~ʙᴇꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅɪɴɢ ʟᴏɴᴇʟɪɴᴇꜱꜱ~
Some of the best stories of all time are in my opinion personal journeys where we can witness the growth of a person and see how they change from beginning to end of their story. These stories are those from where you can take something away from and relate to on a personal level, looking at the character and reflecting on oneself and also see the artistic ability to demonstrate emotion of a certain Character or at a given situation or maybe how they're feeling deep inside. One of those stories is Kokou no Hito, also known as The Climber.
The Climber follows the story of Mori Buntarou, who is sort of a social outcast and is bad at socializing. Like any other people of his kind, he prefers being alone, maintain peace and remains quiet. He was treated as one because he happened to be there when another boy of his age committed suicide and people started treating him differently and had to transfer school and isolate himself from the society. One day he discovers he is a very good climber which was like one of his hidden talents, and gets a feeling "You're Alive!" , here he discovers his strength.
Climbing mountains, being free, and the feeling achieving something on your own by doing that, is portrayed beautifully here through different symbolism.
The Author really shows off his artistic ability here by Portraying certain emotion of a character in different scenarios like in extreme climates through climbing. For example when life is being hectic, it shows being hit by an avalanche or something.
The art is beautiful in this manga, very realistic and simply beautiful, I'd put it next to the likes of Vagabond. He can give life to all of his characters through his art, show different emotions, changes in different characters. Like there's one time they show a jump in time from high-school to work life and later our main character seeing people around him change in both good and bad ways, which can be both heartwarming and heartbreaking, yet very realistic and we see similarities in our life events and understand that life has both ups and downs and we still have to move on which is also one theme portrayed through our main protagonist. Sad moments are shown as a part of life, and seeing Mori not really being hung up on it too much and moving on from it and continuing his journey of life is shown here because we know life goes on no matter what. However you see the burden he is carrying and the theme of people blaming things on him at times hitting him hard which is why he likes to keep him away from others.
The urge to climb portrays the desire of freedom and the peace of being alone at times, where he uses loneliness as his strength .Like I never wanted to climb more before reading this. There are people like that, like me, we live in a chaotic society, all this noise and everything, real life problems makes me wanna break free from those and go off and just enjoy gods creation. Peace is what we need at times.
Dialogues aren't wasted here, everything said shows something, whether it be new info on our protagonist or something that pushes things onward throughout the story.
The Climber is the story of a solo climber and most part of the story is told from his perspective and the quality of the story as a result of that depends much on the main character, so side characters remain side characters which is good and fits the theme of the story.
Magnum Opus of a work.
