The less interesting sequel to Memories of Emanon.

I really like the predecessor series, Memories of Emanon, quite a bit. It’s a dialogue driven, sort of philosophical story that establishes an interesting premise with the character of Emanon. Learning about Emanon from the perspective of the young man on the ferry, where we are only seeing a small slice of Emanon’s life, is what makes it so interesting to me. It's a "big" idea that's established, but done in a short story. Now, getting on to the actual story that I’m actually reviewing, Emanon Wanderer takes on a somewhat different style. It's not bad by any means, and it makes sense to do something different, but I just don’t find anything else in the world of Emanon to really make for an interesting story. We didn't need to go beyond the original 9 chapter story.

The structure of Emanon Wanderer reminds me a lot of stories like Kino’s Journey or Mushishi, the type of stories where we follow a character through a series of episodic events as they experience or meet or explore strange people or locations. Emanon Wanderer is not quite the same, but it reminds me a lot of these types that I can’t help but make a connection between them. Emanon Wanderer also has a similar episodic story that are only connected by a single character - Emanon. What makes those other stories work is that are set is strange worlds - there is always something new and weird to learn about. It's the hook that makes these different and unique from each other. It’s not really the character we follow that is interesting, ok well, the characters ARE also important, but my point is that the world they are travelling is a big deal for the story. The problem with Emanon Wanderer, is that it's just our world. So it inherently can't make anything interesting from what Emanon is encountering, because Emanon is the weird one here, not the people she is meeting, not the places she is visiting.

The stories themselves are actually fine as they of course are not written in the same way as the style I mentioned earlier, they are obviously written with this format in mind, but I found I really did not care for them the same way I cared for the predecessor. I just couldn’t help but not be interested in who Emanon was meeting with. To me, Emanon herself isn’t what made the predecessor story good, it’s more about her meeting and interaction with the young man.

The point I'm trying to make here is: Memories of Emanon didn't need a follow up. I found it to be a story that works best in it's short format and doesn't lend itself for more. Some stories have obviously ways you can expand upon them, but as I've found with this, I don't think Memories of Emanon did. This is a fine story with nice art, but I found it much less interesting that the predecessor.