Emanon vol. 4

It’s been a few years, but Dark Horse has delivered the follow-up, and possibly concluding chapter, to mangaka Kenji Tsuruta’s adaptation of writer Shinji Kajio’s stories.  After a brief interlude in 1980, the first arc in the volume picks up in 1988 with the title character, who has the knowledge of all of her past lives going back to the start of life on Earth, now in high school.  She’s thinking about moving on from her current family situation, but before she can do that she has to deal with the rude introduction of a possible superhuman who declares that she’s going to be his wife.  The next arc is in 1990, when Emanon has to deal with the death of someone who is possibly her only friend.  It won’t be the last time she sees her, though, because this friend is a time traveler.

There is a lot of putting the cart before the horse with these stories.  I say this because they assume that we’re so thoroughly invested in Emanon’s adventures that anything out of the ordinary which happens to her will automatically be of interest to us.  Aside from the fact that she really hasn’t had anything that interesting happen to her over the course of the series, these two arcs don’t make a good case for justifying their existence.  The boy who states he’s going to marry Emanon is barely a character himself, and the same goes for her time-traveling friend.  They’re only distinguished by their sci-fi characteristics and not any distinct personality traits of their own.  Not helping matters is the fact that it’s unclear if their storylines will ever be followed up on given that no future volumes of this series have been published in Japan yet.

Tsuruta’s art still remains lovely to look at as ever.  His color work is downright gorgeous, while his black-and-white style is always appealing in the detail it conveys, both on a technical level and emotionally as well.  Yet it’s all in service of a couple of stories which believe they’re more important than they actually are.  I’ve continued to buy this series to support the idea of getting more offbeat manga from the publisher that’s aimed at an older reader and doesn’t depend on a popular license to sell it.  If this is the final volume of the series I’m REALLY GLAD that I can finally lay down this burden and find another title to lend my support to instead.