GO WITH THE CLOUDS, NORTH-BY-NORTHWEST (Hokuhokusei ne Kumo to Ike), by Aki Irie. First published in 2016 and first published in North America in 2019.
PLOT:
Kei Miyama is a seventeen-year-old Japanese boy with the magical ability to understand machines with just a touch. He uses this skill to help solve cases of missing items and lost people in the countryside of Iceland alongside his lusty French grandfather, his latest squeeze, and her ethereal niece Lilja. Now Kei faces his toughest case yet: to find his missing younger brother Michitaka.
STORY:
Go With the Clouds is a hard series to pin down, but after having read this and a fair chunk of Ran and the Grey World this seems to be Aki Irie's specialty. It's a little bit of a travelogue, a little bit of a mystery, a little bit of a complicated family drama, all set against the crisp, stark beauty of Iceland. It's the sort of story that requires a really good protagonist to give it some sort of anchor and thankfuly Kei is up to the task.
Kei's got the sort of confidence, even cockiness that you would expect from a teenage boy, but he also demonstrates intelligence and a keen sense of loyalty. Then there's the fact that he's a technomage. The magic element is not as prominent as it was in Irie's previous series, but it adds a fantastical element that helps to lighten some of the more serious material. It also adds an interesting facet to what are otherwise fairly mundane investigation. Alternately, it's an easy way to feed Kei information when he can just lay his hands on a car or some household equipment to determine when they were last used.
Something else I've come to expect from Irie is at least some degree of horniness woven into the fabric of the story. Here, it mostly comes from two sources: Kei's womanizing grandfather Jacques and Lilja. It's easy to share Kei's annoyance with Jacques early on, but as the story progresses we do get to see a more serious side to him. Then there's Lilja. It's strongly hinted that she too possesses some sort of supernatural power, but so far she's mostly there so that Kei can walk in on her in various states of undress.
Still, the story is at its strongest in the last couple of chapters as Kei searches for Michitaka. The horny nonsense falls by the wayside, there's plenty of action, and we get a few hints that no matter how much Kei loves him, Michitaka may not be all that he seems. It's a solid hook to end the volume one, and even if you can't pin down the genre it's still a great read.
ART:
Irie's art is as top-notch as always. Her faces always remind me of Kaoru Mori's a little - it's something about the way she draws eyes. It wouldn't be a surprise, considering this runs in Mori's home magazine of Harta and it wouldn't be the first manga from that magazine to be guilty of doing so. Irie's faces are more dimensional and angular and less spade-shaped than Mori's though. Indeed, Irie's always been great at capturing body language (and the occasional bit of fanservice).
In her author's note, Irie notes how she took a trip to Iceland (as well as many other locations) after finishing up her last series and she clearly took lots of reference pictures. She captures the vast, scrubby, windswept meadows, the rolling ridges, and (at least in the color art) captured in shades of muted greens, yellows and blueish-greys.
RATING:
Go With the Clouds has the same strange, indescribable appeal that drew me to Aki Irie's work in the first place. She just has this way of combining drama, magic, adventure, and a splash of horny in just a fashion that I can't help but read it, and I suspect that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
This series is published by Vertical Comics. This series is ongoing in Japan with 3 volumes available. 2 volumes have been released and are currently in print.
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