What do you think?
Rate this book
Super Tokyoland
A perfect hybrid of European and Japanese comics and a rich exploration of the combined wonder and alienation of immigrant life.
In August 2002, artist Benjamin Reiss flies to Tokyo to spend a year with Kayoko, the Japanese girl he met in France a year earlier. What he finds upon landing is a vast and complex culture, steeped in tradition but full of surprises. As one year stretches into six, Benjamin becomes immersed in the world of sento baths, taiko drums, and bento boxes, while studying cartooning under several masters of manga.
In August 2002, artist Benjamin Reiss flies to Tokyo to spend a year with Kayoko, the Japanese girl he met in France a year earlier. What he finds upon landing is a vast and complex culture, steeped in tradition but full of surprises. As one year stretches into six, Benjamin becomes immersed in the world of sento baths, taiko drums, and bento boxes, while studying cartooning under several masters of manga.
232 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2017
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 1, 2018
Weiss, French, goes to Japan for 6 years on the premise of getting involved in video game production and because he had had a brief relationship with a woman from there. When he gets there he can't find the woman (until years later), but he gets to know Japanese culture a bit, and gets various jobs assisting manga-ka.The doesn't go very deeply into anything, kind of meanders around--oh, cool club! Sort of interesting person he meets!--but I guess the most interesting part of it is his struggle with learning manga. This book is a kind of hybrid of manga and western style. There's several noticeable proofreading/translation errors in going from the French to English. The style shifts from time to time. I guess the most damning thing I can say is that most of the time I am not all that interested in Reiss or what he is interested in, but what I will recall from it may be the glimpse into the world of manga, where he is never quite good enough for his masters.
Overall, it's not quite clear what the focus of it all is. I guess it's the title: Tokyo is super! Meh. If you like travel or diary comics or are interested in a Western view of Japan, you might like this. I thought it was all right. I like diary comics and comics about the making of comics.
Overall, it's not quite clear what the focus of it all is. I guess it's the title: Tokyo is super! Meh. If you like travel or diary comics or are interested in a Western view of Japan, you might like this. I thought it was all right. I like diary comics and comics about the making of comics.
January 20, 2018
This is one of those books where there is good information to be had, but the presentation just wears me down the longer I read it. Reiss has lots of stories to tell, but doesn't exactly tell them well as he skips around his narrative. He doesn't give a lot of background about himself beyond some romantic entanglements before heading off to Japan, so I only got to know him through his actions in Japan, and frankly he's not someone I would care to spend much time with in real life and becomes a hindrance to the interesting aspects of Japanese life and manga creation that I picked up the book to discover.
Some little things:
1) It isn't explicitly mentioned in the book, but I get the impression the author may be using a framing device to tie together two or more separately published works, as there are some abrupt changes in art style and the flow of the story that are distracting and annoying.
2) There is a careless amount of proofreading errors throughout, especially in the second half of the book when I was getting bored and spending more time looking for reasons to dislike the book.
3) The lettering is atrocious. Different letters are different sizes, resulting in some words appearing to be stressed or shouted when no little letters happen to appear in them. It irks me and is needlessly hard to read. It made me think of the word balloons used for Delirium in the Sandman series, and trust me, the author should not be doing anything to invite comparisons between his work and Sandman.
4) And it is not a drawback, but I find myself wondering whether or not the book was translated by the author or a second party who was not credited. The author seems to be French, but is a polyglot who speaks English and some Japanese.
Some little things:
1) It isn't explicitly mentioned in the book, but I get the impression the author may be using a framing device to tie together two or more separately published works, as there are some abrupt changes in art style and the flow of the story that are distracting and annoying.
2) There is a careless amount of proofreading errors throughout, especially in the second half of the book when I was getting bored and spending more time looking for reasons to dislike the book.
3) The lettering is atrocious. Different letters are different sizes, resulting in some words appearing to be stressed or shouted when no little letters happen to appear in them. It irks me and is needlessly hard to read. It made me think of the word balloons used for Delirium in the Sandman series, and trust me, the author should not be doing anything to invite comparisons between his work and Sandman.
4) And it is not a drawback, but I find myself wondering whether or not the book was translated by the author or a second party who was not credited. The author seems to be French, but is a polyglot who speaks English and some Japanese.
August 15, 2022
A long meandering read about a young French man living in Japan for about six years. He works at a variety of jobs, and this volume could have been pruned, tightened, clarified and otherwise improved. Many parts were confusing, unnecessary, redundant — or perhaps all three!
The text is all in English, except at the very end when some Japanese is thrown in. He studied some Japanese before arriving, but are we to assume he is having all these conversation in Japanese? There is no translator credited (from French to English) and there are some issues there (for example one Japanese alphabet is katakana — one says, in English "I'm learning katakana"; not as awkwardly given here "I'm learning the katakanas.")
