Travel
By Yuichi Yokoyama
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Graphic novel
Genre: contemporary
Read on 2018-05-23
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2018 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
Lots to love. The way Yokoyama portrays motion, perspective and space, textures and patterns is endlessly innovative and cool. His style of drawing individual faces is totally unique. The pace and humour of specific sequences (buying train tickets, smoking a cigarette) reminds me distinctly of Edgar Wright - one specific pint drinking sequence from The World’s End (2013) where characters slam downed drinks in Yokoyama-esque fashion comes to mind. On that note, some of the visual strategies for depicting motion here also remind me more generally of analogous practices in traditional cell animation.
Also reminded me on a plot/setting level of Snowpiercer (2013) directed by Bong Joon-ho - simply in that the momentum is carried quite successfully by the nested movements of characters on the train and the train itself.
Adding this to my collection of films/literature involving trains which heretofore includes:
the Harry Potter series (Hogwart’s Express)
Snowpiercer (2013)
Inception (2010) (anyone else still haunted by homocidal Marion Cotillard crooning “You’re waiting for a train...A train that will take you far away...”?)
Shanghai Express (1931) starring bisexual/diasporic icons Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong
Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express
Train to Busan (2016)
...wow I guess I really like trains
