Nijigahara Holograph (2024)

"A holograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears."

Inio Asano’s Nijigahara Holograph is a very powerful comic. Asano also created Solanin, which I like very much; that one is relatable and Solanin as a character is very likeable, but this one (Holograph, which came out in Japan in 2006), is stranger and more disturbing by far and also more powerful. If you are tempted to think that comics are for kids, think again. This is an artistic accomplishment of the first order: Enigmatic, troubling, moving, and at times difficult to read--in its subject matter, but also it is not a straightforward narrative. Arie Kimura is the main character, who has suffered much and who is often rather silent, but many other characters in the book also seem to have suffered abuse of various kinds largely in silence. This tale is for me about the need for art to express the inexpressible. In this case, the horror and trauma of existence, maybe especially for the young. And the images Asanao chooses do and do not quite suffice in that process, either for coping or the failure to cope.

For instance, featured in the book are several key images, largely unexplained, and evocative:

*Glowing butterflies proliferate (I was reminded of the manga horror Uzumaki’s proliferating spirals a bit, but the butterflies work another way than the spirals)

*A magic tin box appears periodically

*The windows of tall buildings (for pushing people out, or jumping)

*A well

*A dark tunnel

As with all the serial murders and classroom shootings and racial killings and pandemics in this, one of our disturbing periods in the U. S. (or is just a continuing nightmare?), it is tempting to wonder if some Monster or Figure of Evil has descended upon us. Asano is not an essayist, though, and he doesn't answer that question, exactly. He’s a kind of poetic comics artist with his own views on the matter, maybe, but they can’t be summarized adequately in analytical terms. He’s more interested in psychological horror, or in what we make of the trauma we experience, than sociological explanations. But a Monster IS one theory posited in this story. Is Nijigahara haunted by something terrible? Troubling things keep happening here, and some of what happens takes place in a kind of nightmare dream-state. It's horror as it relates to the everyday, the real (and maybe much horror works that way).

The drawing is wonderful and the juxtaposition of images and enigmatic dialogue creates a kind of mesmerizing effect. For me, anyway. I see later some people are bored by it, or just confused. I can see that, it can be confusing and difficult and elusive, but I personally liked the mystery in it and that images stand in for mental and psychic states. There’s a lot of space to reflect, too, on the various situations, instead of just some really dark and densely drawn experience. But that I mean literal white space, in many panels.

This is not a book about plot. It’s about trauma of various kinds and how it is experienced psychologically and over time, through memory. Never just past. Always present. And there’s a lot of silence, when you might hope for more Solanin-like zest or even rage. But sometimes, as you know, terrible things are as difficult to talk about as to overcome.

This is an amazing comic, a work of art about sexual violence, and maybe particularly against women, about various kinds of violence we inflict on each other, and comics as one central way to reflect on/refract experience.

I thought of filmmakers such as David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boommee, which I had just watched).

Here’s a Comics Alliance review I read after I had written my review, initially, which sheds more light on the horror from the perspective of sexual trauma:

| http://comicsalliance.com/nijigahara-...

You won't come away from this story feeling good, or happy about yourself and the world around you. It's unlikely that you'll close the book, turn to the one you love, and say, 'You know what? I have a feeling that everything is going to be alright.'

Simply put, the book won't let you. It will take you gently by the hand, and guide you on a walk through a world of twisted and broken individuals, unable to recover from the pain and loss of the past, and perhaps unwilling to. Through the eyes of the characters in the book, we see the answer to a simple question: 'How do you move on from unforgettable, unforgivable events?' Rainbow Field Holograph explores several answers to this question, no matter how awkward, painful, or unsettling.

Though you won't come away with anything resembling positivity when you read Rainbow Field Holograph, what you will come away with is an experience. A clear snapshot into lives and feelings you should hope you'll never have to experience first hand.

And for that reason, I think it's a book worth reading.

--Nijigahara Holograph

Pronunciation Guide

This is one of those stories you tend to read over and over again just so you could make more sense out of it and no matter how many times you read it, you find something different about it, something you never noticed was right there. That is the beauty of Nijigahara Holograph, and the gift which comes from the genius mind of Inio Asano, the creator of the beautiful manga, Solanin.

