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エマノン [Emanon] #1

Emanon Volume 1: Memories of Emanon

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A new series begins from the artist of the Eisner-nominated Wandering Island!

The year is 1967, and a young Japanese man is thinking about the future. On one side of the water, the war is raging in Vietnam; far away on the other side, the Apollo Project has just met with disaster as three astronauts die in a capsule fire. And here and now, on a long nighttime ferry ride back home, he will meet and fall in love with a mysterious young woman who carries a past deeper and more profound than his dreams and fears of tomorrow. Her name, she jokes, is no name--Emanon...and she can never be forgotten, any more than she can forget...

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

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2790 people want to read

About the author

Shinji Kajio

67 books51 followers
Shinji Kajio (梶尾 真治, Kajio Shinji, born 24 December 1947 in Kumamoto Prefecture) is a Japanese author of science fiction and fantasy.

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5 stars
907 (32%)
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578 (20%)
2 stars
107 (3%)
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19 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 303 reviews
Profile Image for Sam Quixote.
4,801 reviews13.4k followers
September 15, 2021
A 33 year old man in 1980 reminisces about the time in 1967 when he spent an unforgettable evening with a mysterious young woman on the overnight ferry to Kyushu. Despite being a fan of sci-fi, he finds her story difficult to swallow: though she looks 17 years old, she’s actually 3 billion years old! But is she yanking his chain - or is she really the embodiment of living memory of all life on Earth…?

Emanon, Volume 1: Memories of Emanon wasn’t bad. Just going by the cover and title, I was expecting a fairly generic romance manga so I was glad to be surprised by the sci-fi angle and I was engaged for most of the book. That said, not a whole heck of a lot happens which made it a less impressive read.

The set-up is cute: the overnight ferry is a new one and it was interesting to see how people travelled back in late ‘60s Japan (basically all crowded on an open plan deck). The chemistry between the young man and Emanon (“no name” backwards) is sweet, and the art is very detailed and appealing.

But besides the setup and the revelation of Emanon’s age, it’s a bit underwhelming that nothing much else happens. A lot of time is spent on Emanon talking about her past memories (it’s kind of a Russian doll-type story - the framing is a reminiscence that contains characters mostly looking back on the past) that didn’t add much and felt repetitive.

The ending provides an answer as to whether or not her story’s true but you kinda know already given how much space is taken up leaning in one direction. And it’s not the hammer blow ending I feel the creators thought it was going to be. It was more - and then…?, which is how I felt for most of the book.

Sci-fi angle aside, it’s really about the lives we could’ve led if different choices had been made when we were younger - who we’d be today if we were still with that person, etc. So it’s a very human story about regret, longing and mortality that most people will relate to and it’s those aspects that I liked the most about the book rather than the more far-fetched stuff.

A decent bittersweet romance story with a twist of sci-fi to liven things up, it’s a bit light in content but Emanon, Volume 1: Memories of Emanon was an ok read - I was never (too) bored but, unlike the narrator, I don’t see myself holding onto the memory of this one for very long.
Profile Image for L.S. Popovich.
Author 2 books459 followers
August 23, 2019
“Memories of Emanon,” by Kajio Shinji is a very interesting short story, included in the 4-volume collection Speculative Japan. It was not surprising that the manga rendition was just as "memorable."

The only other thing translated into English by this author is “Reiko’s Universe Box.” These two brief short stories are enough to give me an idea of his author’s style. I do wish more of his stuff was translated, but I’m always wishing that, and I’ll probably always keep wishing that, unless I somehow magically start reading Japanese. The concept is unique, as far as my experience has proven – at least no one has come up with this idea in anything I’ve come across. It’s an example of what you can do with a solid S-F idea. You take one idea and make a story out of it. What makes the story compelling? It’s not just the idea, but the two main characters. There are some amusing side-characters, but the main male character has personality, and a good voice, and the female character is intelligent and interesting. You get their chemistry. It has the quality of a Haruki Murakami story, but with less rhythm, the same amount of humor, and more science. Murakami is like Philip K. Dick and Kajio Shinji is more in the vein of Heinlein. I miss good science fiction with an emphasis on style and characters. Even Heinlein gets dry sometimes and recycles a lot. But I could see myself reading the whole series of short stories about Emanon, if it ever gets the full treatment. The manga proved to be good, though it offered nothing new to me that the story hadn’t already provided besides fluid and exceptionally good artwork. What’s more, the story is tinged with the nostalgia that you feel when you meet that one person who makes a big impression on you – it has the quality of that cherished memory that you are unwilling to let go of, and their imprint of you seems to last forever, even if the inspiration they provided was minor, brief and unexplainable, it is impossible to expunge from memory.
Profile Image for Fátima Linhares.
933 reviews340 followers
December 1, 2023
"-Gosto de ti. Talvez me lembre de ti por toda a eternidade.
-Então porque desapareceste?
-Se ficarmos juntos por umas horas, ou por umas décadas, a lembrança de ter gostado vai ser a mesma."