There is too much going on her, and the story has become lost in the busy mess.
The text is all in English, except at the very end when some Japanese is thrown in. He studied some Japanese before arriving, but are we to assume he is having all these conversation in Japanese? There is no translator credited (from French to English) and there are some issues there (for example one Japanese alphabet is katakana — one says, in English "I'm learning katakana"; not as awkwardly given here "I'm learning the katakanas.")
There is too much going on her, and the story has become lost in the busy mess.
January 11, 2018
Actual rating: 2.5 stars
I absolutely love traveling, so it's no surprise that I live vicariously through travelogues (especially in the graphic novel format - the visuals often make the experience more transporting). Japan is a country I'd love to visit in my lifetime. I'm fascinated by the culture and have devoured anime and manga since I was a kid (I have very vivid memories of watching Sailor Moon with my mom when I was 6-7 years old).
My love of traveling + Japan is what prompted me to pick up Reiss' memoir of living and working in Japan - I otherwise knew nothing else about this comic, or about Reiss himself. Sadly, this wasn't a winner for me, for a couple of reasons.
First off, even for a memoir, this meanders a lot. Reiss adds a lot of strange, unnecessary detail on some things (ie. dealing with hemorrhoides) and then completely glosses over some major details that I would have liked to know more about (ie. meeting his future wife). On the brighter side, I did find his anecdotes about being a manga artist assistant very interesting and insightful. I wish that there had been a tighter focus on his lived experience in Japan. Instead, it felt like he talked about whatever immediately came to mind in a vague chronological order.
The art was mixed for me too. Overall, it's nice, but there was a lack of consistency that jumped out at me. For example, Reiss draws himself in a more rounded, cartoon-y style, but the degree to which he was drawn this way varied - he was either super round and "deformed" on some pages, but then more anatomically correct on others. The work is mostly b&w, but there was an occasional pop of yellow, but this technique was also applied unevenly - some pages had a lot of these highlights and then they would abruptly stop on a page for seemingly no reason.
The last complaint is a bit nitpicky, but because I wasn't totally enamored with the work, I found myself noticing these minor details more than if I had been reading something I was enjoying. It's too bad, because this is a subject that interests me a lot, but I would sadly give Super Tokyoland a pass.
I absolutely love traveling, so it's no surprise that I live vicariously through travelogues (especially in the graphic novel format - the visuals often make the experience more transporting). Japan is a country I'd love to visit in my lifetime. I'm fascinated by the culture and have devoured anime and manga since I was a kid (I have very vivid memories of watching Sailor Moon with my mom when I was 6-7 years old).
My love of traveling + Japan is what prompted me to pick up Reiss' memoir of living and working in Japan - I otherwise knew nothing else about this comic, or about Reiss himself. Sadly, this wasn't a winner for me, for a couple of reasons.
First off, even for a memoir, this meanders a lot. Reiss adds a lot of strange, unnecessary detail on some things (ie. dealing with hemorrhoides) and then completely glosses over some major details that I would have liked to know more about (ie. meeting his future wife). On the brighter side, I did find his anecdotes about being a manga artist assistant very interesting and insightful. I wish that there had been a tighter focus on his lived experience in Japan. Instead, it felt like he talked about whatever immediately came to mind in a vague chronological order.
The art was mixed for me too. Overall, it's nice, but there was a lack of consistency that jumped out at me. For example, Reiss draws himself in a more rounded, cartoon-y style, but the degree to which he was drawn this way varied - he was either super round and "deformed" on some pages, but then more anatomically correct on others. The work is mostly b&w, but there was an occasional pop of yellow, but this technique was also applied unevenly - some pages had a lot of these highlights and then they would abruptly stop on a page for seemingly no reason.
The last complaint is a bit nitpicky, but because I wasn't totally enamored with the work, I found myself noticing these minor details more than if I had been reading something I was enjoying. It's too bad, because this is a subject that interests me a lot, but I would sadly give Super Tokyoland a pass.
November 23, 2017
I loved the setting and details of Japan’s culture. And while I appreciate this memoir having a true to life feel, I found myself searching for a climax that never happened.
April 26, 2018
An autobio comic about Benjamin Reiss's time in Japan, working as a manga assistant and trying to find his place in the world. Surprisingly compelling - and beautifully drawn.
May 31, 2018
I have an odd fondness for meandering graphic memoirs, though Super Tokyoland challenges even me when it comes to tolerating a lack of direction. While Reiss' art is great, his story is hard to parse, doesn't really come to any conclusion or climax (an irony given he talks about receiving that sort of criticism about his work), and ends without any sort of resolution or reason for the book to end at that point. It wasn't a horrible read, but it wasn't an overly good read. I enjoyed the art, particularly the scenery, and the individual memories were nice, but I wish there was more of a focus to the book.
