A review by bantwalkers
Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Adrian Tomine, Kōji Suzuki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Yuji Oniki

4.0

in Tatsumi's autobiographical A Drifting Life, him and his brother have many conversations about what manga is, and Tatsumi's own experimentation. Tatsumi’s brother’s criticisms can be seen at work here. In The Push Man most stories are 8 pages long, but each panel is packed with significance. Here, the longer stories seem to sometimes languish in their openness. Maybe Tatsumi’s wish to be more cinematic hinders him somewhat, as the stories don’t seem as tight, or even as meaningful. That isn’t to say they are bad stories. He still captures the low-lifes in Tokyo struggling to meld the old with the new. He is a talented artist and writer, who packs his stories with more literary symbolism than any other manga artist I’ve read. These just aren’t as powerful as some of his other work.