Este manga tem as ilustrações mais bonitas que eu já vi.
Profile Image for scar.
183 reviews516 followers
April 23, 2020
3.5 stars. the art was very pretty and the science fiction aspect of the plot was cool. unfortunately i don't usually vibe with stories about mysterious, beautiful girls who change a man's life forever even though their time together was so short, blah blah. so that wasn't exactly my thing, but i still enjoyed reading it.
Profile Image for Sarah ♡ (let’s interact!).
717 reviews322 followers
July 19, 2024
A philosophical story about memories, reincarnation, and a mysterious girl with no name - Emanon 💖

Wow, I am so surprised this isn’t rated even higher?! What a fantastic short story. I saw that two more Emanon stories were published a time after this one, I will have to give them a read! I liked the ‘60s time setting and the two protagonists. Maybe I liked this one so much because it’s a mesh of two of my main interests - philosophy and manga.
Profile Image for Hossain.
82 reviews8 followers
March 15, 2015
This manga has a cool concept, but the execution was not my liking. Mostly because Emanon didn't feel like a person who has the memory of 3 billions years and the first interactions between the protagonist and Emanon felt contrived, but the artworks was so beautiful it almost made me forgive the flaws of this book.
Profile Image for António.
123 reviews22 followers
March 2, 2024
A partir de um conto original de 1979, este manga foi inicialmente publicado em 2006 no Japão e chegou a Portugal em 2022. É um livro extraordinário, desenhos belíssimos. Há páginas verdadeiramente arrebatoras, autênticas obras de arte. Gostei mesmo muito.
Profile Image for Jessica.
386 reviews59 followers
December 29, 2020
Los recuerdos, esas imágenes y/o sensaciones que guardamos, algunos con amor, otros con indiferencia u otros con dolor. Hay multitud de recuerdos, algunos acabamos olvidandonos de ellos y otros permanecerán en nuestra memoria hasta nuestro último aliento. Quizá otros recordemos con una niebla que con los años se va volviendo más y más espesa...

Pero algo está claro: los recuerdos son importantes para el ser humano. Sin embargo, no paramos a pensar en su importancia, en cuanto nos beneficia o cuanto dolor puede generar. Unos recuerdos pueden darte una voluntad para luchar contra todo lo que se ponga por delante o hundirte profundamente. Incluso la personalidad a lo largo de los años evoluciona dependiendo de esas experiencias vividas...

Emanon Recuerdos es un manga distinto, ligero en aparencia pero profundo en la reflexión que nos invita su lectura (de ahí mis dos párrafos anteriores). Además, hay que decir que el dibujo, realmente precioso y con personalidad, encaja perfectamente con la (breve) trama que se nos presenta. No quiero revelar nada de la trama e ir a ciegas salvo por la sinopsis oficial que podeis leer en goodreads.

Si te gusta las lecturas pausadas pero para meditar, Emanon Recuerdos es el compañero perfecto para un día tranquilo y dejarte llevar por una misteriosa muchacha.
Profile Image for ScottIsANerd (GrilledCheeseSamurai).
659 reviews111 followers
August 2, 2019
Loved it. The art is gorgeous and the story was sullen with just a tinge of hope and romance. It's exactly what I have been in the mood for lately - a good slice of life with a bit of a sci-fi spin on it.

Profile Image for Igel :).
236 reviews23 followers
March 5, 2025
Die Zeichnungen waren ich hübsch, die Idee war auch spannend, aber die Umsetzung? Hätte mehr erwartet
Profile Image for Pip (Bookish_Pip).
100 reviews26 followers
May 25, 2019
Thought provoking and meditative.

This first volume is set in our world but there is a twist which is provided through a brief, romantic encounter with a science fiction fan and our main character, Emanon. This simple meeting over the course of a 5 hour ferry journey soon takes an interesting turn, as whilst sharing a meal, Emanon reveals she has a memory spanning 3 billion years.

