World Map Room

nameless series #1

by Yuichi Yokoyama (Artist)

In this, Yuichi Yokoyama's long-awaited original graphic novel, published simultaneously in Japan and France, a stripped-back plot and minimal characterizations allow the artistry of Yokoyama's ethereal drawings to shine through. The events within the narrative are spare and enigmatic: Yokoyama is as much fascinated by shapes and visual effects as he is by character and plot. First, the protagonists visit a city; then, our heroes watch airplanes departing and arriving at an airport; next, they go on board a ship and cross a river. Eventually, they arrive at a building where a man welcomes and guides them to the "world map room," where they inspect a library. Eventually they leave, and reach a pond with a sunken ship. Their guide starts to explain the ship's history, and slowly, with casual suddenness, the novel comes to a close. Yokoyama is the author of "Travel," "New Engineering," "Color Engineering" and "Garden" (all published by PictureBox). He was the subject of a one-man show at The Kawasaki City Museum in 2010, and has exhibited in galleries and museums in Tokyo, Singapore, Rome and San Francisco. He lives and works in the suburbs of Tokyo.

Genres: Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Japan, Science Fiction, Comics Manga

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2013

About the author

Yuichi Yokoyama is a Japanese cartoonist and visual artist.
Yokoyama was born in 1967 in Miyazaki. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Musashino Art University in 1990 and initially pursued a career in fine arts.
Towards the end of the 90's Yokoyama turned his focus to manga. His cartooning style, blending modernist abstraction and comics, has been described as "neo-manga". His work has appeared in the alternative magazines Comic Cue, Mizue and Saizô. Among his books are New Engineering (2004), Travel (2006), Garden (2007), Outdoors (2009), Baby Boom (2009), World Map Room (2013), Iceland (2016) and Plaza (2019). Many of his manga have been translated in English and French.
Presently, Yokoyama is also active as a contemporary artist and an illustrator for the press and publishing houses in various countries.

Reviews

[Jan Philipzig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trippy yet highly structured, accepting yet alienating - weird stuff! There is not much of a plot, but the vaguely futuristic, unfamiliar, warped, shrill, distorted tone of World Map Room definitely did something to my brain. Recommended to fans of experimental comics!

[Tony Vacation · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yuichi Yokoyama’s World Map Room is a droll, minimalist satire of manga (Japanese comic books) which focuses on three geometrically-stylish young punks who arrive in a big, geometrically stylish city and proceed to make their way to a big, indoor, geometrically stylish garden, where they are expected for a an important meeting whose import is never revealed. Along the way, our three monotone heroes discuss the frequency of low-flying airplanes, the unfriendliness of the city’s residents, flip through a few uninteresting books, don’t mind having an afternoon drink, ride on a boat, watch a bunch of cars come out of a factory, and gather around an artificial lake to look at a ship that is sunk at its bottom. Nearly every page is littered with jagged onomatopoeic Japanese characters—staples of comic books: you know, those POWs and WHAMs done up in explosions of reds and yellows. The dialogue, which is inane and redundant, is little more than another texture of the wallpaper that serves as this work’s raison d'être. World Map Room is essentially a detailed artistic exercise in aesthetics masquerading as a sober send-up to comic book conventions—and I state this neither as a criticism nor an accolade. This comic simply is what is for you to admire or not.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

--World Map Room

Author's Notes

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

The jacket blurb for this is something like "Guys come to a city. They watch planes taking off and cross a river. Then they visit the World Map Room and get taken on a tour of a garden." This is all pretty accurate to the actual plot here, though it's the first of a projected 4-book series that may be unfolding as a kind of emptied-out noir plotline. With a heavy, though somewhat predictable by now, emphasis on geometry, surfaces, and multiples.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The least impressive of Yokoyama's books, but still full of visionary marvels that only he could conjure. The sections with the airplanes and the books in the World Map Room library, in particular. Since Picturebox is now defunct, I worry this will be the last of Yokoyama's titles we'll see for a long while. If so, I suspect this will seem more precious with each passing year.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Minimalist in story, dialogue and visuals, this is a deliberately flat story that emphasizes the drawing of the city and geometrical shapes, all else being muted. The characters are vaguely futuristic and also bored with all they see in a tour of a city. I guess the feel is ironic humor on some level. It's not all that interesting or unique to me, but I liked it, reading it a second time.

[Estibaliz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this was way too edgy and pointless for my tasting, and if you want to know what happens in the volume without actually having to read it, just read the blurb in the jacket instead.

The good news is 'World Map Room' is supposed to be the first in a four volume series, so we might actually get some real meat later on, but sure not here.

With an awfully chaotic art and dialogues that are short and almost child-like, I certainly didn't enjoy this, and I won't be back for more from Yuichi Yokoyama.

It's not you, it's me?

[xenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

a cacophony of nothing

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad this wasn't the first Yokoyama I picked up when deciding to give him another chance. Something about this one just feels a bit under-baked. It still has the expected cold alienating feeling but it just doesn't fully gel. I'm also quickly learning that I much prefer Yokoyama's works without dialogue.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yokoyama has a wonderful, unique style of depicting the motion of transportation. World Map Room is not as strong as his other work, primarily due to the text. Maybe something has been lost in translating from Japanese to English? The cool 2 page spread panoramic cityscapes in the beginning of the book are marred by the bulbous style word balloons. Even though this one didn't quite have the magic of his other work, it'll be interesting to see how the series evolves.

