The Penguin Highway manga perfectly highlights its magical realism.
I love Penguin Highway movie and how it blends fantasy elements and an unusual mystery into a real-world mystery, and I’m curious to see how the manga adaptation will handle its concepts. After all, we have the descriptive nature of the novel combined with the potential opportunities for more detail than the anime adaptation. It’s still a compelling story that will leave the reader wondering about its many mysteries.
Aoyama is a young man who explores the unknown and the mysterious with his friend and classmate Uchida. He also has a crush on a dental assistant who he really only knows as a strange girl. However, both of these “interests” come together when he realizes that she can create penguins. These penguins have been seen around town, with no real explanation for them. However, when Aoyama and Uchida try to get a penguin out of the area, it turns into a soda can. We get to watch (or in this case, read) as Aoyama gets to know the girl, learns about her past, and finds out what’s going on with the penguins, all while dealing with things like another classmate who also has a crush on him named Hamamoto and a bully named Suzuki.
What’s interesting about all the forms Penguin Highwayand not just the manga, is how the fantasy elements start to creep into the story. When we first learn about the penguins, it’s reasonable to assume that there might be a zoo situation. However, we then see the woman throw a soda can and it turns into a penguin, which dispels that theory. From there, a series of additional information, tests, and insights prove that there is indeed something going on. Not to mention that we get to see than,This is very satisfying and helps highlight other underlying themes in the story.
Because there’s so much going on, and so many fantasy and supernatural elements are intertwined and heightened as they come in. I feel like with the manga version of Penguin HighwayIt’s often easier to see the correlations and connections between them. For example, the initial interactions between Aoyama and the young woman he meets begin to blossom as he falls in love with her. Those first crushes are magical! As they spend more time together, we see more of the penguin’s quirky and creative elements.
Then, as the more important plot elements come into play, we see more traumatic occurrences. When we see the orb and its waters, we know that it is an ominous symbol due to the things that happen around it. The spaceship disappears. The Jaberwock appears. Spoilers are avoided, of course, but as important moments related to coming of age, dealing with bullies, and experiencing loss come into play, it is reflected in what Aoyama and even characters like Hamamoto face.
With the manga adaptation of Penguin HighwayI could see more opportunities to better illustrate what was going on and bring the town and its situations to life. It may not always be as visually impressive as the film adaptation. However, I also felt that sometimes it meant having a little more time or opportunity to stop and take in what was going on. This was especially important as the story reached its climax and conclusion.
I like the manga adaptation of Penguin Highway It allowed me to really spend time with the story. At the same time, it incorporated the same kind of great visuals and allowed us to appreciate the sometimes silly and sometimes dire situations in the same way that the anime adaptation did. In any case, it was a great way to introduce even more people to the original story from the novel.
The Penguin Highway story available through Yen Press now, as NovelThe movie is streaming on Crunchyroll.
