Review - Kyou wo Aruku

Living in a rural village, I could recognize some people who usually pass in front of my house. There’s this one man in his 40s, with a bit of unbalanced way of walking, who passes walking in front of my house almost everyday no matter what day it is, either it is a working day or a holiday. To most people, it may seem strange to seeing him walking so far, but for people who already get used to, including I, a day I see him walking is just a regular day as usual.

One day, on my way to the city riding a motorbike, I got bumped up with the man, and man, it was four kilometers away from my house. I don’t exactly know where the man lives, but I often see him at “Puskesmas” (a kind of hospital for villagers) so I guess the man probably lives three kilometers away from my house on the other way. So it means the man walks like 14 km that day, and maybe even more. Sometimes I see him passing by in front of my house four times a day, two times at morning and two times at afternoon.

And no, the man isn’t jobless. He wears a “batik” clothes (formal clothes) that's similar to the one worn by Puskesmas staff, and the thing that I often sees the man in Puskesmas area just strengthen my guess that the man is one of the staffs.

Looking at the way the man walking, I bet the man had got some kind of illness. Maybe the man walks everyday for his healthy I once thought. I can only guess from very far, so even until today, when I am writing this, I still don’t know the actual reason.

In my area, politeness is something that is highly regarded, you should be polite to older people than you. Even more, you have to call people older than you as "Puang" (which literally means God but is also used to show politeness) before their name, or else you may end up being considered as not polite, or even rude. If you went here and met elementary kids, they would call you "Puang [insert your name]". So I never try to ask the man directly, and only guess this and that about the man. It's rare to find a younger generation greet older people first here.

Reading Kyou wo Aruku made me remember the walking man whose name I don’t know about. If the man were a manga writer, he most likely would write something similar to this manga. Despite I see the man really often, I never see him, even once, talking to other people on the way he usually passes by. So I bet, he must only think about what he sees and feels. I don’t know what he thinks about me who usually observe him from very far. Sometimes our eyes meet and I could just smile a bit while a bit nodding, meaning I respected him. I also don’t know what he thinks about the shop he usually passes where in front of it, he usually stops for a minute, observes that building. I also don’t know what he thinks about the weather when it’s a sunny day. And I told you, it’s about 30 - 33 degree of celcius at 12.00 – 14.00 pm here, and so on. All of them must play on his head only I bet, similar to what happens in this manga.

It's simple but mysterious

Kyou o Aruku is a really simple manga. It has a simple art style that many seinen-slice of life do and has only one significant character, the author himself. The story is also rather simple. It’s about his  daily walking, about what happened and what he thought about what happened along the way that makes this manga episodic. There was a chapter when he usually passed a cat that one day didn’t appear anymore. There was also a chapter where he was talking about a “good” middle schooler who looked angry every time, and about when he lost his key.

But despite being simple, it can be felt mysterious because he never tried to confirm what he thought. What he did was just only guessed what actually happened and what people around him thought. And sometimes it even gets more abstract when he didn’t told you what he guessed but brought you there. Sometimes, when reading this, I thought I would see something supernatural. What a manga!, it got so mysterious as more mysterious than most horror manga (that usually ends up being mindless gore) I've read.

The thing that I like about this manga is it could teach you something, about how being aware of our surrounding could change our view

In this modern society, human is programmed like a robot, starting from a kid until old. We are like robots who have a certain schedule, the time you should wake up, the time when you should prepare yourself to go to the office or school, the time when you back home, sleep and so on. And if you don't follow the "manual", that is set by society's expectation, you'll be an outcast.

Today world is like a survival game when you must follow the instruction or else you are gotten eaten. And following the instruction means doing things in a regular manner, day by day. The same things over and over. And some of us sick of that condition and our working environment becomes more of a burden and boring day by day. I can't count how many times my friends told me that he got bored of his job. Or when we got bored to go to school. Or when we got bored to study the same things over and over.

Coming from this manga's premise alone, some people may have an impression that this manga must be boring. What is the entertainment to read a story about an old man walking all the time in an episodic manga?. I actually can hear from some of you readers - no, I am obviously lying about that. What this manga shows me is you can actually enjoy the same activity that you do again and again by looking from a different perspective. History never repeats. The classification may be repeating, but it never actually repeats a hundred percent the same. There's actually some differences, but we often put our focus more on things we have a strong emotion to. While in fact, there's always an alternative view that we never knew or we knew but we did not acknowledged.

In the manga, the main character never get tired of walking. He is walking regularly that he pushes himself even if the situation and his body don't support him. He is aware of his surrounding, and that's what makes him enjoying the activity.

A regular activity can be interesting even without you trying to do it differently. It can be also enjoying when you are actively aware of your surrounding that's usually different from time to time.

今日を歩く (Walk Today) is written by Mikio Igarashi.

Note:

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