Arctic Department Store Concierge
cartoonist: West Village local fragrance
Translator: Jane Cash
Writer: Mercedes McGarry
edit: Linda Lombardi
Publisher: seven seas entertainment /$13.99
2024 autumn and winter
I decided that this comic would be a suspense novel. Not the detective type, but the old fashioned type with knights and ghosts. The Haunted Castle in the pathless Black Forest is an opportunity for chivalry to be rewarded with life after death. But──turn death into extinction, because department store customers are all animals, endangered species (aren’t we). There was no Mari Lwyd, but there was Mammoth, and you could buy Tarkus in the toy store. West Village local fragrance A timeless and ominous monument to wealth was built. A fantasy mall and its employees? Arctic Department Store Concierge Have a brave heart.
Our young ranger is the titular concierge, one of many and the newest. Her work is about adaptation: performing the art of fulfilling impossible requests. Wrestle with desire. Even more frightening is the promotion of consumerism. The concierge isn’t exactly an agent of conspicuous consumption, but his intentions are sincere, even if the level of arctic shopping clearly comes with expected servitude. The great puffin catches your eye with its glitter, surely trying to tell you something. What aspects of human nature do acts of service illustrate?
Nishimura makes his point clearly when he wants to. This little guide appears in each chapter, but instead of learning about the episode’s guest animals, their entries are mostly about the reasons for their extinction. People are killing you because of the type of business you have. The mall is a cathedral built on property violence, an altar to ownership. Nishimura said this in the article. The problem, I think, is the ambiguity of the rest of the book. Celebrating how neo-colonial slavery brings out the best in us, isn’t it, right?
Arctic Department Store It’s a sweet book that, despite its dark tone, doesn’t try to subvert its cute aesthetic. As You Can Count On, Every Guest Has Unique Concierge Needs Professor Layton All decisions come like clockwork. It’s nice to see employees’ personalities come together (or collide) to make this happen. The happiness that combats the anxiety of selling a product lies in the quality of the product itself. Pens, pocket watches, perfume, penny shopping, puff sauce. All the joy of browsing for handcrafted artifacts in an antique store, along with the familiar powerlessness of wanting it all, yet taking home nothing. After all, Beijing is not for us.
Art in the West Village is a quiet celebration of opulence. Designed to convey wealth, the architecture is visually impressive and the illustrations are full of elegance. You can see the money, this is the place. Like I said, when it comes to story, it’s the details of how the concierge responds to the challenge is where the happiness lies, not the inevitable success. Art also provides the opportunity to step outside the plot path and drink in the present moment. The sense of awe inspired by the setting draws its power from the extravagance that drives the plot forward. Morally conflicted, but emotionally powerful.
The environment and etiquette, the guests and their behavior, the sanctity and solemnity of service, are all things of a bygone era. The loot of the robber baron’s wealth is treated as such, deifying the acquisition of leisure. Nishimura’s manga style is also a throwback, realistic enough to depict rich and anatomically correct animals just as modernly (wearing the various looks available in the catalog) little nemobut with alternate, definite lines, which reminds me of, but not quite Geo McManusbut his international influence on subsequent artists. The fuzzy BD vibe is really an old school comic aesthetic. Upper class serves the background with a dash of viper vigor. Nishimura’s style is gentler than the Gilded Age comics to which it most closely resembles. The faintest hint of a mod.
Fantastic books, cartoon logic, ambiguous ghosts. These animals don’t quite look like animals. They dress, stand, talk and (for better or worse) shop like humans. maybe there are some rudyard kipling Behavior becomes a caricature of personality. But their concerns and actions charles dickens no charles darwin. Although I think the illustration aspect of storytelling is the real source of the surreal experience for readers. This style achieves the simplified caricature equivalent of nature photography – they look like animals, real animals. Not a Disney animal, national geographic. It’s not realistic, but somehow the stylization brings the same vibrancy to the eyes. Life! Twinkling eyes, exposed teeth, silent, strange but familiar, undeniable life. Nishimura also does a great job of harnessing awe.
This is what you die for. You can go and experience it.
So even though this show is dancing in a morgue, Arctic Department Store Find what is unique about the individual – despite consumerism – and honor that in a way that feels special and authentic. This comic is angry at people, but also celebrates them, mostly as they celebrate themselves. Be aware of the price of consumption but don’t offer any alternatives. Celebrating the dreams and intentions of a society that milks human life as casually as juice from a free breakfast bar. So what are you telling me here, Nishimura?
Week after week adds up to years of wasting time somewhere, someone else’s business just so I could eat and sleep in a safe place where they wouldn’t feel like them until I went to them Missing for them. But they come flooding back to me in those fleeting, anonymous moments when I put the right book in a reader’s hands. Which life is real, the fifteen minutes of living in the moment without regrets or the forty-five minutes on the train home? Comparing the time it takes to carve a sabertooth tiger statue to the time it takes for people to look at it is also a shortcut to cynicism and failure. But have I achieved my own enslavement by ignoring what I have lost? As they say, what the fuck?
Thinking about the time I was exploited makes me angry. Ignoring it is the only way not to lose your mind. This is who I am, holding both concepts in my mind at the same time. I cannot be content with the way the world is when it is so unjust, and I should not bear the burden alone of how the system I was born into works. So what are you telling me here, Nishimura?
Perhaps the secret is not that Arctic Department Store’s original intention is to respect customers, but that its champions transcend transactions. The right gift has nothing to do with the purchase. The concierge broke away from the usual routine to expose our actual needs. The entire comic is about teaching, learning, and researching how to practice constructive support. Furthermore, all the invisible labor that makes the service look effortless is pulled aside for the reader. The dedication of the concierge staff is genuine and exciting enough that you might forget who this church was built to worship.
Subsequently, concerns were raised about the redefinition of mall concierge duties as a monastic pursuit. It’s hard to reconcile chivalry with the shattered shields and bloody swords of a knight’s daily routine. A group of killers on horseback. Department stores are representative of class-conscious consumption. Beauty is built on blood, blubber, fur, and hides. Is safety worth it? Can we make it worth it? What do we tell ourselves?
Non-transactional exchanges have value. Chandeliers and cash registers have nothing to do with these things. The box store is built on your empty assumptions, a shadow of the dream of building a place like the North Pole. They have what you need. You should be the one to decide what you need. Taste is not passive, it describes your desires. You decide what speaks to you. This is a comic about genuine listening.
Composed of two volumes Arctic Department Store Concierge Available from Seven Seas or anywhere that sells great comics, comics, and books.