This subtly complex story weaves a new and modern interpretation of a story about immortality and memory where we learn that Emanon’s memory isn’t gained through reincarnation, but is passed down from one individuals’ experiences, from mother to daughter, with memory transferred to her child so only one ‘copy’ of the information exists at a time. Definitely one of the more unique immortality narratives I’ve ever read which had me intrigued throughout and left me eagerly awaiting the next volume! The concept for this seems to have been inspired in part by ‘Hausur’s Memory’ by Curt Siodmak which appears in this manga and I enjoyed the sense of magical realism this brought to the story; it felt like there could really be someone out there like Emanon.

The realism that is felt in the narrative is enhanced by the artwork by Kenji Tsuruta (creator of Wandering Island, a series I’d recommend if you enjoyed this). Tsuruta has a beautiful art style, clean and detailed with incredible background art. The way the panels are composed gives a highly cinematic quality when reading this manga. I also love the inclusion of the colour pages at the front and back of the book which not only show off Tsuruta’s skill as a mangaka but as an artist as well.

Memories of Emanon is a beautifully produced manga that anyone would be happy to add to their collection. Like in all Dark Horse manga, it is a joy to read the added afterwords or translation notes, so reading the included postscripts from the creators was very insightful.

Overall it was an interesting read and I hope we spend more time with Emanon in the next volume. Can’t wait to pick it up!



Thank you to Turnaround Publishing for sending me a copy!
Profile Image for MaguiWorld.
1,132 reviews68 followers
April 17, 2021
Que complejo debe ser tener tantos recuerdos y tanto conocimiento dentro de uno. Tantas vivencias, tantas perdidas, amores, ilusiones, guerras...

Memories of Emanon nos cuenta una historia simple pero a la vez compleja por todo lo que tiene detrás. Por sus fundamentos, por sus explicaciones y por ese final tan increíble y filosófico. Esperaba ver algo más de romance, pero claramente no iba por ese lado la historia y me parece bien.

Particular pero interesante.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
1,442 reviews84 followers
January 16, 2024
This has gorgeous art and a fascinating concept- a woman retains memories of the whole of humanity and serves as witness to its evolution. I just wish the story had been from her point of view. Instead, we see her from the perspective of a man longing for her. Emanon is far more dynamic than the "manic pixie dream girl" trope, and I wish she hadn't been reduced to that.
Profile Image for Tina.
454 reviews
May 2, 2016
2,5. En otroligt vackert tecknad scifiberättelse som inte riktigt greppar tag i mig personligen. En nypa magisk realism kombinerat med en nypa vanlig-kille-träffar-magisk-tjej. Fungerar för stunden, men inget jag kommer minnas om ett år.
Profile Image for Alex Pler.
Author 8 books274 followers
February 24, 2016
Pocas veces un manga te emociona tanto como este en su desenlace. Me ha recordado a los viejos tiempos de Video Girl Ai, pero condensado en un único tomo. Ojalá nos lleguen las novelas originales.
Profile Image for Tabi.
148 reviews6 followers
January 23, 2020
I wish this manga was longer! Amazing story, beautiful art work and such an interesting and fascinating topic!
Profile Image for Michael Scott.
778 reviews157 followers
April 15, 2013
(Pursuing my goal of reading a bit of every type of manga.) Memories of Emanon (Omoide Emanon) is a masterpiece manga about a girl whose memories preserve intact the 3-billion history of all creatures it descends from. (Manga type: mystical, psychological, romance.) Overall, beautiful, really beautiful artwork, a somewhat intriguing story, and a strong female character.

Artwork: Truly great! There's slice-of-life, photo-realistic quality on display. There's also manga at its best, with movie-like, creative angles and sequences. The shading is also fine; for example, the sparse use of black adds drama where due.

Characters: Emanon (anagram of "No Name") is a heroine that carries the world's history and much knowledge in her memory, yet is light and hippy, all jeans and an eternal cigar. The prototype once-in-a-lifetime, no strings attached, lucky encounter kind of girl (heh, I'm starting to sound middle-aged and fantasizing). There's also the young guy, "impulsive, compulsive scatterbrain with a love for sci-fi", who personifies the person to whom happiness might happen at any step (or, just as well, could miss the fortune sitting in front of his eyes)---a rather inconsequential character, constructed to make Emanon look even better.

Story: The main story is about the concept of persistent memory. In short, Emanon is in possession of a faculty not known to other humans. This faculty is not due to reincarnation, only the result of passing all information as a form of individual experience (a single entity's persistent memory). There's also a bit about passing information only through the maternal line and only to girls, and about mothers losing their memory while their girls grow up, so that there's only one copy of the information at any given time (so no inconsistency). In this direction, Emanon seems to be inspired and indeed includes as a story object Curt Siodmak's book Hauser's Memory, which features the power to remember beyond the owner's body (in Siodmak's story, as well as in its prequel Donovan's Brain, the persistent memory leads to nefarious effects.)

