Story & Art: Inio Asano
Translation: Jocelyne Allen
Touch-up + Lettering: Joanna Estep
Design: Shawn Carrico
Editor: Pancha Diaz
Downfall portrays the collapse of an artist past his prime; succumbing to pitfalls of cynicism and escapism.
What They Say:
What does it mean to be a successful artist? Is it a matter of critical acclaim, or is it simply about selling the most copies? Every creative-type comes to this junction at one point or another. For some, the answer they find inspires them to strive forward and elevate their artistry. But for others, the weight of it all comes crashing down on them.
Downfall follows Kaoru Fukazawa, an accomplished mangaka whose long-running series has just come to a close. But Fukazawa’s best years are behind him and finding the motivation for a new series has put his back against the wall. The pressures of mass appeal, industry trends, and dwindling relationships have led Fukazawa to hate the profession he dedicated his life to. A quasi-autobiographical tale, Inio Asano’s depiction of the struggling artist is grim, self-deprecating, and plainly pessimistic.
The Review
Content (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
“When I sat down with a blank page for the first time in a long time, it spread out endlessly before me. I had trouble breathing. If I were still in my teens, I might have raced along innocently on the infinity of that empty page. If I were in my twenties, I would’ve been spurred on by the anxiety and frustration of not being someone yet. I could’ve used all that angst. I slipped through most of my thirties knowing what it was like to be accepted by others and feeling the pain of the expectations those people put on me. All that’s left to me here and now is a worn-out body and some money in the bank. My joy, my sadness, the business of being human – I put it all into my manga. There’s nothing left that I want to draw. At this point, I can’t even remember why I decided to be a manga artist in the first place.”
If you’ve followed Inio Asano’s career up to this point, this excerpt from the mid-section of Downfall will paint a clear picture of what this despairing tale is all about. Asano came into the industry at the turn of the century, landing his first major hit with the rock-n-roll love drama Solanin in 2005-06. A year later he would begin his highly acclaimed, coming-of-age series Goodnight Punpun, which would continue publication for over six years. Asano left a distinct mark on the manga landscape; his stories brazenly emit a juvenile energy, unafraid of the uncomfortable, exploring topics such as bullying, sex addiction, depression and suicide. Asano’s manga feels more modern than any of his contemporaries, and rightly so – he was, after all, writing these stories in his twenties. From What a Wonderful World! to A Girl on the Shore, the youthful spirit and sharp social criticism of a young artist bled onto each page in a pool of crimson red. Inio Asano has been the voice of a generation, fueled by a metaphysical unrest of growing up in the rapidly-changing digital age.
Now, two decades after his premiere, Asano is coming up on his 40th birthday. His latest long-running series Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction continues to push the envelope six years into publication, but Asano is aware that the well’s almost run dry. After 20 years of harrowing characters narratives and thought-provoking exposition, he must feel a bit burnt out. Downfall is a response to those feelings of waning interest and inevitable regression – when the lifestyle you pursued so passionately becomes an end to justify the means.
Downfall unquestionably takes influence from some of Asano’s personal history – from Fukazawa’s bright blonde hairstyle in his college years, to Asano using his own divorce as reference for Fukazawa’s failed marriage. But it would be naïve to assume this is a completely autobiographical account. Asano has always taken a realist approach to his characters, so it would only make sense to reference his own experiences in a story about a mangaka. In fact, I believe Asano created Downfall to save himself from Fukazawa’s fate, using his own book as a “How-Not-To” guide when he finds himself in a similar slump. This is the story of Kazuo Fukazawa, a bitter, self-serving man whose growing disdain for manga drove him to isolate himself from friends and family alike.