It's funny how the name, Rainbow Field Holograph, is somewhat of a contrast to the theme of the manga. Where the title gives the reader the feeling that the manga will be full of rainbows & marshmallows, the reality is much the opposite.
The manga starts with surrealistic, yet existent images; these images, spread across different panels and different pages, representing some pivotal moment in each character's life, are made up of factors affecting their present and future which in-turn are affected by their worn-out, conflicted, and secretive pasts. Try not to get confused as these confusing images may not seem related but, for your information, it is these images which prove as pieces to a jigsaw puzzle; once they end, they give rise to the start of a story which is, actually, the beginning of the end rather than the actual beginning.

Then, when the reader realizes that the story has followed into another story (one spanning over 10 years) – a story within stories (more like stories within a story) – this one more deep than the rest, and the rest even deeper when thought about later, the reader gets even more entangled in the web that is Nijigahara Holograph. Moreover, the general theme of the manga would be life itself – dark, dreary, without hope, selfish humans, humans taking without feeling. I came to face such horrors while reading this that I read this manga over three times with some kind of perverse incredulity about the fact that I live in the same world these people do. It's just bizarre how we tend to live under the same sky with such different people inhabiting it, with us, side-by-side, without us even ever knowing the tragedies facing them or what sort of mind-sets these people have – we will never know unless we come face-to-face with them ourselves – and I pray we never do.

The major aspect of the story is the butterflies, which may or may not make sense even when you have reached the end or you have managed to read the manga a couple of times. Apparently, after I did some research, Asano's Nijigahara Holograph is mostly based upon Taoism. There is an excerpt from one of the chapters' panel from Chuang Tszu's techings. It says, "Once upon a time, I, (personal name of Chuang Tzu), dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction." In my opinion, this manga revolves around a complex attitude towards life, in general. It has nothing to do with Religion or one's (or the characters') Beliefs. It is how things are and how things must be. Maybe Life, the life we are living, is not real. Maybe what we think is real, is just the trick of the mind. Maybe Reality is coexistent with the things which aren't real.

Whatever the case is, the butterflies signify the arrival of something important, a calamity, a revelation; whatever it is, it will change the flow of things, resulting in how things should have been in the first place.

These butterflies are associated with a character, a little girl. Every event that takes place in the story is irrevocably linked to her. We can say that she is the pinnacle, as well as the pedestal, on which the story is based on and on whom it ascends, and ends, with the help of.

When I start reading a manga, the art will be the first thing I'll notice. For me, good art matters a lot even if I don't like the story all that much. However, there have been times when I found the story rather more appealing than the art itself. Nijigahara Holograph, on the other hand, is one manga whose art actually portrays the story rather than being unidentifiably individualistic to it.
I just love this manga – not only does it capture the reality of life, it captures its essence and the art ascertains the fact that the reader establishes a strong connection to the story through it. The art is beautiful; it captivates the attention even if it does not wish to seek it. The details are a visual orgasm of things left behind for us to recall and reflect upon, to be curious about and to simply (un)acknowledge, to fear over and to be disgusted with.

The way things are drawn, it's difficult to conceive the beauty of things; what is most amazing is how every single object in the storyline (living or otherwise) has a personality. The magnitude of complexity of detail is astounding; focus is a MUST. Emotions are drawn vividly, without mercy, making the reader digest fully the nature of what is being read. Personally, I think the mangaka has paid complete attention to how the things are supposed to be drawn rather than what; my view is that he has fixated himself upon nature, overall. How nature effects all reasons of outcome.

All in all, the art is inconspicuously remarkable. The expressions are instantaneous and it's as if it is not a manga being read but a film with moving pictures; watching as the scene changes oh-so-smoothly.
The character design is explicitly subliminal; meaning that every character's personality has been described to the last detail without having to spell it out. It's simply amazing how the reader can grasp the entire persona of the character's, even how unstable it may seem. Every character is unique, having their own problems, their own dilemmas, and their very own secrets kept away from prying eyes & ears.

Suzuki Amahiko is a disturbed individual with disparaging views of those around him, hating the world for being so unfair; he rarely tries to connect with the people he's with, and refrains from having any ties with them; he has always been shunned from society, moving from one place to another with parents who he knows aren't really his, and attempting suicide more than once. Then comes the girl who seems to be at the centre of it all, Kimura Arie; ever since the manga starts, I have thought of her to have lost all innocence from the day she achieved ethereal beauty; I sympathize for her – all she ever wanted was something everyone desires, having it all go against her in ways which would extract profanities from the reader's mouth; the life she has led would be the cruelest, and most unsettling of all. Komatsuzaki is an aggressive character who acts in unpredictable ways and whose actions have a veritable significance. Sakaki is the trio's homeroom teacher for whom Suzuki has somewhat mature feelings for; she injured one eye in an 'accident' which fits yet another puzzle of the story. There are a few more 'main' characters whose roles are noteworthy in themselves.

