Let me tell you about my favourite manga in publication right now.
Ikoku Nikki (also known as
Different Country Diary, but in published material also titled
Journal with Witch; the latter is likely my preference) is a drama series by Tomoko Yamashita in publication since 2017. It tells the story of Asa, a 15-year-old soon-to-be high-schooler who is suddenly orphaned as her parents die in a traffic accident. Asa's 35-year-old aunt Makio, a novelist Asa has barely ever met or interacted with, becomes her new guardian, in a move that up-ends both of their lives as they learn to cohabitate and cope with one another, awkwardly and tentatively.
It's hard to describe how much I love this comic and all the various reasons that I do. Initially, it's just the simple premise, in that it's a story fundamentally about the relationship between two women, familial yet estranged, and them attempting to navigate the complex feelings of alienation, numbness, and tension that comprise the web that binds them together even as they begin as strangers to one another. Makio's hatred of her late sister--Asa's mother--intersects with the life she's trying to provide for her new charge even as Asa grapples with a delayed processing of grief and the total loss of her previous life as she attempts to adjust to her new status quo--there's so much raw, real emotion in the narrative that could easily read as contrived melodrama, but Yamashita's writing forbids such easy dismissals. She is a master of everyday asides, dropped tangents, odd pauses, repetitive orating, mumbled responses--the way people talk in all the ways we avoid in writing, conveyed convincingly through text. As an introspective character study and interpersonal drama, a compelling narrative voice is crucial to imbue the cast with the lives they represent, and that lives so strongly in every interaction people have with one another here.
That strength in portraying people with an unusual degree of authenticity is best represented in Makio. She is a character who might as well be completely unprecedented in all the various aspects of her distinct self that she represents. A leading character who's an adult woman in her mid-thirties is rare enough on its own, but what makes her a revelation and capital-I important is how genuine her depiction is in terms of social awkwardness, anxiety and "introversion." Those are all an active part of her and her characterization, and at no point does the writing frame how Makio lives her life and how she feels about things as a personal failing, or a condition that she needs to overcome or have "fixed." It's instead a nuanced and reflective portrayal of an adult with social difficulties and barriers that she's cognizant of, that her confidants are aware of and accept, that she's learned to manage and cope with in the context of her daily life, even as she grumbles through uncomfortable situations. It's so amazingly refreshing and honestly validating to see such ubiquitous but still stigmatized mental health subjects represented in an adult character where the fact that she's anxious about guests in her home, conversations over phone, or just the presence of people are all things that inform the narrative interactions she has with others but do not form the thrust or focus of her ongoing arc.
At the heart of it,
Journal with Witch is a story about empathy and understanding others, and often very pointedly about the gap that exists between the two sentiments, and the apparent impossibility of ever truly knowing how others feel when you're not them and can't substitute that absence of perspective with anything no matter how much you try or want to--and it's about how that, ultimately, is an acceptable and okay thing to be and feel. I love it as a comic for all of these things, and for Yamashita's keen grasp of visual composition and metaphor, for the delightfully expressive art in body language and facial expressions, for the incredibly stylish fashion her uniformly hunky characters wear, and for the mundane inclusivity that lives in all the stories told in its pages.