Just So Happens
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Summary
'I still remember arriving in the city for the first time... It wasn't easy... But here, London, is my home.'
Yumiko is a young Japanese woman who has made London her home. She has a job, a boyfriend; Japan seems far away. Then, out of the blue, her brother calls to tell her that her father has died in a mountaineering accident.
Yumiko returns to Tokyo for the funeral and finds herself immersed in the rituals of Japanese life and death – and confronting a decision she hadn’t expected to have to make.
Just So Happens is a graphic novel by a young artist and storyteller of rare talent. Fumio Obata’s drawing, in particular, is marvellous in its power and delicacy.
Yumiko is a young Japanese woman who has made London her home. She has a job, a boyfriend; Japan seems far away. Then, out of the blue, her brother calls to tell her that her father has died in a mountaineering accident.
Yumiko returns to Tokyo for the funeral and finds herself immersed in the rituals of Japanese life and death – and confronting a decision she hadn’t expected to have to make.
Just So Happens is a graphic novel by a young artist and storyteller of rare talent. Fumio Obata’s drawing, in particular, is marvellous in its power and delicacy.
Reviews
Just So Happens feels so richly intimate... [Obata] is a talent to watch. I like his elegant, understated drawings, which hint at the manga stories he must have read as a boy. Bullet trains, Shinto temples, shopping malls, sushi restaurants: he does them all beautifully. His storytelling, too, is crazily accomplished.
Rachel Cooke, Observer