Life begins at 40, whether you're ready for it or not.
This is the story of a forty-year-old salaryman who quits his job to pursue his dream of becoming a manga artist--and the family that has to put up with him. While not terribly unhappy, Shizuo Oguro can't fight the feeling that something in his life just isn't right, so he walks away from his stable (yet boring) day job to embark on a journey of self-discovery. Unfortunately for his family, this journey also involves playing video games all day while his teenage daughter and elderly father support him. Will Shizuo succeed in creating a true manga masterpiece, or will he be just another dropout living a life of slack?
Shizuo Oguro is living his dreams… sort of. A complete waste of a human life until now, forty-year-old Shizuo breaks free from the corporate rat race and charts himself a fairly random and new career course: to become a published manga artist. Sure, he lacks the talent, discipline, or any other skill necessary to become a success in the manga industry—but that’s not enough to stop Shizuo!
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Shunju Aono was born in Ibaraki Prefecture. In 2001 he won the Young Magazine 45th Chiba Tetsuya Award in the Newcomers category, but was never published. In 2005, he won the 17th Ikkiman IKKI newcomers award and finally debuted with Somato (Kaleidoscope).
Gr 10 Up–It's hard to feel sympathy for someone like Shizuo Oguro. Instead of supporting himself and his daughter, he quits his corporate job of 15 years and decides to hang around the house playing video games and trying to become a manga artist. There is one major obstacle: he isn't very talented. He is frequently belittled by his father and by his coworkers, and he has to borrow spending money from his own daughter. His relationship with her is strained for another reason, as well: he discovers that she is working in the sex industry when he runs into her after his visit to a local "fashion health" (full-service) massage parlor. If there is something positive to be said for Oguro, it's that he is not judgmental of other people. Like Don Quixote, his outlook is often strangely positive even in the face of bad news. The story is sometimes funny, but in a poignant way rather than in a laugh-out-loud way. Aono's simple line drawings are less polished than the artwork usually found in manga, but they fit the story of this struggling artist. At the end of this volume, it appears that Oguro's daughter is willing to believe in his dream, and that this will motivate the man to one day become a published author. The next volume in the series will presumably demonstrate just how much of Oguro's dream will be realized.Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library
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