We're trying to beef up the graphic novels section at Central. I consulted a friend, who is a far more avid reader of manga than I, on what titles we should have in the collection. He was adamant about the works of Yuichi Yokoyama, a growing contemporary Japanese figure in the world of art comics. I added them to the list and eventually a couple arrived on the shelf.
Travel's spare title and even more spare presentation caught my eye immediately. At first glance the book seems defiantly formalistic and reading through confirms these impressions. The book isn't so much a narrative as a guided tour through the particular feeling of traveling by train. However this train is far from ordinary.
On the one hand the book succeeds in recreating a feeling of constant movement. As it follows three unnamed characters though increasingly bizarre train cars, the panels move from detail to detail and the pages from car to car. The book builds a kind of physical momentum that is rare in comics.
On the other hand it is a reverie to Yokoyama's imaginative manufactured landscapes and spaces. The book is as much about these surreal architectural forms as anything else, and seems to be telling the reader that travel itself, with all its exhilarating movement and strange vistas, is perhaps more interesting than destination.
I loved it. And lucky for me, we have another of his books: Garden(my next post), and more on the way.
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