[Oscar Huerta Plaza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cinematic and fast paced comic in a cold, unfriendly and mysterious world by Yuichi Yokohama, but this time with words, unlike "Travel". The story is as inconclusive as the characters themselves and their unjustified apathy. Everyone looks suspicious of something. Also, overwhelmingly thunderous but smooth movements, so loud I could actually almost hear them.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tu bardziej niż fabuła, liczy się forma. "World Map Room" to pierwsza część cyklu, którego kontynuacją jest "Iceland", a w którym główny nacisk położono na dźwięki. To jest niesamowite jak bardzo czytelnik tę historię "słyszy". Miks onomatopei, ruchu i kształtów, które potęgują wrażenie obserwacji dynamiki miasta. Wszystko spłaszczone, geometryczne i z ostrymi krawędziami. Eksperyment, który pokazuje nieograniczone możliwości medium.

[Teodora · Rating 3 out of 5]

It makes no sense which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes really boring

[Shea Proulx · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a book is "for art" above all things, I think an ethical standard also follows.

When I first reviewed and rated this book, I critiqued it's emptiness, but then I thought about the great pomp, the shouting, the "glorious" manifesto that accompanied the original futurist art movement, and I found the weird beauty in this book.

"World Map Room" uses the futurist aesthetic ideals, but separates itself from a historically connected facist agenda by establishing a plot that is empty, filled with flat characters that we cannot connect with. The title references this connection as the map room is based on one from Mussolini's fascist rule, a point established in the author's notes.

Without a manifesto, without politics, with no one to root for, Yokoyama fills the book with a gorgeous display of speed and technology, and reveals it all to be empty, empty, empty. All we feel is ambivalence, by design. It's people that matter, in reality. We are shown, in painstaking detail, that this is a fantasy that we have no business idealzing. We are reminded that when we did put the qualities of speed, and technology up on a pedistle, it was at our peril.

[Darin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to describe, this gekiga work almost reads like an graphic version of a futurist play. The characters peopling this work are drawn in a highly abstracted, geometric style, while certain other elements receive a *relatively* more realistic approach. A group of three young men (perhaps--gender is almost indeterminate, and may even be beside the point) arrive in a city they don't know, bound for a mysterious destination to do who knows what. Plot, there's not. But there's an incredibly kinetic artistic style, and this work excels in the way that many Asian comics do (particularly those not marketed towards young audiences): it establishes the importance of detail, place, atmosphere, time. I'm not sure that I've ever read a work of graphic fiction that felt as "noisy" as this one. Almost every panel has a prominent sound effect as part of the panel design. Recommended for adventurous readers.

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love experimental comics, especially ones that really manage to stretch the form beyond what we've seen before. Yokoyama is one of those artists who can capably to do so, though I will say World Map Room was a bit of a mixed, but slightly positive overall, bag for me. The plot is sparse and ambiguous, but it revolves around a group of people traversing a futuristic city and making austere observations of what they see. Clearly, the book is attempting to invest our interest in the designs emphatically splashed on the pages, and while I do think they are quite impressive to behold at times, I often felt the boredom displayed by the characters began to seep into my own insight. I still found this to be a worthwhile read just for Yokoyama's insane geometric doodling.

[Bléu · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Did you know those guys?
They might know us even if we don’t know them.
I don’t know anyone in this city.
They seemed unaffected by the airplane. Maybe they’re used to it.
But they did looked at us.
Strangers are probably rare. “

WHAT DID I JUST READ? （≧∇≦） This is honestly my first “picture book” so spare my vision. Yet, i kinda liked it. Yes it was weird and filled of rare sounds ( KWREEEEEN, RHIRIRIRIRI) i did not even know existed, haha. Also the drawings and characters are kinda hard to tell apart but still it’s kind of good in way of being funny and bizarre (?)

[Hsu Jui-Ting · Rating 4 out of 5]

show this book to people who think manga is the same 4koma format to disorient and enrage.
experimental in form and highly playful at times, even if its content features entirely disgruntled figures with chihuahua like rage (gekiga format).

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, enigmatic work from Yokoyama. His latest book, Iceland, is a sequel to this one (or so the author suggests).

[Zack Conklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything that happens is portrayed as the center of attention and with such sweeping tension. Woof.

[Rachel Benge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The design is second to none, I only rate it 4 stars because it is apparently a 5 part story, and it ended on a rather obtuse note.

[Breogán Xague · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enorme

[Natali · Rating 1 out of 5]

Не нравится ни стиль, ни повествование

[Benny · Rating 4 out of 5]

so eerie and tense. how does he make such ridiculous whimsical characters feel so uncomfortable. the ones with watery eyes make me feel paternal

[Marcus Skog · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the heck is going on???

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A trio of grim, nameless men enter an unnamed, noisy metropolis, intent on a mission whose purpose is never stated. Flat, simple-geometric figures and backgrounds, often shown in extreme close-up, add to the claustrophobia and disorientation of this work, the first installment of four graphic novels. What's it about? Who knows? It's all mystery and mood, and dark aesthetics.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have noted, not Yokoyama's strongest work. Still enjoyable, though, and I particularly like the sequence of World Map Room books.

[Joel Kibbe]

This book is strange. It has so much chaos and so little going on. An odd duck.