I must applaud Asano on how he achieved such character depth within a mere manga spanning almost 300 pages.

At the end of the day, this manga needs concentration in every single way. It teaches every reader something new, something different – what I learned, or got, from it, would be unlike some other reader's life-lesson learned. For me, it indulges in the credence that everyone has a role in life to play and that everyone plays a vital part in someone else's role. People living interrelated lives, having complicated mindsets, yet existing in a clandestine past, and living a lie – this is what Nijigahara Holograph is. Funny enough, it is a whirlwind of feelings with characters that have none.

Well! That was weird and depressing but also intriguing and disturbing.
I'd give it a 3.5 but not one that's strong enough to bump to 4.
I think Thomas Hobbes would really like this book, were he alive today.

Here's my quick introduction to this story:
An entire town is stuck in a loop of misery, despair, hopelessness, and butterflies.
Arie was an emotionally damaged young girl and talked about the monster who would end the world, a belief her mother had voiced before she left with her son and married another man, leaving Arie behind with her father and her mother’s butterfly necklace. However, a year later, the mother went missing and then was found, presumably by Arie, in a tunnel in town. A haunted tunnel.
That messed Arie up even more and her classmates decided she was too scary to live so pushed her down a well and she spent the next ten years in the hospital in a coma being raped at night.

From there, the people that surround Arie in one way or another are introduced and we see both what they'd been doing when Arie was an abused child as well as what they're doing now, ten years later (ten years? maybe it was fifteen. I don't remember now. I read this a week ago and that's way too long for my old memory) All these people are connected to each other, all the bits of the story lie with these varied and disturbed characters. Their lives have all been shattered and the source of their misery centers around Arie who is as the body of the butterfly necklace that was snapped in two.

Make sense?
No?
Yeah, that's because you actually have to read this book.
There's so much going on, so many little twists and turns and stabs and jabs.
And I liked it, I did, but I'm getting tired of moving forward in stories by going backward. All the jumping around was too much for me since I wasn't in the mood for such shenanigans.
However, once the story finished (it doesn't actually finish though it's also not set up for a sequel. It seems to have an open end) and I was able to look back and piece it all together, I was impressed. Also, depressed. Because this is not a happy tale, people. It's just not.

Story: ☆☆☆☆
Art: ☆☆☆☆☆

The one star is deducted by no fault of the manga itself--rather, it's a me problem. I feel like there are some subtle cultural references that I'm still missing, where an understanding of said references would have given me greater enjoyment and a deeper, more meaningful interpretation of this story as a whole.

That said, you don't need to be acquainted with Japanese children's games or philosophical daoism to enjoy this manga, but it is one of those narrative designs where only after a second read-through do we get a better appreciation of the messages and symbolism injected in the story.

The description doesn't really tell you much about the plot, and I guess neither does this review. There are plenty other reviews out there that has summarised it much better than I ever can--honestly, I don't even know where to begin explaining what happens in this book.

Suffice to say, this story is a tragedy with multiple ways of interpretation. At face value, it is the story of a group of people who must come to terms with what they have done in the past. It is the story of trauma and its manifestations, and how it hides itself so well, people cannot see it for what it is.

Unmarked spoilers ahead, so proceed at your own risk--though calling them spoilers is a bit of a stretch, because most are my own interpretation of this manga so could very well be way off the mark. Understand that this story is not told in a linear fashion. Past and present events are interspersed throughout the chapters, and so weaving them together to form a coherent line (or circle?) involves some degree of subjective interpretation.

It all begins with a tale Arie Kimura weaves, of a monster lurking in the Nijigahara tunnel--the same tunnel where she found the body of her murdered mother--and how it will one day bring about the end of the world.
She becomes the target of her classmates' tormenting--whether it is out of fear or jealousy or misplaced anger or unrequited desire--and eventually they decide to appease the monster by sacrificing her into its lair. An act that leaves Arie in a coma, and her tormentors forced to live with their guilt; some feeling more guilty than others.

While this is chiefly the story of Arie and the horrific acts and people around her, the tale is told through the perspective of Suzuki Amahiko; a young boy with many traumas of his own. His parents divorced when he was very young, his mother taking custody of him and remarrying before she mysteriously vanishes--leaving Amahiko with his step-father and, eventually, a step-mother who makes it clear to him that she'd prefer it if he were dead.

