A Zoo In Winter

As far as warnings go, being a rendition of generally someone (who ID's as a man) life in the 60s coming to the big city, there's some stuff... I'm still not clear exactly on what I should be tagging, but here's a list of things that are noteworthy. A literal zoo to start with, then a naked model that Hamaguchi has a hard time not oggling, lots of indoor smoking, drinking, teasing Hamaguchi because he was dancing with a "crossdresser", girls having to hide from bad guys (not Hamaguchi) and a literal being inspired by dying girl bit.

Flipping over the book, to introduce how the creator has decided to portray themselves:
"The Pleasure of drawing. Kyoto, 1966. The young Hamaguchi is working for a textile manufacturer whilst dreaming of becoming an artist, when an incident at the zoo forces his hand. He moves to Tokyo at the invitation of an old school friend who also arranges an "interview" at the studios of the famous mangaka, Shiro Kondo. Here he quickly discovers both the long hours of meeting studio deadlines along with the nightlife and artistic haunts of the capital.
For the first time ever, multi-award winning Taniguchi recalls his beginnings in manga and his youth spent in Tokyo in the 60's. It is a magnificent account of his apprenticeship where all the finesse and elegance of the creator are united to illustrate those first emotions of adulthood."

Slow, like A Distant Neighbourhood, this coming of age story was interesting but not particularly entertaining. There's that strong sense of nostalgia again and the art is conventional but in a way that is still striking.

As far as gender and sexuality goes, that was certainly one of the biggest drawback. It just felt like such a closed off boy's club sort of dealio. Hamaguchi seems like a nice enough guy, and some of his co-workers are women. But women (cis women) remain such an incredible mystery to Hamiguchi that there just these wispy creatures on pedestal, fragile, and this case also literally dying. And since we are dealing with a mostly dichotomous view of gender here, this leaves very little for people who do not identify as male to really go with. I guess however, in contrast, his portrayal of women in a Distant Neighbourhood seems all the more empowering.

Class is not really touched upon as, while Hamaguchi clearly does not have much money, things always seem to work out for him. We certainly do not spend that much time focusing on negative things, and the hectic work schedule of manga production is shown to be exciting.

I'm not sure if his chronically ill girl friend really counts for disability representation, but if it does it ranks pretty high on the inspiration porn kind of representation. I mean, it's difficult to critique someone's real life, but Taniguchi could have toned down the fervent sincerity just a tad. He certainly had enough time to reflect, although little to none of that really seems to have come through in any way. Much more just a rose tinted view of his own past.