant. Shimura Takako is tackling a very real, but sensitive issue here, and manages to do so with ease. With the characters being so young, one can imagine how tough it is to capture the mindset and inner feelings of each person, however the reader easily finds them likeable and relatable. Shuichi, the main character is absolutely adorable, possibly the cutest of all male characters in manga history, and I find myself falling more and more in love with him as I turn the pages. His counterpart, Takatsuki, is strong, courageous, and handsome, just the opposite of Shu. Together they combine with some supporting characters to set up the beginning of what will truly be a wonderful story.

I really cannot recommend this enough.
Nitori Shuichi has always been an effeminate boy. When he transfers schools in the fifth grade, he meets Takatsuki Yoshino, a girl who looks more like a boy. The two end up in the same group for a project, and they become friends. But when Takatsuki starts giving dresses she doesn't want to Nitori to give to his sister, he finds that he'd rather wear them himself. Even the girls in his project group say that dresses would look good on him. One day, when he's home alone, he tries on a dress and a headband and discovers that he really likes how he looks as a girl. Meanwhile, Takatsuki keeps rejecting the girly fashions her mother buys her, preferring boyish clothes and haircuts. She is open about her preferences, but Nitori knows that boys who dress like girls are not accepted the way girls who dress like boys are. But their classmate Saori knows about Nitori's secret and likes seeing Nitori as a girl. A blunt, seemingly mannerless girl who does what she wants, Saori suggests putting on a play where the boys play girls and the girls play boys for the 6th grade farewell ceremony. Nitori is excited when he finds out that he'll get to wear dresses, but what would his classmates think if they knew he was enjoying it so much?

A manga about crossdressing fifth graders sounds like a terrible idea, but Shimura Takako's "Wandering Son" is a gentle, sensative portrayal of two children finding their identities at an already awkward age. Actually, it's more than that. Shimura takes time to develop other characters and their struggles as well, so it's also a story about childhood and growing up. Saori is a strange girl who doesn't get along very well with others, but she secretly struggles with herself, feeling like she's a bad person. Nitori's sister, Maho, seems like a mean girl at first, but she's going through her own changes, and is confused and embarrassed by her brother's behavior. Nitori himself is sensative and sweet, while Takatsuki is more headstrong. All of them are sympathetic, and think and behave so realistically for their ages.

The story is sort of slice of life and follows the characters as they go about school and play. It jumps around at times, and there were a couple of sequences that didn't seem to have much purpose (such as when Maho gets in a bike accident with a teacher). Still, the story is interesting enough and brings out the character's personalities well. I especially like the part where Nitori and Takatsuki go to a faraway town together, cross-dressed. I really appreciate that the story is never preachy. You never get the sense that it's trying to teach you a lesson. Instead, it's a strait-forward story about two children who like to cross-dress and the difficulties they face. The characters are sympathetic, and this promotes understanding much better than a message story would.

I love the artwork in "Wandering Son." It's simple, but it's also gentle and warm. Despite what Shimura says about her own work, the characters are all easily distinguishable. They're also very emotive, which is very important to me when reading manga.

Fantasmagraphics Books (which previously published Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories) has done a really bang up job with the publication. The translation is great and retains much of the nuance of the original dialogue, and it reads right to left to preserve the artwork. The book is hardcover with the color pages from the original Japanese version included. The paper is nice and thick, and the binding is strong. There's also an essay in the back by the translator, Matt Thorn, about gender and the use of honorifics in Japanese. This will be informative for those not familiar with the language, and even students of Japanese might learn a thing or two. The only thing I don't like about this publication is the glaring omission of translation notes. This is a manga with a wider appeal than most, and there are sure to be plenty of people who don't know what things like the Takarazuka Revue and "The Rose of Versailles" are (they are a musical theatre of all women with bright, flashy costumes based in the city of Takarazuka and Takarazuka play based on a famous girls' manga about a female guard of Marie Antoinette's, respectively). Some notes on what foods mentioned in the manga are would also have been nice, but aren't as necessary to understanding.

"Wandering Son" is a beautiful coming of age story about developing your identity and the difficulties therein. It's more literary than most manga and ought to have a broader appeal. It's really meant for adults, but I think children will also be able to relate to it and appreciate it, especially those who have trouble fitting in with their peers. Recommended for anyone who's ever lived through puberty.
I believe this is the first Fantagraphics Books graphic novel I've bought, but it most certainly won't be the last anymore. This is one of the highest-quality comics I have in my collection; everything from the binding to the page quality is fantastic. And to do that for a manga, a medium that generally has extremely sub-par paperback releases, is something worth commending them for.

As for the comic itself, Wandering Son is an amazing manga. This first volume doesn't get too heavy into the story just yet, but it establishes the characters very well and is able to portray the two protagonists' problems with their genders extremely effectively, without hitting the point too bluntly other stories of the same nature tend to do. Takako is very good at communicating story points without spelling them out, but also without being too subtle as to confuse the reader.
This is a wonderful edition, with large clearly printed pages, including almost all the color pages that appear in the Japanese edition. The translation and localization is nicely done. (As the afterward makes clear, this is a particularly difficult series to translate because gender is quite different between Japanese and English, and gender is what this series is all about.)

Wandering Son is a very gentle story, with no politics and no drum to beat. What Shimura Takako does best is to convey the emotional turmoil of people who are dealing with being, and especially just realizing that they are, different in a way that is going to cause trouble, one way or another. If you've been in such a place, this may be something of an emotional roller coaster, but it's a good ride.