Song of the Hanging Sky 1
June 14, 2009
You know, I didn’t realize I wasn’t buying any Go! Comi series until someone pointed out that they were one of the few studios that don’t allow for Right Stuf sales. I always bought After School Nightmare elsewhere since I don’t like to preorder things I’m going to want to read right away, so I actually didn’t notice I hadn’t been following anything else. I thought I’d change that with this, which sounds like their most critically acclaimed series at the moment.
It’s really, really unique! It’ll be a good replacement for After School Nightmare, even though the series are nothing alike. It’s got a really ambiguous sense of time and place, which lends itself well to the fairy tale nature of the story. A man who is escaping the war (I’m not sure he explicitly states that it is World War II or if it was just heavily implied) camps out by himself in a remote, wintery land and accidentally stumbles across a tribe of bird people. He can’t communicate with them, and initially they want to kill him in order to keep their existence a secret, but later they adopt him in as part of their tribe.
Most of the story focuses on the human, Jack, and the small boy he finds named Nuts. Nuts is scared and resists Jack at first, but eventually the two bond. Nuts is so fond of Jack, in fact, that the tribe reads the bond on Nuts’ soul and decide to change his name to “Hello,” the word that Jack tried to get Nuts to say. As time passes, Jack and the bird people eventually learn a common language and Jack even helps them trade in human villages to raise their quality of life.
A lot of the story focuses on the fact that the bird tribe is about to go extinct and their old ways are dying. Lots of signs point to this in the first volume alone, including repeated prophecies from the tribe shamen/seers, the fact that some of the older members of the tribe disappear, the fact that they adopt some human ways, and, more seriously, that there haven’t been any new children born to the people in a long, long time. The story also reflects a quiet maturation and coming-of-age in Hello and his friend Wolf, who seems jealous of the bond that Hello and Jack share (father/son, while Hello is technically Jack’s “father” in the eyes of the tribe after the adoption, Jack is the one that watches over Hello). The bird people will also likely have to deal with the war sweeping through their land and invading their solitary life, as Jack already has. There is also a chance that one of the women who has recently come of age will choose Jack as a partner rather than one of the bird men. There is some talk that the tribe, since it is so small, is too closely related (hinting at inbreeding, but there are no signs of it), so I’m quite curious to see if merging with human society will somehow help save them.
The artwork also has a certain soft, sketchy quality that lends itself well to a storybook tale like this. There are lots of interesting details in the designs of the bird people, and although most of the book took place during a rather bleak winter, I also liked the scenery.
It’s an absolutely wonderful story, a nice balance between fairy tale, coming-of-age, and perhaps an anti-war message as well. Despite the fact that the outlook for the bird tribe is incredibly dark, there was a wonderfully positive mood throughout the book. I’m definitely going to pick up the second volume the next chance I get. It looks like there are at least two more volumes available, so I imagine I’ll be dying for more once I polish off the second.
June 16, 2009 at 8:11 am
[...] of Haruhi Suzumiya (Manga Recon) Lorena on vol. 5 of Skip Beat (i heart manga) Connie on vol. 1 of Song of the Hanging Sky (Slightly Biased Manga) A Library Girl on vol. 1 of Tramps Like Us (A Library Girl’s Familiar [...]
June 17, 2009 at 11:04 pm
i bought this based off the cover art work and i really liked the title, but it was not what i was expecting and it really didn’t make me want vol.2 badly. and vol2 also never wound up at borders and i haven’t pursued it since then…
June 18, 2009 at 2:02 am
I wanted volume two only because I enjoyed the pacing and story so much, but I can see what you mean by it being something that doesn’t really make you want to rush out and get the next volume. It does move at sort of a slow pace, and the story is an understated one.