HER: REVIEW OF THE MANGA DYNIT

6 self-contained stories to understand what we know, what we understand, what is around us

I love girls who fall and face, then full of mud and with skinned knees get up on their own crying, to start running! I wrote these stories out of my love for women who struggle and struggle. To show how cute and tender they are and how impossible it is not to love them "
Her is a josei, a single volume by Tomoko Yamashita, famous author of the manga Boy's Love, published at home by Shodensha and published in Italy by Dynit for the Showcase series. Translated by Asuka Ozumi, available at a price of 16.90 for a volume of 165x240 mm.

The toxic superficiality that grips our throat is exhausting, forcing us to gobble up definitions, explanations, clichés and banalities without giving us the opportunity to react most of the time. When it comes to women it is always like this, everyone has their own idea, everyone knows how they are or worse still they rejoice in their not knowing; concepts that taken word for word may well have that glimmer of meaning but what bothers is the scorching depersonification, reducing everything to ideological schemes if not bar offenses. Her is a manga about women, about life, about fear and guess what ... about people.

 can not help but reiterate how the issues are within everyone's reach. Without going too far, I will show you what Her is. Let's start with Ide (the girl on the cover), a girl with a grim look and a perpetually pissed off attitude, a 25-year-old like many who would like to be loved but who has no idea what that means. An interesting story and like all highly introspective, although the ending is the most bizarre of all, leaving us with a feeling of estrangement that represents a unicum in the whole work; I leave it to you to judge whether it was a worthy conclusion or not. Immediately after we are with Onofusa, a 31-year-old hairdresser (just that of Ide), a woman who is afraid of the future, of the unknown. A handsome client boasts to her of his betrayals to his wife and it is a pleasure to experience Onofusa's reflections on the matter and to let ourselves be carried away by the rest of the story. It is a chapter that more than anything else is about respect and understanding what mistakes you should never make, even on your darkest day.


The third story is the one that in my view is the best: Kozue, a 16-year-old girl sees her certainties collapse when she discovers that her elderly neighbor is a lesbian; a story that enhances the classic adolescent themes but for this very reason simpler to propose and of greater impact, a chapter that can create a solid bridge even between several generations of readers. Let's quickly return to more mature themes: Nishiura is a 34-year-old woman and colleague of Ide, who at 15 discovered that her mother was cheating on her father but after nineteen years she still has many problems to overcome this trauma. A story that can be summed up in one sentence: “it is said that everything that happens to a woman, fortunes and misfortunes, comes from the mother”. The value of certain words can be subjective, but the intent to show us a path in search of something lost, something essential to be able to live with our heads held high, is undoubtedly successful.