This is my first Inio Asano manga.

Of course, I knew about his work. I knew about how he's a master of hurting people through melancholy in "Goodnight Punpun" and how he was great at portraying mundane life through unique events as depicted in "Dead Demons Dededededestruction". Even with the popularity of these last two, my first experience with him has been "Solanin", not his "opera prima", but still one of his earlier works before he reached great notoriety with Punpun.

"Solanin", like the substance, is a bitter pill to swallow. It's a manga about being lost in your 20s. We follow a group of friends from university, a group united through their love of music that have formed a band. They are stuck in somewhat unhappy situations; jobs that don't satisfy them or repeating years in a university. The manga tries to talk about their plans for life in the future, with each other, and what each person desires most.

On a technical level, I like most of what this manga tries to achieve in terms of art. I think its character art and scenery are both quite good. Even then, I feel that sometimes the story's pace can be inconsistent with some slow chapters with too much dialogue on black boxes and I find some of the characters to be perhaps a bit disappointing. In a story about connections to people, I feel that some of them are underdeveloped or are a bit foggy to me. Meiko, of course, is incredible but I find issues in some of the rest, even if I find a lot of truth in their friendship.

From here on, I want to talk more personally about how I resonated with this work on a more personal level.

Right now in my life, I am walking a somewhat set path. I have a contract with a set end in what I could consider a "comfortable" job. They barely pay me the minimum wage, but it's something I enjoy somewhat and it's not strenuous. This is also a job that will prepare me for a field I want to move into after somewhat disassociating from video game development due to the current industry crash. However, this path's end is unknown. I want to try to get a job at an editorial thanks to the experience I got here, but it's not a guarantee. Previously I was stuck for one year without a proper job, hunting for anything. Will my job hunt go the same now, a year later? The end isn't near, not for several months. Even then, what's going to become of me then? Will I be content with staying more at this job I am in now if I get the chance?

My experience is fundamentally different from that of Meiko. I am not suffering in the same way, and I am thankful for that. The message of Solanin still resonates with me regardless.

Walk.

Walk without an end in sight. Walk for the sake of moving forward. Walk slowly to rest if you need to. Walk because of your connection to everyone else. I am walking on a path now, with clear delimitations, but afterward, I'm not sure where I'm headed. My mother is always pestering me about the fact that I didn't do a course to become an English teacher (while doing a full-time job). I'm not really interested in it. Maybe if nothing comes up, I will try to do that, maybe I will get a great job at an editorial, maybe it will be a bad job, maybe I will have to go to university again because my country's youth unemployment has reached 25% and I decided to enter a crashing industry.

Not all dreams come true. Not all chances are grasped into one's hand. Life can be unfair. This is something I am bound to keep in mind. Solanin does too.

And at the same time, Solanin also reminds me that there's beauty in the small moments of life in the present that outpower the uncertainty of the future. In the mundane, in friendship, and in love, there are plenty of ways for us to find strength. We are lucky to be able to experience these moments. That luck needs to propel us, needs to motivate us to walk.

I don't think this is a perfect resonant experience. I liked it a lot, no doubt about it, and I took a lot of what I read with me, but maybe I felt it to be weaker than "Look Back". Unlike that work, which is more focused on regrets, this manga is about feeling lost. Am I lost? It's hard for a life to be fully set when we're still maturing and there are things I want to improve my life upon. I need to walk forward to achieve that. Where though? It's anyone's guess, so I guess I am lost after all. Am I happy my life while being lost? Maybe it's not at the peak it could reach, but I definitely enjoy the moments I get to spend with my pals, reading works like these or trying to improve my craft writing like this. Solanin definitely made me more aware of all of these things. So at the very least, I'm grateful that I read it.