OK early work of this anime maker. Environmental message and fantasy with mermaid. ( )

This is a basic story that proceeds how you think it'd proceed about a small fishing town than takes care of a mermaid egg. There is no twist of the plot or anything just the typical, town with mystical item gets besieged by corporate men and there's a race to return the item to wherever it needs to go.
 
All with a healthy dose of Casual Misogyny. Seriously it seems like Satoshi Kon hates women as they don't feature really prominently in this manga and only live to further the male plotline. Even the mermaid is rather nondescript.
 
Also I though this would be a novel which is the only reason I bought it, low and behold it's not and it's from Vertical. The people that don't know a thing about their properties. ( )

Satoshi Kon is probably best known as a phenomenal writer and director of anime, especially in the West, but he started his career working in manga. Tropic of the Sea, serialized in Young Magazine in 1990, was Kon's first long-form manga. Vertical's release of the English-language edition of Tropic of the Sea in 2013 marks the first, and hopefully not the last, of Kon's manga to be translated into the language. The volume also includes an afterword by Kon excerpted from the ninth anniversary edition of Tropic of the Sea published in Japan in 1999. Vertical's edition of Tropic of the Sea is actually based on an even later Japanese release of the manga from 2011. Already a fan of Kon's work in anime, I was thrilled when Tropic of the Sea was licensed. I was even more excited for the manga's release when I saw the absolutely gorgeous and captivating cover. Added to that the manga's focus on legends and the sea and I was sold.

For generations, the small fishing village of Ade has been blessed by calm seas and bountiful catches. This good fortune has been attributed to a promise made between a mermaid and a priest--the village receives protection and in return he will worship the sea and care for the mermaid's egg for sixty years before returning it to begin the cycle anew. But times are changing and very few people believe the old legend to actually be true. Yosuke Yashiro's family is responsible for guarding the egg and its shrine, but his father does the unthinkable and reveals the secret of its existence to the world. The sacred relic has now become a draw for tourists, only the most recent example of the increased commercialization of Ade. Although there have been some good things to come from the village's development, many people are upset with the extent of the changes that have been made and what they may be losing in exchange.

At first the pacing of Tropic of the Sea is fairly leisurely, appropriate for a story that takes place in a quiet seaside village, but as the manga progresses the pace steadily quickens. The role that Ozaki, Ade's most prominent commercial developer, plays as the manga's villain is somewhat predictable--desiring the mermaid's egg for his own purposes while claiming to be interested in the good of humanity--but he does have slightly more to him than first appears. One of the greatest things about Tropic of the Sea from beginning to end is Kon's artwork. A tremendous amount of attention has been give to the backgrounds and landscapes, granting the manga a very real sense of place which is crucial for the story. The illustrations also convey a feeling of mystery and wonder, awe and foreboding, surrounding the mermaids and the sea. Some of the scenes involving water are simply stunning, the realism strikingly rendered. The artwork in Tropic of the Sea is wonderful.

What impressed me the most about Tropic of the Sea, though, is how subtly complex and deceptively simple the narrative is for such a short work. Thematically, Tropic of the Sea has many overlapping layers and the story can be viewed through a number of different lenses. Tropic of the Sea explores generational dissonance, familial disputes, the values of modernity and tradition, the tension between science and religion and skepticism and belief, the human struggle both with and against nature, the power of legends and their impact on reality. (And that's just to name a few of the many elements in play.) Any of these aspects of Tropic of the Sea can be focused on individually but they are all interconnected and influence one another to form an engaging story with a surprising amount of depth. Out of the various conflicts portrayed, no one side is ever entirely in the right. I enjoyed Tropic of the Sea a great deal. It may be an earlier work, but Kon's talent was already evident.

Experiments in Manga ( )

Un manga à l'histoire simple et classique (une guerre entre les partisans de la tradition et ceux de la modernité), mais d'un style très maîtrisé. Le rythme est parfait, faisant en sorte qu'on ne veut pas poser le livre avant de l'avoir terminé. L'édition française de Casterman contient aussi une courte histoire en bonus à la fin du livre.
Un style graphique et rythmique très proche de celui de Katsuhiro Otomo, qui a d'ailleurs été un mentor de Kon. Vous aimerez surement le livre si vous aimez des mangas de celui-ci, comme Akira ou Domu, ou bien encore si vous vous intéressez aux histoires de youkai et au folklore japonais. ( )

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