A Distant Neighborhood (遥かな町へ) is a slice of life drama by Taniguchi Jiro. The manga was originally published between 1998 and 1999 and was compiled into 2 tankoubon.
Hiroshi lives a moderately satisfying salaryman's life. He works hard, has a devoted wife and two daughters on the cusp of adulthood. But something nags at him as he goes through the motions of life. After a night of heavy drinking he ends up on the wrong train on his way to a meeting. He finds himself back at his childhood town. To waste some time he visits his mothers grave where he begins to reflect on her difficult life following his fathers sudden disappearance. Something overcomes him and the next thin he knows he is back in his 14 year old body, living in 1963.
Suddenly having the body of a 14 year old and the mind and experiences of a 48 year old can be beneficial but Hiroshi has to be careful with what he says and does. He has somehow traveled back in time to occupy his past self. It would be close to impossible to convince anyone of what was going on but his personality and experiences are too far removed to be able to truly pretend to be his teenager self. Once he accepts the fact that he is stuck back in time he decides that he will do everything he can to prevent his father from leaving. Unfortunately he seems to be altering his past little by little and he is uncertain, if he can return to his rightful time, if the life he had been taking for granted will be there for him.
I am a sucker for good time travel stories and this is a pretty good one. The characters are well developed and Hiroshi's dilemma and concerns are easily relatable. Revisiting the past and altering things, correcting mistakes, is a universal desire. What would it be like for you to revisit your past life with the experience and knowledge you have gained? How would you do things differently and what would you be able to ultimately change? I appreciated the fact that Hiroshi was not overly occupied with maintaining the past as it was. He was at first enjoying his new found vitality, reliving past experiences and building new ones. Eventually the concern for correcting the one thing in his past that he regretted the most started to take form and he focused on how to change it. It wasn't like some time travel stories where the characters focus is so much on preserving the past of the search to undo their situation. Instead if focused on Hiroshi going with the flow and accidentally/intentionally tweaking it a little. There was no grand search for a return to his present, only concern for how he could correct this one thing.
Taniguchi, having grown up in the post war years, may have used this as a little bit of his own personal life fantasy. There is a chance that part of him was displayed in Hiroshi and his life as a child. Given what group of artists he is part of the artwork is classic in character design and layout, very different from modern manga or even manga from the 90's. The style, while intentionally his own, does well with the type and era of the story. I can't think of a better way to present it, even if it isn't the prettiest looking artwork, especially when compared with some of the top names of the current generation. It is simple, realistic and nostalgic.
The manga has been available in English for a while now through Ponent Mon who just released a large single volume version of the manga. Definitely worth picking up.
Hiroshi lives a moderately satisfying salaryman's life. He works hard, has a devoted wife and two daughters on the cusp of adulthood. But something nags at him as he goes through the motions of life. After a night of heavy drinking he ends up on the wrong train on his way to a meeting. He finds himself back at his childhood town. To waste some time he visits his mothers grave where he begins to reflect on her difficult life following his fathers sudden disappearance. Something overcomes him and the next thin he knows he is back in his 14 year old body, living in 1963.
Suddenly having the body of a 14 year old and the mind and experiences of a 48 year old can be beneficial but Hiroshi has to be careful with what he says and does. He has somehow traveled back in time to occupy his past self. It would be close to impossible to convince anyone of what was going on but his personality and experiences are too far removed to be able to truly pretend to be his teenager self. Once he accepts the fact that he is stuck back in time he decides that he will do everything he can to prevent his father from leaving. Unfortunately he seems to be altering his past little by little and he is uncertain, if he can return to his rightful time, if the life he had been taking for granted will be there for him.
I am a sucker for good time travel stories and this is a pretty good one. The characters are well developed and Hiroshi's dilemma and concerns are easily relatable. Revisiting the past and altering things, correcting mistakes, is a universal desire. What would it be like for you to revisit your past life with the experience and knowledge you have gained? How would you do things differently and what would you be able to ultimately change? I appreciated the fact that Hiroshi was not overly occupied with maintaining the past as it was. He was at first enjoying his new found vitality, reliving past experiences and building new ones. Eventually the concern for correcting the one thing in his past that he regretted the most started to take form and he focused on how to change it. It wasn't like some time travel stories where the characters focus is so much on preserving the past of the search to undo their situation. Instead if focused on Hiroshi going with the flow and accidentally/intentionally tweaking it a little. There was no grand search for a return to his present, only concern for how he could correct this one thing.
Taniguchi, having grown up in the post war years, may have used this as a little bit of his own personal life fantasy. There is a chance that part of him was displayed in Hiroshi and his life as a child. Given what group of artists he is part of the artwork is classic in character design and layout, very different from modern manga or even manga from the 90's. The style, while intentionally his own, does well with the type and era of the story. I can't think of a better way to present it, even if it isn't the prettiest looking artwork, especially when compared with some of the top names of the current generation. It is simple, realistic and nostalgic.
The manga has been available in English for a while now through Ponent Mon who just released a large single volume version of the manga. Definitely worth picking up.
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