All this occurring before Amahiko was even 10 years old.

So, whilst miles away in another village, a group of seven children pushes Arie Kimura down a well, Suzuki Amahiko jumps off the roof of his own school building.

And herein lies the source of all the mystery and murkiness to Nijigahara Holograph. Amahiko survives his jump, but, so traumatised and disenchanted by his life and the people around him, he blocks all memory of everything that has happened in his past. Indeed, we will not even learn of his adoptive status until the very end of the story.

Following his hospitalisation, Amahiko and his parents move to Nijigahara, where a swarm of butterflies have begun to inexplicably appear and infest the village.

The fact that butterflies symbolises both the grace and innocence of girlhood as well as the manifestation of departed souls is just the tip of the iceberg.
Whether you want to interpret this story under a supernatural lens: Spiritual possession and godly ascension ... time loops and the soul of a mother, refusing to carry on until her daughter is safe--or a more grounded, psychological frame: Trauma and coping mechanisms, how it shapes and perpetuates in adulthood; recovery or decline, rising above or sinking below, finding atonement or overwhelming guilt ... freedom or repression--is entirely up to you. Whichever way you see it, at the root of it all are these connecting lives, each ending in their own personal form of divine justice.

Arakawa Maki. The envious girl who grows into a woman incapable of genuine emotion and love; who finally "wins" the object of her desires simply because he has nowhere else to go. Thus the empty shell of a girl gets to keep her empty shell of a relationship.

Higure Makoto. The brother who murders his own parents and sister, obsessed by a girl he later rapes; a man whose only reprieve from life is speaking to a motionless doll, obsessing over a story whose ending--due to his own faults--he will never know.

Komatsuki Kouta. The boy whose guilt turns him into a bully, who ends up sharing the same fate as that of the love he failed to protect. But while Arie's coma protects her from the world's cruelty, the not-so-innocent Kouta--through supernatural intervention, psychological trauma, or both--delivers justice to those guilty of cruelty. Thus the silent coward turns into a silenced bully who in turn grows into a silenced man who cannot even show his face for fear of capture.

There are more, of course. I've only just scratched the surface. But this manga and its characters is too much to summarise all in one short piece, so I'll leave you to read and capture its essence yourself.

An elegantly brutal and supremely confident narrative labyrinth, rewarding the multiple readings that it demands. Highly recommended to fans of Kobo Abe, David Lynch, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

A complete masterpice
Tough as hell
It leaves you without words
It may need a re-read, no doubt!

One reservation I have with a lot of manga is the episodic nature of its production, and how this dictates narrative decisions. Like how there are episodes in Uzumaki which could be removed without any loss whatsoever to the whole, or the constant cycles of action that bear the reader along across many issues in even something as cohesive as Akira. Even Taiyo Matsumoto's narratives unfold in a series of essentially compartmentalized sections. I'm listing all things that I like, or even love, here, but I recognize the limitations the form tends to place on long narrative arcs that build subtly across a lot of themes and plot movements.

I don't know much about how Nijigahara Holograph was composed, but it seems like it couldn't possibly have originated as a serial. With its multiple timelines, character continuity across 11 years, obliquely explained crucial actions that may occur off-camera, or go unexplained for hundreds of pages, and elaborate sustained montaging, it would just be too confusing for a reader to wait a month and pick up all the threads again. Even here, in a single volume, divided into chapters (though chapters that vary in length and do not exactly compartmentalize their plot, character, or theme, all of which unfold over longer stretches--though still providing a meaningful structure!), this can be confusing, but in the best way, the way that suggests complexity of concept, ambiguity, and multiple readings, in the way that comics rarely dare to be.

This is brilliant, haunting stuff. The past's long claw marks on the present, the destructive forces that churn beneath the everyday, dark portents, mysteries that switch direction suddenly in a flash of motion in the corner of the eye.

I saw this in the library, was intrigued by the cover, and checked it out. I shouldn't have. I don't understand much of what is going on in the story, but what I do understand is bleak and depressing.