Read
August 10, 2021Millennial French foreigner in Tokyo with the attention span of a curious squirrel. Observations and experiences of Reiss' time in Japan in early 2000s. A lot of tangents and drifting about, perhaps that's the whole point. The way Reiss draws himself at times looks proportionally odd to the characters around him, perhaps that's also the whole point, he was not blending in and to emphasise being an outsider.
April 16, 2019
In SuperTokyoLand, Benjamin Reiss offers an incredibly detailed account of his life in Tokyo, often providing minute-by-minute action of that time he wandered around aimlessly or ate food with his mangaka coworkers. Is any of it interesting? Not at all. I'm honestly impressed at how intensely dull this travelogue is.
To be clear, there are a few worthwhile nuggets. It's somewhat neat to see the life of a manga assistant and there are two fascinating stories related to Japanese culture (specifically, theft and public baths). Beyond that, though, it's basically just Reiss going through the day-to-day motions in Japan, except without any narrative thrust to draw the reader from one page to the next. It's difficult to even understand the passage of time because Reiss jumps around so much.
I was actually excited about SuperTokyoLand because I feel like I know so little about Japanese culture. As a foreigner deeply embedded in that culture, I would have expected Reiss to have more interesting stories to tell than about that time he got really bad hemorrhoids. I wish I was joking about that.
To be clear, there are a few worthwhile nuggets. It's somewhat neat to see the life of a manga assistant and there are two fascinating stories related to Japanese culture (specifically, theft and public baths). Beyond that, though, it's basically just Reiss going through the day-to-day motions in Japan, except without any narrative thrust to draw the reader from one page to the next. It's difficult to even understand the passage of time because Reiss jumps around so much.
I was actually excited about SuperTokyoLand because I feel like I know so little about Japanese culture. As a foreigner deeply embedded in that culture, I would have expected Reiss to have more interesting stories to tell than about that time he got really bad hemorrhoids. I wish I was joking about that.
December 21, 2017
Fairly meandering throughout, and with no real "plot" to speak of, it also has nowhere to go -- the ending is quite abrupt and lacking any sort of impact. The author also comes off as kind of an asshole, though I get the sense that he possibly does not realize as much. The best thing going for the book is the art style, which was the reason I picked it up in the first place, though it isn't enough to hold the rest of the work together.
February 6, 2021
The drawings were great and the beginning was fairly easy to follow. Unfortunately, about halfway through I found the plot began to really disintegrate. By the end of the book the timeline was jumping constantly and the story ended so abruptly I was really taken aback. After spending three pages on a random digression, it would all of a sudden be like “oh by the way a few weeks before all that I met my prior wife”. Just very strange.
September 23, 2018
I'm not sure if it was the translation, but I found the writing in this to be painful at parts. The story is very disjointed, the timeline can jump all over within a span of a page, and the entire story packed focus.
I didn't like the character illustrations at all, but the environments were nice.
I didn't like the character illustrations at all, but the environments were nice.
July 19, 2021
WTF?!
Pero qué mierda de terminar es esta? El estilo del dibujo no está mal peeeero... la historia está construida de una manera que no tiene sentido.
Empieza más o menos bien: el autor está en un coche compartido y empieza a explicar sus 6 años viviendo en Tokyo. Ok. Te pueden gustar más o menos sus experiencias, pero no lo puedo juzgar por eso... Lo que pasa es que hacia la página 100, parece que todo se va por el desagüe. Hay saltos de tiempo muy raros, episodios que no acabo de entender demasiado bien porque parece que hayan puesto una página en el orden equivocado
Sin tener en cuenta que, como alguien que lleva 12 años viviendo y trabajado en Japón, me parece mucha falta de respeto y creerse muy superior el hecho de no tener en cuenta cuándo te caduca el visado y luego encima quejarte.
No sé, como digo, como alguien que ha experimentado el culture shock al venir a vivir a Japón por primera vez y el culture shock reverso al volver a Barcelona, esperaba un poco encontrar esa parte, pero no. He leído las últimas 132 páginas del tomo con una frustración cada vez más grande y con el final (que sólo se le puede llamar final porque literalmente se acaban las páginas del libro) me he quedado con cara de: me tomas el pelo?
En fin, si queréis leer un cómic para conocer algo sobre Japón, este no es el adecuado.
Pero qué mierda de terminar es esta? El estilo del dibujo no está mal peeeero... la historia está construida de una manera que no tiene sentido.
