Julie Blanchin

The title is a bit misleading, as there is not a high proportion of love or autobiography. Instead of "manga memoir" I would call it a cartoon scrapbook.

A French woman travels to Japan to live and work. She fills the pages of this book with random thoughts about Japan, serving up lots of images of clothes, food, apartment layouts, and toilets. Each page has a cluttered feel as the images are plopped here and there in the midst of full text in both English and Japanese (which, why????). It is sometimes difficult to match captions and open word balloons to the correct image as the two languages fight for space.

There are a few anecdotes scattered here and there, but most of the pages are just "isn't this odd" info dumps that offer little insight into the author's personality beyond her bemusement at Japanese culture and maybe a fetish for Asian men. She touches on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and in the last 40 pages -- the final fifth of the book -- she abruptly introduces and barely sketches a romantic relationship.

I do like the art, and if she had given me a little more of her inner life and dumped the clutter I probably would have enjoyed this a lot.… (meer)