Holiday Review #5: RIVER'S EDGE

 We haven't seen a new Kyoko Okuzaki work in English in well over a decade, back in the glory days of Vertical.  Naturally, when Kodansha put out a new one I had to check it out.

RIVER'S EDGE (Ribazu Ejji), by Kyoko Okuzaki.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2023.

PLOT:

At a run-down high school near the edge of an overgrown river, all sorts of teenage drama plays out.  Relationships are created and split apart.  Kids get bullied.  Girls and boys alike struggle with sex and their bodies.  In the midst of it all, Haruna find some comfort when she defends the class pretty boy and the resident model, even as they all struggle with their own personal demons.

STORY:

If you're looking for a feel-good kind of read, then hoo boy is River's Edge not for you.  This was released in the midst of Japan's big recession, and it's absolutely soaked in the sort of ennui that was everywhere in the 1990s.  Everyone's depressed to some degree, there's no hope for the future, and everything seems to suck all around.  I should also note that this comes with a whole host of trigger-warning-worthy content: bullying, homophobia, eating disorders, animal abuse, etc.  Even if you're a fan of the other Kyoko Okazaki books that got released in English, this might be a bit much.  

So why did I find it so compulsively easy to read?

It helps that Okazaki gives some order to this chaotic web of stories through the troubled friendship between Haruna and Yamada.  Haruna is as close to a normal kid as you're going to get here.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to call her the least troubled, although she's a slacker with a single and is stuck in a relationship with her shitty, horny bully of a boyfriend.  Meanwhile, Yamada is a closeted gay boy who is regularly bullied by said boyfriend and stuck in a loveless relationship with a girl he can't stand.  You know things are bad when one of his few comforts is sneaking off to look at a decaying skeleton near the riverbank.  Haruna inadvertently becomes his only confidante, and their connection becomes the point around which all of these stories pivot.

If there's any sort of message or moral to be found in this book, it's that everyone has problems of their own.  Most of them are invisible to others, and even if you share them with others you may not know the whole story.  Even then, the connections you can make can provide some comfort and support even in a world that seems hopelessly gray and dull.  Relationships will change, people will die or get hurt or move, the world will move on, and it's in those moments that you realize who your real loved ones really are and value the moments you had with them, however fleeting, weird, or morbid they may be.

ART:

Visually there's not a great deal of difference between earlier Okazaki works like Pink or later ones like Helter Skelter.  Her linework is loose, but there's a naturalism to the poses and body language that lends the book a lot of subtlety (which is needed in a story where there are a lot of people leaving a lot unsaid).  There's an almost mask-like simplicity to the characters' faces with big, flat eyes and large pouting lips that tend to give the cast a haughty look by default.  The backgrounds have more detail than you'd expect for such mundane, even decaying structures, yet the shading is done in an almost abstract fashion with just a single type of screentone.  

Really, the thing that struck me the most about the art was the way Okazaki would juxtapose moments of high drama.  It's not so much about the composition of the panels onto themselves as it is about the content and when and how she shifts between them.  It's usually staged for maximum contrast in emotional intensity and tone - for example, switching between Haruna and Yamada looking at a dead body while Haruna's boyfriend has sex with one of her friends.  It feels like her trying to translate cinematic editing on the page, and when she does the effect is striking.

RATING:

It's been nearly 30 years since River's Edge first came out, but it's barely aged a day.  It's a troubled but powerful work about a bunch of young people adrift in the world.  It's the sort of intense, moody josei manga that you could easily recommend to the Inio Asano fan in your life.

This book is published by Kodansha.  It is currently in print.

Our Holiday Review Giveaway is underway!  Just leave a comment here or on our BlueSky about your favorite manga of 2023 to potentially win a $25 Bookshop.org gift certificate!  Contest ends on midnight Christmas Day.