Holiday Review: HANA-CHAN AND THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD

Christmas is a time of childish wonder and imagination, which is fitting considering that's the focus of the book we're reviewing today.

HANA-CHAN AND THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD (Hana-chan to, Sekai no Katachi), by Ryotaro Ueda.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2021.

PLOT:

In a small town somewhere in the Kansai countryside lives Hana and her friends.  Their days are often spent wandering through the countryside as they try to tally the town's cats, get lost in a flood, or witness what happens in the middle of a typhoon.

PLOT:

I wouldn't blame anyone for looking at this cover and the cover blurb and presume that this is some sort of whimsical tale of childhood adventures, something in the vein of Yotsuba&! or Barakamon.  If so, you are in for a bit of a shock.  That candy coating of whimsy hides within it a creamy center of strangeness and darkness.  It's not enough to be off-putting, but it's not going to be to everyone's taste.

To start with, Hana and friends aren't wondering around any sort of old-fashioned unspoiled country village but instead one that's gone into decline.  The buildings are a bit shabby, the rice paddies have turned into dry, overgrown grasslands, and you find things like broken-down cars deep into the wilderness.  Of course, to Hana and her friends, it's all just good fodder for make-believe and exploration, but this seediness just kind of seeps into the story.

This is more of an anthology than anything else.  You could honestly scramble up these stories in any order and it would make as much sense as anything else (which is to say, not a ton).  Some of them are more mundane, like Hana not wanting to play ping-pong with her best friend Uta because she made the shopkeeper cry by exposing her face.  Others are downright surreal, where the town's attempts to clear the overgrown fields with fire-spewing robot suits turns into a Masaki Yuasa fever dream once they burn the strange weeds underneath.  It's a weird vibe that's too intense for kids and too strange for your average manga-reader.  Reading this book was an interesting experience, but I'm hard-pressed to figure out who it's really made for.

ART:

Ueda's art doesn't help to dispel the notion of this being a kid's story.  His characters are all based on simple, rubbery shapes that could have easily stepped out of someone's picture book, and it doesn't help that we barely see anyone older than 7.  They stand out in contrast to the backgrounds, which are much more dark and impressionistic.  Together it create a visual uneasiness that certainly matches the weird tone of this book.

RATING:

It's weird that Yen Press picked up something like Hana-Chan and the Shape of the World.  This feels more like something you would pick up from a smaller, more alternative publisher (much like the magazine it was originally published in).  It's not the kind of manga I personally dig, mostly due to the off-kilter tone, but those who like the stranger, artier side of manga might find an interesting bit of reading here.

This book was published by Yen Press.  It is currently in print.

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