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Il Viaggio (2005)

by Yuichi Yokoyama(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Canicola

review 1: This is fantastic. A simple train travel story, completely abstracted through obsessively meticulous representation and an unwillingness to use any sort of accepted visual comic shorthand for anything. The level of obsession borders on the autistic: for instance, the train contains an unending series of differing seat types, each isolated in schematic precision in their own frames within the "action", and every conceivable variation of exterior landscape or weather is given microscopic attention throughout. Really, such details become the action itself. i.e. Travel as its own ends, not a process requiring a defining destination (a concept I endorse in many forms). This attention to detail does not actually mean that the drawings are perfect in a traditional sense, rather t... morehey are extremely idiosyncratic (particularly the renderings of people), and highly exacting in their strange imperfection. Most exciting to me, Yokoyama's means of representing various tricky effects of motion or lighting are entirely his own: here, the view from the window is frequently inundated in great horizontal bands of speed-blur and hexagonal chunks of sun glare, and harsh shadows chop the train interior apart when the sun is at its brightest. And then you hit the "commentary" at the back ("the man on the left is carrying a comb in his shirt pocket", "the station appears deserted") and the impression of intense, meticulous autistic over-explanation becomes even stronger. Is this the only real explanation for such a bizarrely focused work, or is the commentary really Yokoyama's way of winking at the reader, a way of acknowledging the oddity of this style and amplifying the effect a little more even. Either way, the commentary is kind of incredible and I found myself beginning to re-read with its (vague, not-really-helpful) guidance almost immediately.
review 2: This is a great book. There are many books trying to do a single story in a large book, and many (most) come with a certain feeling of each page working in service of the story, sacrificing the quality of each individual page. The pages feel "smaller" even if they physically are not. Sometimes this is a hindrance, but in the case of "Travel," it works perfectly, and is its strength. It inspired me to want to do a single long story more than most of its type. I never wanted it to end. Yokoyama's world is so cold and horrifying and yet so accessible, and it seems like it's colored with yellows and blues and oranges even though it's in black and white. less

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