The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

Arakawa Under The Bridge

What's It About? 

Kou Ichinomiya has lived his life by his millionaire father's simple but grueling demand that he should never owe anyone anything. While following this maxim has allowed him to ascend the ranks of corporate Japan effortlessly, it's also left him absolutely uncertain what to do when his life is saved by Nino, a peculiar young woman who makes her home on a riverbank beneath a Tokyo bridge. Desperate to repay his debt and so escape the bizarre community of outcasts that have assembled beneath the bridge – including but not limited to a mayor dressed as a kappa; a scarred mercenary who poses as a Nun; and a moon-faced musicians who wears a star-shaped helmet – he agrees to help her fall in love. Now christened “Recruit” to mark his acceptance into this society of oddballs, Kou finds to his begrudging surprise that he may have a place in their midst, and that Nino may have a place in his heart.

Available for the first time in English courtesy of Vertical, this initial omnibus of Arakawa Under the Bridge collects the first two volumes of Hikaru Nakamura's fanfavorite comedy series and will retail for $17.95 when it lands on November 21st.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Austin Price

Rating: 3

A tag line in the midsection separating front and back halves of this omnibus declares Arakawa Under the Bridge a manga “for those with a big laugh and an inner sorrow.” While it's easy to dismiss it as just another joke given the exaggerated seriousness of its context and the generally wacky thrust of the series, it's also difficult to think there isn't a modicum of guarded honesty in that statement.

Arakawa is unabashedly absurd, yes, hailing from an era and a school of manga comedies that saw zany fare like Cromartie High School ascendant, but it also aspires to be a critique of major attitudes and philosophies in contemporary Japan. Kou is the quintessential corporate elitist: the scion to a captain of industry and a rising star himself, he sees human connections as a burden, potential debts to be repaid, and so has isolated himself from just about all interpersonal contact. To him the only things that matter are independence and the approval of his father– status is only a means to both ends – a philosophy that leads to some surprisingly introspective moments when thrown up against the interdependent nature of Nino and the denizens of mayor Kappa's riverbank commune. In one tender flashback it's revealed Kou never knew his mother, that his father considers her “the greatest mistake of his entire life.” In another it's revealed that the last time his father touched him it was to give him a bath (one he immediately forced his son to repay in kind).

Yet something about these scenes prevents them ever truly working. It's not that they feel unearned, necessarily, or absurd when juxtaposed against the sheer strangeness of happenings elsewhere. The problem is that they feel uncertain, as if they don't know whether they should be played entirely for laughs or for tears or if maybe there isn't a way these two elements might in fact complement each other to greater effect. And so the absurdist elements don't bolster the pain but undercut it.

Better are those moments where Nakamura uses her gift for comedy to demonstrate the limits of Kou's – and by association the larger culture's – meritocratic philosophy. The conceit that the riverbank looked totally blank to Kou from a distance and will only reveal what should have been obvious landmarks – a church, a farm, a garden – when he's more fully integrated into the society pays off brilliantly in a few instances. And although the members of the riverbank all depend heavily upon each other and could not exist on their lonesome, they are all of them far, far more interesting characters than Kou, whose devotion to his individualistic pursuits have left him an interchangeable cog, which lends their absurd appearances a pointed power.

Unfortunately, between these two fascinating poles falls a large amount of forgettable material that relies almost entirely on Kou denouncing loudly what is already so apparently strange to any reader or in jokes repeated again and again and again. Like so many manga comedians, Nakamura seems not to trust her audience or herself and so has to hammer home the comedy, which ultimately sabotages what's best in Arakawa. I look forward to following it because I missed it the first time around, but I remain cautious.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Arakawa Under the Bridge is the sort of pleasant surprise I love. I didn't care for the anime, which I felt tried too hard to be loudly funny, but the manga manages to capture both the humor of Recruit's situation and the idea that everyone who lives under the bridge has some sort of underlying psychological reason for being there. From Nino's assertion that she's from Venus to the Mayor's insistence that he's a kappa, everyone taken at face value simply seems a little off. But as the book progresses we start to see that there may be more going on than even the characters know – Nino's statement about being Venusian when Recruit brings up their relationship starts to sound more like her trying to justify her differences from the rest of the world and her difficulties functioning in the “normal” world than an actual statement of origin.

Perhaps Rec himself is the greatest indication of this. At first blush, he just seems like a caricature of the usual snooty rich guy in manga, with his ridiculous tie and theories about never owing anyone anything, but as he starts to have flashbacks about his childhood with his (terrible) father, we begin to realize that his staying under the bridge has less to do with his family moto and more to do with his having finally found people who accept him as a person and who actually give him some measure of affection. He pursues his relationship with Nino not because he's bound to, but because he wants to – he wants to have the love that comes with a romantic relationship, even if he has no more idea than she does how to go about pursuing this.

