In Clothes Called Fat
I thought that “Insufficient Direction,” Moyoco Anno’s “essay manga” of her life with husband Hideaki Anno, was pretty enjoyable for what it was. This is actually an atypical reaction compared to the previous manga I’ve read from her. Titles like “Happy Mania,” “Flowers and Bees,” and “Sakuran” left me cold and not feeling much for their main characters. A mild exception was her magical girl series “Sugar Sugar Rune” which I was content to borrow from a friend, but didn’t find compelling enough to buy it on my own. However, she remains a defining figure in the josei — read: women’s — manga landscape and Vertical has picked up the torch for publishing her work in English for the time being. This is a good thing as “In Clothes Called Fat” is the most compelling work I’ve read from her, even as it comes off as a fairly unsettling experience.
Noko is an overweight office lady whose interior monologue really sets the tone for the series. “I’m fine if I’m eating. If I can eat I’ll be okay. Even if a whole bunch of bad things happen to me.” This isn’t what you would call subtle foreshadowing as we see how her fellow co-workers deride Noko behind her back, her boyfriend is cheating on her with the worst of them, and she just can’t get her eating under control. Noko feels that the only thing standing the way between herself and happiness is the flab on her body and after an encounter with an elderly gentleman nets her an unexpected windfall she thinks she has the means to finally become the thin, beautiful, well-liked person she always knew she could be.
As you can probably guess, things get even worse from there. That’s because if “In Clothes Called Fat” is nothing else, it’s a tragedy. It’s made very clear early on that Noko’s binge eating is a coping mechanism for the abuse heaped upon her by the outside world. She can lose all the weight she wants (and she does… she really does…) but she’s not going to be happy unless she can change her mindset and learn to be happy with herself however much she weighs.
It’s this tension between the reader knowing what Noko needs to do and seeing what she actually does that makes the book a compelling read, if a very uncomfortable one. I think we can all say that we’ve known someone like the protagonist, or even been her at (hopefully just) one point, and Anno’s depiction of her desperation rings true. That truthfulness keeps the story from becoming a boring, depressing litany of pain and a fascinating character study as Noko’s refusal to realize what she needs to do leads her down some dangerous and disturbing roads.
Anno spares no pity for her main character, or the people around her. Saito, Noko’s boyfriend, isn’t just a cheat, he’s also a simpering mama’s boy who is only in a long-term relationship because he wants to feel needed. His would-be dominatrix-type girlfriend Mayumi defines her life by how bad she can make Noko’s and, after the longest while, winds up paying for it in the end. Then you’ve got Tabata, the office’s resident weirdo, who thinks she can objectively make everyone adhere to the written rules of society, but keeps getting tripped up by the unspoken ones. They’re not as well developed as Noko, which is no surprise considering she defines their entire existences in this story. It’s also fairly telling about her own personal state that she winds up spending more time with these characters than anyone else in this volume. There are people with their heads on straight that try to point Noko in the right direction with their efforts being rewarded by disbelief or stubbornness.
While I do think that Anno does a good job of telling the story she wants to tell, there are a couple parts that don’t quite fit with the rest of the narrative. At one point Noko gets demoted down to “the basement” with all of the company’s other losers, and it’s a very dark and dirty place. Too dark and dirty for a book that takes place in an approximation of our reality. It’s too Kafka-esque for its own good, and Anno would’ve been better advised to have ditched it or taken it as a jumping off point for even more surrealism. A concept which I find both appealing and frightening in equal measure.
Then there’s the epilogue which is quite awkwardly placed in terms of its connection to the rest of the story. The “final chapter” has a time jump of six months to show us what became of Noko and it’s surprisingly upbeat considering what came before. Reading the epilogue, you get the feeling that Anno was dissatisfied with that ending and felt compelled to deliver something more in line with the tone of the narrative. For as awkwardly as it’s wedged into the story, it actually works so long as you can wrap your head around where it’s meant to be in the story’s continuity.
Even though the story can be difficult to take in for all of the emotional honesty Anno invests into the narrative, I didn’t want to put this down while I was reading it. “In Clothes Called Fat” is a scalding social critique that represents the best thing I’ve read from Anno in English. If you’re not already a fan and wondering if this volume is for you, there’s an easy way to figure that out. Take a look at the cover. If that striking and disturbing image tells you to “Stay Away!” then do just that. However, if you want to know what kind of story would foster such an image, then go and add it to your library now.