Things weren’t always so bad for Fukazawa. An aspiring manga artist fresh out of university, Fukazawa found work and eventually hit his stride with the series Sayonara Sunset, publishing for eight years and garnering him many fans. But all good things come to an end, and our story begins at that milestone in Fukazawa’s career. Sayonara Sunset releases its final volume and Fukazawa is an empty husk – he sees no future for himself in the manga industry, his marriage lacks even a shred of love, and any praise directed toward him is rebutted with an adverse, defeatist response. Fukazawa is depicted as a deplorable character from front to back, often digging himself into a pit of unnerving self-indulgence. His inability to continue writing manga leads to several forms of escape – visiting love hotels, reaffirming his talents from fans on Twitter, berating former coworkers, anything that’ll distract his mind for even a moment. But like his own manga, he is left unsatisfied by these experiences. For every fan rooting for him online, there are two more calling him “washed-up”. The love hotels act as a momentary release; even when he finds solace as a repeat customer for a girl named Chifuyu, a relationship built on stilts can’t last forever. Fukazawa pines for the days of his youth, when there was an unending sky in front of him. But now he feels as if he’s at the end of his road creatively and romantically. At one point he was the hot young talent, full of endless love and stories, prompting jealousy in the eyes of his tenured colleagues. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
To Fukazawa’s credit, Asano deliberately highlights the toxicity of the manga industry and the many factors that can weigh down on a creator. In any creative landscape, whether it be music, film or comics, an artist has to come to terms with several things: what/why you want to create, what the audience wants, and how much you’re willing to concede to those trends. Asano has some clear criticisms on how his industry functions and what people find valuable. Judging an artist based on book sales or writing stories that are trendy – no artist wants to accept such a reality, but when a Weekly Shonen Jump series lives or dies by a weekly popularity poll, the pressure to create a product that sells will drag any aspiring creator through the mud. Putting his career in perspective, I’m sure an artist as abstract as Asano was met with a lot of disapproval and negativity.
“Nobody will read something so pretentious!”
“*insert artist* hasn’t started a new series yet, they must be washed up!”
“If you have to ask for advice, I don’t think you have the talent for this.”
Downfall gives Asano the space to air his grievances, displaying an array of opinions like these from the peanut gallery. The manga and anime social sphere is filled with internet trolls, money-hungry editors and delusional fans, all of whom have an effect on the artist’s mind. But whereas many of Asano’s stories have some kind of silver-lining, Downfall does not have a satisfying redemption for Fukazawa.
Rather than continue to go against the grain, stressing over a story worth giving a shit about, Fukazawa accepts his fate and lets the tide wash him away. In the end, Fukazawa gets out of his slump and continues writing manga. In a way, he’s back on track to being a “successful” manga artist. But what does success mean here? Fukazawa no longer loves manga and he isn’t writing the story he truly wants to write. Success to him now means sales.
“When it comes to entertainment, soothing always wins out. That’s the law. As long as it sells.”
Throughout Downfall, Fukazawa looked down on everyone around him, and now he was no different than any of them. The atmosphere of this story is tenaciously bleak, even for an Asano work. The plot was a bit disjointed at times, which I think could have been fixed with an extra chapter or two, but overall I think Downfall accomplished what it set out to do.
Moving away from his unique brand of storytelling, Asano’s illustrations are always worth highlighting. Asano is well-known for his insanely detailed photo-sketched backgrounds and quirky character designs, but Downfall seems a bit toned-down compared to his other works. In a sense, I had a vague feeling that what we were seeing was a reflection of Fukazawa’s warped social lens. Aside from the full-colored prologue, giving life to Fukazawa’s formative years as a mangaka, the rest of Downfall creates a heavy air with busy streets, hazy skylines and cluttered apartment rooms. The one point in this story where Fukazawa may see things in a new light comes when he travels to the countryside with Chifuyu. But even that remote tranquility is disturbed by abandoned bookstores and the cat-eyed woman standing before him. Compared to the other sex workers whom Asano draws with unappealing features, Chifuyu is the spitting-image of what Fukazawa wants in a woman (which unsurprisingly reminds him of the cat-eyed girl he dated back in college). Asano deliberately created Fukazawa’s self-inflicted, oppressive atmosphere through his art and I commend him on that. And despite the overall tame visual presentation, Asano nails the emotional expressions of his characters (or in Fukazawa’s case, emotionless expressions).
In Summary:
Downfall isn’t my favorite Asano story, but it may be one of his most important. It’s an unfiltered take on the artist’s dilemma, trekking down the perilous road of a creator who’s lost their way. I can’t recommend it as an ‘enjoyable’ read, per se. The true value of Downfall lies in the dreary, unabashed emotions of its author and the intrinsic weight of his craft.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Rating: Mature
Released By: VIZ Signature
Release Date: February 18th, 2020
MSRP: $14.99
