Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Saturn Apartments. 1 / Hisae Iwaoka ; translation by Matt Thorn



Far in the future, humankind has evacuated the earth in order to preserve it. Humans now reside in a gigantic structure that forms a ring around the earth, 35 kilometers up in the sky. The society of the ring is highly stratified: the higher the floor, the greater the status. Mitsu, the lowly son of a window washer, has just graduated junior high. When his father disappears and is assumed dead, Mitsu must take on his father's occupation. As he struggles with the transition to working life, Mitsu's job treats him to an outsider's view into the living-room dioramas of the Saturn Apartments.
 
The story revolves around Mitsu but there are reoccurring characters, like Jin who had been Mitsu's father's partner and now is showing Mitsu the ropes, and Sachi, a girl who lives in a cleaning-machine with her cat that perpetually crawls the surface of the ring. But mostly the stories revolve around the quirks of Mitsu's clients, and the various reasons why they shelled out the massive amount of cash required to get their window's cleaned.
 
I didn't think I would like this as I don't do well with Japanese manga but I the first copule of pages several times to get a feel for it and actually found myself enjoying it.