This is the first book I’ve read by Inio Asano and unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not a terrible graphic novel, I just that couldn’t understand what was going in the story. I found it even more confusing with the way the story keeps switches from various time frames. I couldn’t tell who was the main character. Also, was this a murder mystery, phycological thriller, both or something else? Again, this is not a bad story, but I wasn’t able to enjoy it because I couldn’t grasp what was going on. There might be an allegory or hidden message I couldn’t comprehend, so the story may be enjoyable for someone else that can pick that up. The dialogue seems to be written well and reads well, but the plot is confusing. The redeeming factor with this graphic novel, is the artwork is really good.

Patriarchy sure loves dressing in the garbs of misanthropy, eh?

A disturbing and chaotic read.

This tale is based around a chilling myth that in the local area a young girl, who is repeatedly reincarnated, appears with the ability to predict the future and announces that a monster lives in a tunnel that will bring about the end of the world. The townsfolk, fearful of this revelation, sacrifice the girl and her reincarnations to appease the creature, not realising that with each death it grows ever larger.

This myth and it's telling leads the main character, a beautiful yet disturbing pale child, to be thrown down a well by her school mates where upon she slips into a coma and there remains until the end of the book. However, even though she is now silenced, her actions and her story live on through her affect and interactions with the school bully, a suicidal boy in her class and a man who is revealed as raping her just the year before she was "sacrificed".

This book is particularly complicated and disjointed as there are multiple time lines that Asano jumps through and the story's narrator seems to switch randomly as well. It's a book to be read slowly and more than once and it takes some careful consideration to understand what is "real" and what isn't, who is who and how they are all related and whether the ethereal yet violence inspiring butterflies are the creature or simply an unusual ecological qwerk.

You will walk away with a feeling of doubt about what you have read, confusion about the seemingly uncaring violence that springs up sporadically throughout and a feeling of disturbance about how so much of the violent behaviour is directed at this one child/woman for no real reason whatsoever.

It would have got 5 stars of it had been a little less disjointed and had not lent so heavily on violence and rape to get its message across.

This might sound bad...
But I think he'd be better off not waking up at all.

A butterfly portends on Amahiko's rooftop reality confession, settling on a head there and corner of eye consciousness as he doesn't know if he is dreaming. His decrepit wheelchair confined adopted father calls out someone's name, not Amahiko and not for now.

Everywhere butterflies, they only live a day and which is this. They wish it had never happened, straight down from the gut. Sometimes they are children again but without absolution of a way to be different. As young adults no one can forget. In the tunnels and in the pit where a decade past the collective school children pushed their classmate Arie. She remains in her hospital, a serene smile of the dreaming. The only people who smile in Nijigahara Holograph are the comatose and dead to the living. Today the homes are darkened places of stale don't get out of bed today, don't move on, sit in front of the tv and sick promise of no future. A nightmare loop of ruts. I felt suffocated by the unshaven faces and it takes too long for the next day to be no different.

Maki has brief sex with men she knew as boys. A girl crush still beats wings in her heart. There he is again, Kohta. Maybe this time. Flutters of promise, maybe, or a way to forget. Or to beat Arie, the girl that her brother and the young Kohta who had preyed on and raped child Arie.

Their this never happened and this isn't happening never moving on moved me into the dreaming-notdreaming more than anything else. Another classmate is a police officer and he must visit Arie's hospital bed one time. There's no way to get her her life back. But to look at what they did. There isn't any absolution for anyone in 'Holograph'. Asano couldn't imagine any. No moving on is possible. Their teacher Sakaki is today leaving her husband and children. He's from her teaching days. She married him because it must have taken more effort to meet his wanting looks day in and out. It must take too much effort to bear under every day needing of life. (Her husband must be the only male in this entire book who looks at a female who isn't Arie.) Her face is bandaged from when she rescued a child Arie from her rape. He smashes a brick into her face. The teacher hates Arie, blames her for disfigurement. For the loss of the day to day end's will. The students get up everyday and have to go to school with each other. Cold hearted monsters. The teacher thinks about doing or not doing something the way a bed bound depressive doesn't think about getting up today. The gravity of thinking of not doing anything keeps her there. She sort of takes Amahiko under her wing, watches from an impartial wishy washy place. I kept thinking she was going to tell him how to be like her, the secrets of how to be the normal kid who gets by. I never knew how to do that. Not that he wasn't normal, really, on the outside. What I don't get is the gang was bullying other children into jumping out of windows. Arie isn't the only kid who had it bad but she is the only one who matters because they are casualties of reality and she haunts. The "not too late for her". This pissed me off so so so so much. Was everyone born already bad except for this one kid? (I had a bad feeling that the way to be apart was to be apart and know that it is everyone else who is rotten.)