Of course, it's not all serious, as the art helps to show with its deceptively lazy-looking linework. From Hoshi to Sister, there's a lot of silliness in the series that helps to both underline and make light of the more serious aspects. Sister lurking with a machine gun makes for some particularly funny imagery (in a creepy way), and Hoshi's ongoing competition with Rec for Nino's affections feels like a parody of more serious romance stories. There's a nice mix of goofy and poignant to this omnibus that makes it read easily, and I was surprised by how deftly the book handles this combination of themes. I'm not sure how it will hold up if you liked the anime, but as a stand-alone work, Arakawa Under the Bridge is worth reading.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

The cast of Arakawa Under the Bridge are a bunch of misfits of various exaggerated varieties. Nino believes she's an alien, the “mayor” insists he's a real kappa and not just a guy in a costume, Hoshi wears a star mask, and Sister is a guy in a nun's habit with taste for firearms. Kou too, is a misfit, although he doesn't know it yet. He was raised as a wealthy family heir with the coda to be self-sufficient and never owe anyone anything. Until he gets pulled into Nino's world of off-beat transients literally living under a bridge, he thinks he's got it made. Living on the fringes reveals something important, and that's the fulfillment of community.

I was surprised when I heard Vertical Comics picked up this series. The series ran for about 10 years, with the last volume published in 2015. It was adapted into two anime seasons that aired in 2010 but faded out of fandom's collective consciousness after that. Reading the two-in-one volume put these questions at ease. Arakawa Under the Bridge is a manga with a well-honed funny bone and a lot of heart that deserves to be revisited by anyone who missed it the first time around. Creator Hikaru Nakamura has her comedic timing nailed down. She expertly balances the absurdity of her cast without overplaying or recycling the same gags. Just when you think you've got Nino's weird alien-girl persona figured out, she does something unexpected but somehow still fittingly in character.

The first volume is squarely focused on Kou's growth while the rest of the cast mainly serves as a conduit to get him to acknowledge his empty materialism and need for human contact. Kou never relies on anyone to avoid owing them anything, so he's never been able to accept another human's kindness even from his own family. His involvement with Nino opens up the prospect of rediscovering familial love for a young man that grew up having work off his sentimental moments with his father. It's that part of Arakawa Under the Bridge that continues to resonate once the laughter dies down, because underneath all its absurdity and gags is a story about family, acceptance, and choosing self over the pressures of a materialistic society.

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Amy McNulty

Rating:

The first two-in-one volume of Arakawa Under the Bridge is a delightful, side-splitting story of a how a stubborn, rich young man's determination to never owe anyone anything blows up in his face in one of the most peculiar, extreme manners possible. Both the scenario and the characters make this manga memorable, even though nothing at all happens outside of this wacky neighborhood of odd people who live along a riverbank. It makes no logical sense, as protagonist Ichinomiya/”Recruit” himself points out on occasion, but the surreal actions and attitudes of the riverside denizens always manage to surprise and amuse. Nino, the woman who becomes Recruit's “girlfriend” after she saves his life and refuses to take money as compensation but asks for his help in learning to fall in love, is always deadpan and practically emotionless, but her chemistry with uptight Recruit is actually there on the page in a roundabout, abnormal fashion. Neither is madly in love with the other, but they're determined to make their strange relationship work. Secondary characters such as the mayor (a man in a Kappa suit); Hoshi, the star-head musician with a thing for Nino; and Sister, the bishonen, gun-loving mercenary in a nun habit, add more comedy to Recruit's new life under the bridge.

One of the few weaknesses in this volume is unavoidable due to the manga's original serialization. The chapters seem too short, like they're over just as they're picking up momentum. That's not too much of an issue reading them one after the other, although the narration to recap past events and information that pops up on occasion can become cumbersome when reading the volume all at once. However, it's still a series really made to be read more than one chapter at a time.

Nakamura's human character designs are unique but somewhat lacking. The faces are somewhat disproportioned, but the blank expressions on Nino's face are often humorous. The characters in costume are much more expressive and fun to look at—the kappa and Hoshi in particular. Background art is limited to the riverside and the strange hovels various citizens make their homes, but the images of the river and the tall buildings in the distance behind the riverbank help set the mood for the bizarre limited world Recruit has found himself in.

Arakawa Under the Bridge omnibus volume 1 will appeal to virtually any manga reader. Funny, bizarre, and over-the-top, it's a page-turner of a series. As the neighborhood slowly expands throughout this volume, future volumes promise a bigger little “town” and more hilarity to come.