Then, there's the travel romance, which happens on a ship on the route Nagoya-Kochi-Kagoshima. This part is realistic and syrupy, a boy meets girl without consequences. There's the flirt, the semi-dangerous situation, the get-together, the kiss, etc. Simple and lovely.

Last, but not least, Memories of Emanon is also a discussion about the meaning of life. I'm not ruining anything when I say that this is not the strong part of the manga, especially since it ends in the hippy idea that nothing really matters and we should just enjoy the moment (can also call it hedonism, but it would be too pretentious).


Related: Wanderings of Emanon (Sasurai Emanon), in which Emanon is wandering through what seems like an eternal forest.
Profile Image for Carol.
216 reviews109 followers
March 10, 2024
habitualmente não costumo gostar de ilustrações a preto e branco. sinto que o ilustrador tem de ter um traço muitíssimo diferenciado para que seja possível distinguir os retratos. numa conversa com um amigo e numa tentativa de me converter a este género literário, o hugo mostrou-me o interior deste livro. soube imediatamente que o teria de ler. lá me convenceu a ler o meu primeiro mangá.

o traço fininho de kenji tsuruta é lindíssimo e todas as pranchas estão repletas de detalhe. o uso do preto, branco e cinzento não foi um problema para mim pela riqueza presente na arte. e no final ainda temos umas páginas a cores, semelhante ao que acontece com um webtoon.

a verdade é que não foi só a arte que me conquistou. toda a premissa do livro deixou-me a pulga atrás da orelha e chamou a minha veia de nerd - aquela que é capaz de gostar de alguma ficção científica e até mesmo de fantasia (o último género não se aplica a este caso 😂).

estive completamente agarrada do início ao fim e aquela carinha laroca da emanon só me fazia querer saber mais. a estória deixou-me completamente boquiaberta e o final foi mesmo full-circle. perfeito.

mas de quem são estas lembranças que o título refere? quem é emanon?

não quero revelar muito da estória para poderem ir à descoberta. no entanto, posso dizer-vos que emanon é uma rapariga única, com um olhar misterioso. é a caminho do japão, numa viagem de barco, que a história começa: quando a jovem se cruza com um rapaz, a curiosidade e o encanto falam mais alto.

no final do livro está ainda disponível o conto original, que deu origem a este mangá. contudo, achei a mancha gráfica assombrosa. li-o com muita dificuldade. Não há espaçamento entre parágrafos, excetuando algumas situações, e a letra não tem um tamanho propriamente agradável.

gostei tanto desta estória que encomendei à o volume I e o II e agora já só quero o III!
Profile Image for Sean O'Hara.
Author 23 books101 followers
May 30, 2019
This is an adaptation of a short story, and after reading it, I wish we just had the short story. The narrative is very talkative and not much happens by way of action, which is perfectly fine on prose, but for a visual medium ... well, it's a good thing Tsuruta is really good at drawing waifish women looking pensive, because that's 90% of the book.
Profile Image for Dylan Michael.
208 reviews
June 5, 2019
9/10

Really, REALLY beautiful. The main male character kind of reminded me of the bland protagonists we see in Murakami novels. But the story being told here is quite sad and philosophical. August can’t come soon enough!
Profile Image for ✿ K.B ✿.
394 reviews78 followers
March 1, 2022
Brilliant artwork and story. I wanted more of Emanon's adventures in different years, decades. I wanted to see her interacting with other people in the world, adding more to her memories.

Beautifully written and drawn.

Update: I just found out that there is more to her story. Great!
10 reviews
June 3, 2018
loved it but the history definitely could be better worked
Profile Image for Boujee.
190 reviews2 followers
November 4, 2019
this was both simultaneously mellow and wild, kind of like...Mushi-Shi, ya dig? that sort of vibe. i liked it a lot. enough to read up to the second volume, anyway. maybe i'll continue it someday.
Profile Image for Oleksandr Tarasov.
60 reviews1 follower
April 5, 2020
Finally the manga that left me incredibly happy and my friends quarreled with each other.

Profile Image for Gavin.
Author 3 books617 followers
March 18, 2021
Wonderful hippie nonsense. Art is stunning, and the 60s setting is fully realised, including in the vagueness of the protagonists.
Profile Image for Lily Jambon.
17 reviews
December 30, 2023
Honestly this is the most interesting and insane thing I have ever read, like no lie
Displaying 1 - 30 of 303 reviews

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