Fifth grade Amahiko meets a butterfly and feels he has met God. Today he is himself again. But what he imagines he could do with his heart swelling power is get rid of the whole world if he wanted. Teach shows him a sunset that could almost get rid of every bad feeling, for now. No one in 'Holograph' can deal with any feeling than by destroying it but that one time a sunset was enough. Even the butterflies mean something damning. While he's dreaming his father has a hard on to little Arie's back of the head. Amahiko sees another classmate, Kohta's kid sister Narumi. They taunt her and call her thermos (he doesn't know why). She's always writing in a book. They thought they pushed Arie into the well to stop her from talking. To stop her judgement of feeding monsters and mob injustice. Kohta stops Narumi who knew about Arie. He burns their home with her in it. I've read theories that the ending means everything is from the bed dreaming of Arie. Maybe her nightmare on the rest of them. Or none of it ever happened. I hate the dream theory (and the book opens on a dream theory so it isn't like I could get away from it). Their chance to atone for what they did, not change the past, but learn from it is taken away. Amahiko meets his sister again and she says don't you remember. Their mother is talking some very-Arie prophetic shit that God gets rid of everyone and this hell is their eternity. Dad can't deal with this and strangles her in front of the kids. Why violence against one person's opinion on humanity is the only way anyone deals with anything in 'Holograph' I can't stomach. It was as annoying as when every episode ever of Doctor Who was written off as "Oh, it all happened because they time traveled. It happened because it happened." Way to obliterate the point of human existence is to exist in it. Nothing happened, it was all a dream. The police officer is talking about another victim to the tunnel. He believes in the monster after all and butterflies swarm his protesting face. I believe that people would want to believe in a monster, an off the hook, it was fated to be.... But no, 'Holograph' was the most moving, the most real stakes to me, when it was a weight on them. A desire for it to never happen that doesn't come true. Wake up every day and you aren't a different person who did something so terrible. Try to not do it again, or keep living in darkness, no hope to find whole places. The only way out is death except for the one who is judging. Is this why only the unliving are the only ones who can smile? Because they are above the living? Fuck no! That's not it at all. They pull you down with them sometimes, sometimes you gotta go find some sunset and feed off of it. Asano's artwork is great (and I've liked a lot his other stuff I've read), like having to live with people strangling. But this is bugging the crap out of me. (I read 'Holograph' in August.) Amahiko meets an old man who has his name on that roof in the start and in the end. He tells him this:

No matter how awful the world is... you must be strong of will.
The direction your life takes... is for you to decide.

A striking and enigmatic work. This is one of those books that one reads again and again, noting nuances and details each time that one never noticed before. The tale is non-linear with a fairly large cast. There's a slow, dream-like quality to this book. It reminds me, in some ways, of the films of Peter Greenaway. And, like those movies, at the end of it all, the reader may not necessarily understand everything, but the beauty, richness and import of the work are undeniable.

I think I'm going to need to reread this one.

I might need to read it at least 5 times to understand everything.

*Cuatro estrellas y media. Mi favorito de Inio Asano de los que he leído hasta ahora.

I’m just gonna express myself through a series of gifs...

I’m trying to draw my own conclusions about what exactly the story is about but my thoughts are jumbled and going a bit like this...

-so like was this man raping a comatose patient cuz I saw hospital and then the sex (which confirmed it for me later on the story).
- does this dad wanna bone his daughter cuz he got a straight up boner
-does this kid wanna bone his teacher cuz he also got a straight up boner
- ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE KILLERS and with weird sense of humours.
- Shit, was he fucking his sister?
- are they twins???
- this isn’t horror this is craziness

So yeh....I still don’t know.

Una pieza retorcida donde Asano nos muestra su talento para tejer historias desde todas las perspectivas posibles. La paranoia generalizada del pequeño pueblo en el que transita la historia, lo embarga todo y revolotea en torno a las víctimas de un fuego cruzado entre lo monstruoso y lo luminoso.

Recomendable hacer lectura y relectura para entender la relación entre todos los personajes.

Final destacable que, aunque se salta las leyes la lógica narrativa, funciona perfectamente en el circo de los monstruos que hemos presenciado durante toda la historia.

I need to talk about this book with someone...soon.

The art is stunning.

Absolutely gorgeous

The effect is so well done in contrast to how crappy EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. PORTRAYAL. IS.

I'm not sure if I'm more amazed at the art or the the sophisticated storyline. It's not that I'm amazed at any stereotypical reasons like a comic "being smart, etc." I just can't believe that the coherence wasn't lost along the way. You pay attention to such detail it detracts from the storyline---you focus on the storyline, and you're stunned at all the little details.

I'm telling you, I can't begin to unpack this book because I'll need all of my 19,000 characters left. I really do need to connect and have a conversation because I read this book twice, and then scanned through pages I had bookmarked to make sure I inhaled the gist of the story. You suck in all the beauty and misery, and then I wanted to make sure I exhaled the falsities and inhaled the realities.

Even so, I still may not have quite worked it out!

WTF I've just read. The craziest manga I've read after Fire Punch. Reading this is certified traumatic experience™️

It's a very dark manga about a group of people whose fates were entangled after they did heinous things just to satisfy their selfishness. They did so many awful things to innocent person just because of lust, jealousy, emptiness, anger, etc. (like killing, raping, bullying) There's a girl who's in coma because of those things. And the story is from the point of views of the perpetrators and their traumas because all the shits they did to that girl.

Perhaps it was meant to show the ugly, dark side of humankind or perhaps there were some allegory in it. But I can only see it as a group of fucked up people who I would gladly burn. In a way the storytelling style is poetic and surrealist tho, it seems it has its own charms to some people. Some others I think might be disgusted by everythings.

Keywords: manga, slice of life, tragedy, trauma, murder, surreal, nonlinear timeline, dark, horror
Trigger warning: suicide, murder, gore, rape, bullying, domestic abuse, pedophilia

I picked up this manga based on the beauty of the cover art, and while I liked the art in this one, I did not understand what was going on for most of the story.

I knew going in that this was a horror story, and I quite liked how the author shows that what is often most horrifying is not some unknown bogeyman, but often the people around us. There is clearly trauma of various types in this story, and some of those scenes are shown in ways that made me pause for several minutes. However, I was confused as to what was going on, and the fact that there were multiple timelines only added to my confusion. The little I understood was brilliant, but unfortunately, that light at the end of the tunnel never did clear things up for me.

Una de las historias más raras y enrevesadas que he leído. Situada a la vez en el presente, pasado y futuro, es difícil seguir una trama nada cómoda y muy compleja.
Casi es obligada una relectura para entender mínimamente los personajes. Pese a eso, o gracias a eso no sabría decir, es un manga adictivo y que produce a la vez sensaciones confusas.
Es a la vez desagradable, con un personaje psicopático, otros sumisos, abusos... alternando con pasajes casi poéticos, sobre todo los relacionados con las omnipresentes mariposas que parecen intervenir en la historia.
Un manga para adultos con profundidad (demasiada) y una historia diferente para pensar un rato después de leerla.

Well… WTF??
An absolute chaotic yet disturbing and strange journey to the minds of monsters. It was kinda distracting storyline 100% weird characters.

So many trigger warning, not enough time to process it. In the end the best thing about Nijigahara Holograph is just the drawing style. This book will haunt you while you don't think about it. That's why i'm not recommend it at all. SMAD! 🤧

It seems like it tends to give out a deep , more dark aspect of life, but it doesn't. It's bland and sad.

The difficulty of thematically parsing Nijigahara Holograph is complicated by its disjointed, non-linear plot — making it a challenging text in the first place — but, I suspect, is actually due to the overwhelming extent to which it seems to dramatise philosophical Daoism, with which many Western readers may be totally unfamiliar. The most explicit indication that Daoist thought inflects the fates of NH’s various characters occurs when Miss Sakaki reads the tale of Chuang Tzu to her class, better known as Zhuangzi’s allegorical butterfly dream. Asano thus provides the reader with a clear referent for the text’s butterfly imagery, whose ubiquitousness then points back to the significance of its Daoist source.

If the incorporation of the tale of Chuang Tzu in chapter nine seems like a late invitation to attend NH’s Daoist subtext, other, albeit non-verbal, clues are present from page one, where we begin with a butterfly suspended in a white void. Here, Asano visually renders the first lines of the forty-second chapter of the Daodejing:

The Dao generates Oneness.
Oneness generates Twoness.
Twoness generates Threeness.
Threeness generates the ten thousand things.

As we follow the butterfly onto the next page, its winged form fragments successively, first in two, then in three, the sequence then concluding with a panel replete with butterfly wings, mostly in states of fracture (i.e. “the ten thousand things”). The numerical formulation that Asano’s butterfly imagery parallels expresses Daoist cosmogony, wherein one and two correspond with the major Daoist concepts of non-presence and presence respectively, the combination of which – three – being ‘the fountain head of multiplicity, of the manifold world of the ten thousand things’, as Hans-Georg Moeller helpfully explains. Without elaborating the constituents of this cosmogonical scheme, it is enough to say that Asano could do little more to communicate that a Daoist worldview informs NH at the most fundamental of levels than by opening with an illustrated conception of the universe and its creative process according to Daoism.

However, for all doors whose knobs I’ve otherwise always only fruitlessly jiggled that Daoism would seem to open, I’m reluctant to deem it a kind of interpretive “master key”. Perhaps because those doors were personally never themselves barriers for so much of what I appreciate in NH. No doubt partially inspired by the blurb’s own regrettable description of Asano’s work as “Lynchian”, floating around are a few cursory, off-comparisons with the films of David Lynch. But Lynch has never, I believe, shown much interest in the interior lives children and the small and grand cruelties and kindnesses in which they trade. Nor is he known for counterposing violence and enigmas with moments of an almost militant hopefulness, beauty and grace. Against the prevailing tendency to describe this as a harrowing slog that leaves one bewildered and depressed (not to say that it is not that, exactly), I’ve considered NH from the first generous in consolatory gifts, and its parting one, in the text’s final pages, is not characterised by brutality or bleakness of vision, but lyrical and quite literal uplift. And the narrative's frightening intimacy with suffering, pain and loss is, too, part of the kind of ambitious caress that the text ventures: tender and totally ungloved.

Lo primero que les voy a decir es que no se si comprendí muy bien lo que acabo de leer. No se si algún día lo voy a llegar a comprender aunque creo que podría irme directo a algun blog o foro y ver diferentes reflexiones y explicaciones sobre lo que pasa acá... porque todo es bastante confuso y retorcido.

De más esta decir que tiene un TW gigante este manga. Se los avisé.

Creo que no voy a volver a ver las mariposas de la misma manera, gracias Inio Asano! jajajaja

Fuera del pequeño chiste de las mariposas, creo realmente que no llegué a comprender todo lo que pasa. Las lineas de tiempo se me mezclan, los sucesos, los personajes, los diálogos... todo es bastante confuso y cuando terminé de leer el manga lo primero que pensé fue en cómo puntuarlo. Porque la verdad es que no comprendí casí nada. Esas tres estrellas son más bien un 2.5. Aunque tal vez luego de leer algún foro explicativo podría comprender un poco mejor las cosas.

This is worth reading solely for the visual language -- the paneling and pacing is excellent, and Asano uses black space to striking effect. The art itself is striking and effective, but the actual layout of the pages is what stood out the most.

It's hard to comment much in terms of content; I feel incredibly unqualified to really dissect the story. It's one that invites multiple re-readings. Nijigahara Holograph is a patchwork story, and Asano slots it together well--not neatly, but masterfully. What starts out as a confused jumble of striking images falls into a cohesive, albeit still confusing, narrative. The ending worked for me; I think other people might find it a little twee, but it felt good to read, and it didn't come cheap.

I do want to say something about the feel of the piece, because I so rarely find words that resonate just right with me. There was something in the bleakness of the story that felt really, frighteningly familiar, a kind of tiredness. I think that's the thread that made the manga really work for me--without that familiarity I'd probably find it veered too much toward pseudo-philosophical torture porn. As it is I'm not quite sure how I feel about the way the narrative dealt with rape. It's one of those things I don't feel qualified to talk about as I feel like Nijigahara Holograph speaks very specifically within Japanese culture.

It's worth reading and it's worth rereading. I liked it very much, insomuch as you can like a book like this one. Maybe someday I'll collect my thoughts enough to actually meaningfully interpret the story. Until then this will have to suffice.

DNF @ ch. 7 Buddy read with my daughter. My choice.

?!?!? This was confusing. I had to quit.

This is a flipped book, so it has to be read backward. When I jokingly told my daughter, "What if I want to read this front to back instead of back to front?", she started laughing and said, "I don't want give away anything."
I asked why she kept laughing and she said, "It would make about as much sense if you read it that way."

Uhm...yeah. She was right. This made no sense. The fact that all the characters looked the same didn't help matters.

Well, at least I can say the artwork was 5 star. Beautiful artwork.