Shimura Takako Wandering Son has always been highly regarded for its representation of LGBT characters, especially when it was being serialised in the early 2000s. Sadly, the series never finished its run in English due to poor sales. But Fantagraphics are trying again with new omnibus editions for Takumigraphics, the first of which we’re taking a look at today!
Our story follows middle-schooler Shuichi Nitori, a quiet boy who is nervous about joining a new class and finding himself in a new environment. Luckily, he quickly makes a friend in Yoshino Takatsuki. And these two are kindred souls in more ways than one…
Shuichi and Yoshino are kids who are both struggling with their gender identities. Yoshino wishes to be a boy, and she thinks that Shuichi wishes to be a girl (which is true, even if he isn’t as far along in figuring that out as Yoshino is). With their newfound friendship, the two begin exploring what gender and identity mean to them while under the loving watch of their family, friends and people they encounter along the way.
The themes in Wandering Son are incredibly progressive for the time (especially in Japan), and these are still very relevant (and perhaps even more important) today. Of course these two characters are very young, and the content is age-appropriate for that. A lot of their exploration revolves around how they dress, with Yoshino often trying to offload the dresses her mother buys for her onto Shuichi. And Shuichi wrestles with wanting to try them on but being scared of how his family (especially his sister) will react.
In some ways he finds Yoshino pushy, which offers an interesting dynamic to their relationship because she is overbearing at times, but generally with the best of intentions. When his class decides to put on a gender-bent play, that offers him some freedom to experiment without awkward questions from those around him.
And along the way, they make friends with Yuki, an adult trans woman who becomes a mentor of sorts to the two who are still figuring themselves out. This is a relationship the kids understandably are trying to keep a secret from their parents, who would certainly not agree with them hanging out with a random stranger (a worry we readers share early on). But they can learn a lot from Yuki, who has already faced the harshness of the world and wishes to protect the two as they explore who they are.
This new edition of Wandering Son is an omnibus paperback that contains the first two volumes. That gives us a large chunk of the 15 volume series. And I think that works in its favour, as I found this manga a bit difficult to get into at the start. Takako admits in the first afterword that the characters are hard to tell apart and their backgrounds are rather empty, which contribute to it being difficult to follow early on. I also found that scene transitions weren’t handled very well, and I often lost track of what was happening.
But Takako is an accomplished creator with many popular titles to her name (Sweet Blue Flowers, Even Though We’re Adults, Scenes from Awajima), so I know what she’s capable of, and even by the time we get into the second volume of Wandering Son, it’s clear that she’s been taking feedback onboard and slowly improving. So even if you end up feeling similarly to me, I think it’ll be worth sticking with since the mangaka is improving at a reasonable pace. And art aside, the series is well written. Takako approaches the subject matter seriously, finding a middle ground between being overly harsh about the realities of identifying differently in a society that doesn’t necessarily understand what being trans is or means, but not being fantastical about it either. It’s realistic and easy to see how it rose to such fame when it had its first English release.
As mentioned, this Wandering Son omnibus comes to the West thanks to Fantagraphics under their Takumigraphics imprint. I never had the original release, so I’m not entirely sure if this is the original translation, but it is still Rachel Thorn credited, who also contributes a short essay about the usage of honorifics in the series. There’s no lettering credit and not a great deal of variety in the lettering, which can lead the text to come off as a bit dry.
The book reads well otherwise and comes in the form of a larger paperback with high-quality paper and a range of full-colour pages at the beginning of the book and midway for the colour pages from Volume 2. It is quite a heavy book, coming in at 426 pages, and with its large format, it can make it uncomfortable to read for longer periods.
The series is complete in Japan at 15 volumes of this in Japan. Meanwhile, the previous English releases stopped at Volume 8 and it seems like it will take us a while to even get back to that, as the second omnibus isn’t scheduled for a release until February with nothing further in the schedule after that. Still, I truly hope that we will get the full series released this time around.
Overall, Wandering Son’s rerelease gives new readers an opportunity to get into this charming and important piece of Japanese manga. While it can be a little hard to follow early on, I think patience will certainly pay off as the mangaka gets into her stride.
A free preview can be read on the publisher website, but do note that the pages are in the wrong order.
Our review copy from Takumigraphics was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).
Demelza
When she’s not watching anime, reading manga or reviewing, Demelza can generally be found exploring some kind of fantasy world and chasing her dreams of being a hero.
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