冒険エレキテ島

BOUKEN EREKITETOU

MANGA

STATUS
RELEASING
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
Invalid Date
CHAPTERS
Not Available

DESCRIPTION

Mikura Amelia is a free-spirited young woman who lives alone with her cat and operates an air delivery service, flying her vintage seaplane to Japan’s small island communities located hundreds of miles out in the Pacific. When her beloved grandfather passes away, she discovers he left her an undelivered parcel, addressed to an island that doesn’t exist . . . or does it? To answer the question, Mikura flies off in search of the truth behind the Wandering Island!

(Source: Dark Horse)

CAST

Amelia Mikura

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

hxie
93/100
Wandering Island is a stirring adventure manga that features a spunky heroine.
An updated version of a previous review I wrote on r/Seinen on Reddit.

I am a sucker for adventure stories involving discovery of some lost land or island. Consequently, Wandering Island by Kenji Tsuruta may be my favorite manga in a while. The narrative involves a woman named Mikura who pilots an airmail delivery service in a charming biplane to serve communities scattered across Japan's more remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. Mikura becomes wrapped up in an obsession to find a mirage island in the Pacific Ocean that her grandfather sighted years ago called the Electric Island.

The story is fairly simple, but well-executed up to the current Volume 2. Mikura has an energetic, engaging disposition that puts a big smile on my face. I'm a big fan of Kenji Tsuruta's art -- he draws very warm and vibrant characters. Mikura's character design goes with her personality. He's made the island villages and towns look so charming I'm actually now dreaming of a trip to visit those Japanese islands at some point. Dark Horse's first volume actually ends with a fairly educational afterword about Japanese islands that appear in the narrative.

I have a pretty amorphous and varied taste in manga. FYI, my favorite series include Children of the Sea, Blame, A Distant Neighborhood, Mushi-shi, Nausicaa, Gon, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Gon being the non-seinen exception here ), so while those are pretty different from Wandering Island, if you're not a big fan of some of them, perhaps that can be informative. I suppose an underlying thread connecting all of those previous works is a sense of wonder and discovery, and that's a feeling I'm always chasing as I'm reading manga (and, just realizing that a bunch of those are published in Kodansha's Afternoon). Wandering Island is my favorite combo of art, character, and narrative I've read in a manga in a while. As a heads up, I'm cool with seeing more "natural" and "functional" under-dressed-ness and nudity in characters (of any gender) and did not find Mikura's traipsing about in a bikini to be erotic, distracting, or demeaning, but I can see how others may find her portrayal too fanservicey.

Dark Horse has released two English-translated volumes so far, solidly constructed books with durable paperback covers and pages of good paper quality. It is just unfortunate that the physical edition of first volume is already getting harder to find. Dark Horse historically has done pretty small print runs, which I understand, but it means that things can get hard to find even in just 3 - 4 months, as is the case with the Blade of the Immortal omnibuses.

Anyhow, I heartily recommend Wandering Island! My closest comparison to Wandering Island may actually be the late Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man." There is a lot of wordless walking and observation from Mikura's point of view that makes for a relaxing read. Kenji Tsuruta is a really underrated mangaka who is a case of quality over output quantity. Other previous notable works of his include Omoide Emanon (Memories of Emanon), the first volume of which also recently released by Dark Horse, and the long out-of-print Spirit of Wonder.
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