to overhaul - position

One of the qualities respected in every media from cinema to literature is the ability to tell a story with images rather than words. However, such a quality can be more difficult to find depending on the situation. For instance, a manga can present gorgeous illustrations without much difficulty and can thus rely on its art to convey a message, while few anime can pretend to achieve this ideal because of budget restrictions. Similarly to his work in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, the potential of what a manga can offer is once again exploited by Hitoshi Ashinano to create Position.

This short series relates the extraordinary events of the protagonist's otherwise perfectly mundane life. From meeting a girl claiming to be a parakeet, to witnessing the fog wrapping around a road, or discovering an astonishing sight by looking at a landscape with a particular perspective, Position is the tale of such adventures.

Since these experiences seldom happen, Position focuses on the few significant parts of the protagonist's life. This allows the manga to portray uncommon situations while keeping a certain sense of realism, at least to some extent. Most of the depicted happenings will look rather supernatural at first, to be in hindsight justified as in fact merely out of the ordinary. These occurrences are explained with justifications like the immense skill of an old man, a meteorological phenomenon, the magic of light angles, or even the haziness of a memory which is indirectly stated to have a masterfully handled metaphorical value.

However, this doesn't apply to all of the stories, unless we start making far-fetched interpretations. Even though Position could have been firmly tied to reality, it chose the path of supernatural in two of its instalments, making the reader more detached and less inclined to relate to the events. But since it only applies to a small portion of what Position has to offer, the rest of the series remains stunning, outlining extraordinary yet somewhat plausible happenings.

Focusing on particular sections of the protagonist's life from childhood to adulthood also allows the manga to transmit a nostalgic outlook on the memory of some of these stories. The conveyed feeling is very powerful and well supported by the manga's excellent writing. Like so, one of the stories is nostalgically regarded by the narrator, strengthened by skilfully limiting its position in time and setting: a little child's play in the forest, too dangerous for young kids, but too childish for adolescents. It's from these sorts of details that the writer's talent comes across.
The concerned memories are, furthermore, given the appropriate storytelling. In opposition to the other stories, the scenes are highly elliptic and the drawings illustrate the narration, whereas in the other chapters, the events are told in a deeply down-to-earth fashion and the narration exists on the contrary for the purpose of commenting the drawings from the character's point of view.

Each event is thus accompanied by the observing character's insightful thoughts, making the readers feel the scene as though they were the ones beholding it. In order to maximise the immersion in the series so as to make the readers appreciate the superb scenes, realistic and relatable characters are required; and even though Position counts a limited amount of pages, the author didn't make the mistake of using clichés in his character design and characterisation, the fastest but poorest way to make a character stand out within a series. The characters don't have significantly outstanding characteristics like catchphrases or fancy visual features like pink hair and recurrent outfits. Instead, the author optimised its use of pages by not forgetting to show a certain amount of interactions between the characters, and by sharing a sheer amount of their insights. The characters are gracefully portrayed, with realistic and ordinary yet charming designs and highly expressive faces, making it easy to read their feelings and identify with them when witnessing the different events taking place in Position.

The stories told in Position primarily revolve around the beauty of what is viewed. For that reason, even more than most manga, Position needed an appropriately solid art in order to illustrate the situations it narrates. Of course, as many would expect of the creator of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, the illustrations are formidable. One rarely sees such beautiful artworks, with flawless shadings and enticing landscapes. The drawings proficiently render different atmospheres: at times, you can almost feel the wind on your cheeks, the odour of the trees in your nostrils, or the quietness of the night.

The panels are decorated with lovely vegetations, sometimes clouds or mountains in the distance. This trick of drawing elements far off to beget contemplation on the reader's and the characters' part is used a couple of times in the series and works splendidly. Thanks to his impeccable sense of scale, the author offers majestic landscapes in which it is easy to lose oneself.

Three sets of pages are coloured and reading them is an especially delectable experience. Not only the coloured pages are even more awe-inspiring than the other drawings, their selection is also quite clever: each set of pages depicts a different aspect of our world, allowing the author to colour new situations and avoid redundancy. The first coloured pages thus render the beauty of nature, colouring much leafage, in accordance to the theme of the concerned story, a parakeet girl. The following one is centred on the city at night, using bluer hues and putting a stronger emphasis on lights. The last coloured story focuses on dusk, using somewhat sepia tones, and the choice to colour this passage was extremely pertinent because it permitted to emphasise the passing time by depicting the transition between afternoon and evening, which would have been trickier to achieve with normal drawings.

The illustrations are moreover not simply gorgeous, but also masterfully tied to the narration. The ultimate chapter puts an emphasis on the beauty of the unusual motionless stance of a particular object: for this purpose, the splendid scene is not only visually depicted, but textually animated. Relying on the readers' imagination, the motionless object is, through narration, described to stand amidst the perpetual motion of the grass otherwise impossible to portray genuinely dynamic, effectively reinforcing the crafted image. Furthermore, the narration adds a sound environment to the scene. The latter is described to take place near the sea, where the sound of the waves can be heard, once again strengthening the immersion in the manga.

Position tells beautiful stories, gripping in substance and excellent in writing. But they are mostly told through illustrations; which are splendid for the most part and exceptionally handled on a technical level. It is an exquisite series, perfect for fans of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou or for new readers seeking something short to discover the author.

Surely, telling stories through art is an admirable ideal. And this ideal was brilliantly achieved by Position.