Manga like Fune ni Sumu

also known as Boat Life

Genres: Slice of Life

What is Boat Life about?

Status: Finished

Serialized between 1996 and 2000, Boat Life stars novelist Tsuda Kenta, a lightly veiled stand-in for the artist, Tsuge Tadao, himself, as he pursues a life of reprieve and reverie on a small, makeshift house boat on a river outside of Tokyo. Based loosely on the artist’s own daily life, this charming story follows the hapless protagonist on a series of magical absurdist quests, featuring a panoply of personable characters, including a drunkard fisherman, a pervy monk, a talking corpse, a senile hermit, and a half-supportive, half-doubtful wife and adult son. Most of the scenes take place on the Tonegawa River in Chiba, a favorite fishing spot of Tsuge’s. Others occur at the artist’s home or at Joker, a jeans and apparel shop the Tsuges opened in 1977. While fans of Trash Market and Slum Wolf will enjoy this late-career elaboration of après-guerre themes Tsuge has been exploring since his debut in the legendary alt-manga magazine Garo in the late ‘60s, fans of his brother Tsuge Yoshiharu’s The Man Without Talent will appreciate the more relaxed and optimistic take on middle-aged reclusion and the grind of work and family. Note: Chapter count includes one extra.

Tags: Male Protagonist
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Here is a list of Manga similar to Fune ni Sumu

The Man Without Talent

Munou no Hito

Also known as The Man Without Talent.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

The Man Without Talent is an unforgiving self-portrait of frustration. Swearing off cartooning as a profession, Tsuge takes on a series of unconventional jobs—used-camera salesman, ferryman, stone collector—hoping to find success among the hucksters, speculators, and deadbeats he does business with. Instead, he fails again and again, unable to provide for his family, earning only their contempt and his own. The result is a dryly funny look at the pitfalls of the creative life, and an off-kilter portrait of modern Japan.



Tags: Autobiographical , Seinen , Philosophy , Rural , Primarily Adult Cast , Male Protagonist , Drawing
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A Drifting Life

Gekiga Hyouryuu

Also known as A Drifting Life.

Status: Finished
Genres: Comedy , Drama , Romance , Slice of Life

Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics storytelling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists around the world. Now the visionary creator of "The Push Man and Other Stories" and "Good-bye" has turned his incisive, unflinching gaze upon himself. Over ten years in the making, "A Drifting Life" is Tatsumis' most ambitious, personal, and heart felt work: an autobiographical bildungsroman in comics form.Using his life long obsession with comics as a frame work, Tatsumi weaves a complex story that encompasses family dynamics, Japanese culture and history, first love, the intricacies of the manga industry, and most importantly, what it means to be an artist. Alternately humorous, enlightening, and haunting, this is the masterful summartion of a fascinating life and a historic career.



Tags: Autobiographical , Historical , Drawing , Non-fiction , Tragedy , Work , School , Seinen
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