Empieza más o menos bien: el autor está en un coche compartido y empieza a explicar sus 6 años viviendo en Tokyo. Ok. Te pueden gustar más o menos sus experiencias, pero no lo puedo juzgar por eso... Lo que pasa es que hacia la página 100, parece que todo se va por el desagüe. Hay saltos de tiempo muy raros, episodios que no acabo de entender demasiado bien porque parece que hayan puesto una página en el orden equivocado
Sin tener en cuenta que, como alguien que lleva 12 años viviendo y trabajado en Japón, me parece mucha falta de respeto y creerse muy superior el hecho de no tener en cuenta cuándo te caduca el visado y luego encima quejarte.
No sé, como digo, como alguien que ha experimentado el culture shock al venir a vivir a Japón por primera vez y el culture shock reverso al volver a Barcelona, esperaba un poco encontrar esa parte, pero no. He leído las últimas 132 páginas del tomo con una frustración cada vez más grande y con el final (que sólo se le puede llamar final porque literalmente se acaban las páginas del libro) me he quedado con cara de: me tomas el pelo?
En fin, si queréis leer un cómic para conocer algo sobre Japón, este no es el adecuado.
December 20, 2017
It was a good amalgamation of manga and european comics truly as was promised on the cover. He could have told so much more about Japan but the book was more about himself than Japan. The ending was a little rushed, I can say it needed a 30-50 more pages to show how that last assistant gig ended and how he went back to France to create his own comic. Still it was enjoyable read, I learned a few more things about Japan.
September 24, 2019
Very nice artwork. I was really pumped to read the story, especially all about the complex and traditional Japanese culture as mentioned in the book's resumé. But this is not about life in Japan, this is about mangakas' life in Japan... Not the same! Too bad the stories are a bit repetitive and sometimes do not link well to each other. Same for the ending, so abrupt! Translation is mediocre to say the least.
May 6, 2021
Wow, a lot of harsh comments about this book.
J'ai beaucoup aimé cette BD. Je suis très bon public pour ce type de BD "slice of life", et quand ça parle du Japon je deviens nostalgique. Les dessins étaient chouettes, très proche du manga, avec une palette de couleurs très minimaliste. Parfois l'auteur termine et recommence un "chapitre" de manière un peu abrupte et inattendue, mais franchement ça m'a dérangé au point d'y mettre une critique négative.
J'ai beaucoup aimé cette BD. Je suis très bon public pour ce type de BD "slice of life", et quand ça parle du Japon je deviens nostalgique. Les dessins étaient chouettes, très proche du manga, avec une palette de couleurs très minimaliste. Parfois l'auteur termine et recommence un "chapitre" de manière un peu abrupte et inattendue, mais franchement ça m'a dérangé au point d'y mettre une critique négative.
February 2, 2021
The book started off well but petered out. It was cool getting a glimpse at the not-so-glamorous lifestyle of a manga-ka, but it was clear that Reiss just wanted to wrap things up and skipped years to get a France bookend of the story. I would have liked to have seen more cultural touchpoints and a bit more of his own thoughts and emotions.
March 7, 2022
Le temps d'un covoiturage, l'auteur raconte les 6 années qu'il a passées au Japon. Il évoque sa vie quotidienne, l'importance de ne jamais ramasser un vélo trouvé dans la rue, même en mauvais état, et la culture du travail chez les mangakas.
C'est une BD bien racontée et fournie, mais je n'ai pas spécialement accroché avec le style de l'auteur ou sa façon de voir les choses. Une bonne lecture malgré tout !
C'est une BD bien racontée et fournie, mais je n'ai pas spécialement accroché avec le style de l'auteur ou sa façon de voir les choses. Une bonne lecture malgré tout !
March 8, 2018
The immigrant experience of a French illustrator living for a few years in Japan. He chronicles working at several manga companies and taking care of a dorm of highschoolers. I enjoyed it well enough while actually reading it but retrospectively, not a whole lot happened.
April 13, 2019
An episodic recounting of the author's time living in Tokyo, getting gigs as a manga artist assistant and doing other short term work. While he seems interested in staying, there is a sense of acceptance that he would remain an outsider.
February 12, 2018
The flow was confusing, and I didn't particularly care for the author and his actions.
January 18, 2019
I loved this. Wonderful drawings on every page, funny, fascinating. I was sad to be done, that’s why I tried to take my time. Totally recommend.
March 2, 2020
What's with french cartoonists, their effortless storytelling techniques and wit . Its first book by the author and such a delight , more power to all the french cartoonist and their drive to not let this medium die .
Followed her Girl to Tokyo only to find she is not interested in even seeing him once , reiss goes on to work with local manga artist and different studios . Its a tribute to Tokyo and its manga artists . Illustrations are beautiful and i was amazed by the detailing in every frame .
Followed her Girl to Tokyo only to find she is not interested in even seeing him once , reiss goes on to work with local manga artist and different studios . Its a tribute to Tokyo and its manga artists . Illustrations are beautiful and i was amazed by the detailing in every frame .
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews