The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Josee, The Tiger and the Fish

What's It About? 

Josee has been in a wheelchair since she was a child and has lived her life through pictures, books, and her imagination. One day, she meets Tsuneo, a college student, and while they clash at first, the two soon grow closer than expected. She takes this chance to venture outside with Tsuneo to experience a new world where surprises await.

Josee, The Tiger and the Fish is based on the anime film of Seiko Tanabe's short story. The manga is drawn by Nao Emoto, with English translation by Matt Rutsohn and lettering by Elena Pizarro, and Yen Press has released this omnibus volume both digitally and physically for $9.99 and $24.00 respectively.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I'm torn on this one – on the one hand, it feels an awful lot like trauma porn, but on the other, there's a lovely message here about learning to face your problems and fears. Josee (or more properly Josée, after one of French author Françoise Sagan's characters) is basically allowing herself to be bound to her wheelchair. Needing to use mobility assistive devices isn't a sentence, although I don't pretend that it's always easy to get around in a world built for the able-bodied, but her grandmother's fear for her has translated into Josee being afraid of the outside world. Symbolically she sees it as being filled with tigers, and in her wheelchair she doesn't believe that she has much chance of survival should she encounter one.

So of course she needs someone to come in and show her how wrong she is. That would be Tsuneo, a marine biology student who is hoping to study in Mexico for graduate school. After he saves her when her wheelchair is careening down a hill, her grandmother hires him to help Josee around the house, and it's exactly no surprise when he opens up her world by taking her places Grandma won't. His accident saving her from a car (the modern equivalent of a tiger in a jungle, perhaps) also isn't a shock, because it forces him, the able-bodied person, into a position where he sees firsthand what Josee has dealt with…although with the equally unsurprising benefit of eventually being able to walk again and pick his life right back up where he left it.

It's hard to deny that there are a lot of very sweet moments, particularly in the latter half of the story, and I also very much appreciate the nods to Sagan's style of writing, which often relies on women who see themselves as trapped in a world where their agency is taken away from them. Josee's a little too happy to truly be one of Sagan's characters, but the inspiration she finds in their melancholy strength is a tribute to Sagan's works. I also like the use of The Little Mermaid and Josee's rewriting of the story, which shows how Josee herself has grown over the course of the book. But it's still uncomfortably close to the story where the disabled person teaches the able-bodied person An Important Lesson in places, and while it ends up being pretty darn mutual, it's still an off-note that won't sit well with everyone.

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Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Not having seen the Josee, The Tiger and the Fish movie, I wouldn't be able to tell you how good of an adaptation this manga is. What I can say is that it's a beautiful story, both in art and in impact. The visuals do a wonderful job illustrating the world – from Japan's beautiful towers and urban landmarks, to the lovely underwater vistas seen only by scuba diving, to Kumiko's cozy private room cluttered with artwork and knickknacks. The story does hit on some tired beats, like Tsuneo's lout of a friend and Mai's unrequited attraction to Tsuneo, but the story is very respectful towards Kumiko and her disability and the way it makes people around her treat her differently.

This is a melodrama, but it's a good melodrama. It's very sweet to see Tusneo and Kumiko grow closer to each other and fall in love. Again, I can't tell you how good it is compared to the movie, but I can say that on its own it's a fantastic read—and I appreciate that both volumes are bound together in one omnibus. Strongly recommended.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Josee, The Tiger and the Fish is a story about adults struggling to find that middle ground between independence and codependency. As we get older and work hard to strive toward our dreams, sometimes life gets in the way and we need to seek help, but how much do we let others influence the journey that we are on? This 400+ page book does a good job of portraying that struggle right up until the very end, even if there are some plot conveniences that aren't strictly necessary. There's also one or two elements that definitely don't feel as fleshed-out as the book sometimes makes them out to be, but these come off more as slight blemishes in an otherwise crystal clear narrative.

The book's artwork is absolutely gorgeous, relying on a lot of light pencil strokes and sweeping shots to convey emotion in places without much dialogue. The chemistry between our leads is believable and despite my gripes, I felt a swell of emotion at the end as the book came full circle. The book's central message about connecting with other people and recognizing our own limitations is a lesson that I feel like a lot of people take for granted, so maybe reading something like this can help remind us of why it's so important.