Solanin - Inio Asano
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| Image generated by AI |
Solanin isn’t a manga about adventure, but about that blurry phase between youth and adulthood. Inio Asano—once again—unfolds a raw, unfiltered sensitivity. We follow ordinary characters in an ordinary life—and that’s exactly where its power lies.
Meiko and Taneda live in Tokyo. They’re together. They’re in love. But they’re stuck. She works an office job she doesn’t care about, he clings to his guitar. And around them, their friends do what so many young adults do: they survive. They hesitate. They postpone. There’s no grand quest in Solanin. Just a quiet question humming beneath it all: is this really what life is?
This manga moved me deeply because it doesn’t try to beautify anything. It talks about inertia, the fear of becoming an adult, the urge to create even if it leads nowhere. It’s about music as release, social pressure, and grief, too. It’s an honest work—never melodramatic. Every page is simple, yet true. Every emotion restrained, but real.
Asano perfectly captures what words often fail to say. The silences, the slow gestures, the urban landscapes full of emptiness. There are no heroes in Solanin. Just lost people—like all of us, at some point. And yet, this manga is never pitiful. It holds deep affection for its characters. It lets them fall, fail—but also get back up.
It’s a short work, but one that lingers. I thought about some parts of Solanin months after reading it. Not because they were spectacular, but because they felt right. Because they voiced that feeling many carry in silence: the urge to scream, without knowing what to say.