A short remark about Yuichi Yokoyama's "Iceland"

[asri]

Iceland by Yuichi Yokoyama is a comic (a „gekiga“, as opposed to „manga“, the creator would say) in which anthropomorphic persons (distinguished by weird head shapes) move through a few scenes. All figures seem to be conceived of as males, although I‘m not sure of that. The work seems less concerned with the figures and the plot and more with sound design in comics. Here are two reviews of Iceland which go into that:

Alex Hoffman (Sequential State, Sept. 6, 2017)

Oliver Sava (AV Club, Sept. 13, 2017)

It‘s interesting how sound penetrates some panels. For more details read the reviews above. Goodreads reviewers make some other salient points. 

Something I found interesting: Yokoyama is building suspense and unease (and, I‘d say, irritation) through extremely sparse information. We see details (e.g. a trio searching for an individual by showing a photograph to strangers) but do not get the bigger picture. We‘re never told what‘s at stake. Judging from other reviews this seems to be normal for Yokoyama, but since I‘m unfamiliar with his work, it took me by surprise. Iceland moves slowly, in a way, but it also appears to move nowhere in particular.

Iceland is visually interesting, but it also showed me that I prefer stories that move somewhere.