Downfall

I’ve been a fan of Inio Asano ever since “Solanin” was published in English.  The mangaka had an interesting perspective on the world that embraced humor, sadness, and surrealism as its characters navigated their post-college lives without proper direction.  His subsequent works that were published in English — “What A Wonderful World!,” “A Girl on the Shore,” “Nijigahara Holograph,” “Goodnight Punpun,” and “Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction” — all emphasized one of these feelings more than the other, or just amped up all three of them.  They’ve all been good, interesting reads, some of them more than others, and with fantastic art to support them all.

The reason I’m starting this review this way is because Asano has essentially been batting a thousand in my book.  Up to this point. “Downfall” is the first series from him that I haven’t liked or would recommend to others. It’s a morose, bitter story of manga which really feels like the mangaka is venting his own feelings about the industry.  Asano may very well mean what he says here, but he failed to find a way to make it more than sporadically interesting.

Kaoru Fukuzawa has just wrapped up his long-running series “Goodbye Sunset,” and the mood is supposed to be celebratory.  What with the wrap party being thrown and all. You wouldn’t know that from looking at the mangaka himself. Fukuzawa has the look of a man who is all burned out regarding his chosen profession.  Not to mention life itself.

That’s because manga was the man’s passion.  Emphasis on “was.” What we’re told about “Goodbye Sunset” is that it was one of those series that had a devoted following, but peaked sales-wise early on.  This lack of success doing something he (apparently) liked has given Fukuzawa a harshly cynical view towards the medium he once loved and an unsurprisingly bad case of writer’s block.

The man’s problems don’t end there, though.  His wife, Machida, is an editor who is managing a rising star whose series is selling well, and he’s resenting her for having less time for him as a result.  He also has assistants who he’s stringing along as he makes excuses to his editors about the new series he can’t come up with. To top it all off, Fukuzawa is also cheating on his wife with a random series of escorts.  Random, until he meets one named Chifuyu who finally gives him pause. That’s because she’s got the same cat eyes as the old girlfriend who saw through him a decade ago.

If you’re thinking that this might wind up being the kind of story where the hooker with a heart of gold winds up reigniting the spark of life in this hollow husk of a man, it won’t.  That being said, the one chapter where Fukuzawa accompanies Chifuyu back to her hometown is a welcome respite from the rest of the story. Mainly because it’s unlike anything else we’ll see before or after in it as the two drive, walk, and sleep across the town.  Their aimless conversations don’t reveal any deep truths about their character, but have a naturalness that’s appealing to them.

It certainly beats the relentless negativity of Fukuzawa’s moaning before and after this chapter.  That he’s depressed because of his situation is understandable, and at least explains his actions if it doesn’t excuse him from them.  The problem with his characterization, and the story itself, is how one-note and predictable they are. All of his gripes about the manga industry, such as how only sales matter and catering to fans is the way to make it, feel like lazy cheap shots rather than the sharp criticism that they’re meant as.  We see him searching through social media only to find the worst of humanity talking about him — save for that one diehard fan who genuinely loves his work. Then there are the interviews by an uncaring press…

Look, the plot of “Downfall” generally operates under the idea that anything that can go wrong for Fukuzawa will.  It reaches its apex towards the end when he’s having the argument with Machida that the series has been building to and he asks her to do something for him instead of the creator she’s working with.  She yells at him that she can’t because this creator sells more than he does.

What happens next isn’t rape.  It goes right up to that line and then lingers as unpleasantly as it can before dissolving into pure misery.  If that does not sound like something you can deal with, then you should avoid “Downfall” at all costs. If you can get past that, then things become a different, more interesting kind of awful.

It’s after the encounter with Machida that Fukuzawa has a revelation.  It’s one that leads him to become the best version of himself that he can be.  The problem is that this version is something of a monster. This new Fukuzawa is someone who has heard all of the old one’s complaints about the manga industry and went, “Ok, let’s do that!”

The weird thing is that he looks happier as a terrible person than he does at any other point in the series.  That he needed to embrace the worst parts of himself in order to find some kind of peace is a fascinating idea that I would’ve liked to have seen more of.  Whether or not Asano intended that to be the reaction readers had towards this new version of his protagonist is another question. He did miss his chance to have the story end on the most depressing note imaginable, however.  The idea that Fukuzawa has always been a monster actually makes a lot of sense given what we’ve seen of him up to this point.

Does it make reading through the slog of everything leading up to this — middle chapter excluded — worth it?  Doubtful, unless you’re already a fan of Asano. It’s still his weakest work by a long shot as everything surrounding the middle and ending is such a slog to get through.  Even wondering how much of Asano is reflected in Fukuzawa doesn’t add much to things; though, there are some interesting easter eggs regarding his assistant and the look of the manga by the mangaka Machida is editing.  So call “Downfall” an interesting failure in the end. Unless Asano goes back to show us what Fukuzawa does next. In which case it’s a troubled but promising start! At best, anyway…