As gifted and versatile as Jiro Taniguchi is, I do find myself ambivalent about some of his work. I can sometimes find it too cerebral (The Times of Botchan), too burly and stoic (The Ice Wanderer), or even too sentimental (A Distant Neighborhood). I always appreciate his comics, particularly for their flawless draftsmanship, but there can be those nagging reactions to tone that keep me from admiring it without reservation.

A Zoo in Winter, Taniguchi’s latest translated offering from Fanfare/Ponent Mon, ends up being one of his titles that ends up working for me without qualification. It starts out a bit on the stoic side, but it ends up being thoughtfully sentimental in just the right way, at least by my standards.

Taniguchi reveals his early days in the manga industry, working as an assistant to a popular shônen artist. When we first meet him, or at least his avatar, Hamaguchi, he’s working in an unsatisfying job at a textile concern, making deliveries and wondering if he’ll ever get a promised chance at design work. An awkward series of events involving the owner’s daughter leads him from Kyoto to Tokyo, where a high-school friend sets him up with a job in a manga-ka’s studio.

Hamaguchi learns the assistant’s trade on the job, finding the workplace dynamics somewhat trickier than he expected. He’s jealous when a co-worker seems to be on the verge of his professional debut, and he’s quietly alarmed by the news that his superior had his shot at a solo career and went back to supporting someone else’s work. Hamaguchi also hits that wall any cartoonist faces: what kinds of stories does he want to tell?

He also gradually starts taking advantage of life in Tokyo. The studio is sort of a wheel-spoke for the kind of weird, low-grade arty types that congregate in cities. Between Kikuchi, the ne’er-do-well friend of Hamaguchi’s manga-ka boss, and his high-school buddy, Hamaguchi begins to develop something resembling a social life. Those two threads intersect when Kikuchi asks Hamaguchi to hang out with his girlfriend’s sickly sister.

The waif ends up inspiring Hamaguchi merely by expressing an interest in what happens next in one of Hamaguchi’s half-formed stories. His fondness for the girl (and probably the ego boost her admiration provides) prompts Hamaguchi to take his own work more seriously. After a rather clinical starting point, the narrative goes to some shamelessly romantic places, and I’m surprised at how well it works. There are few things quite as clichéd as the sickly inspiring the hale to make the most of their lives, but Taniguchi pulls it off by acknowledging that this is what’s happening but keeping his protagonist sweetly in the dark about what a stereotype he’s executing. It ends up being lovely rather than gooey, though the gooey mien gives it all an extra something. Taniguchi gets to frost his cake and eat it, too.

As a tale of a young artist, A Zoo in Winter is generally understated, which is a blessing. Taniguchi is in his best kind of thoughtful, restrained mode with this material, which results in some very astute observations about the hothouse quality of artists in collaboration. I think that restraint and understatement also give Taniguchi license to tug at the heartstrings a bit more than otherwise might be palatable. It strikes a very nice balance overall, and it’s certainly among my favorites of Taniguchi’s licensed works.

I don’t know if it was editorially composed to be this way, but Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) puts its least successful pieces first, allowing the stories to build in ambition and interest as the anthology progresses. The order leaves the reader with the strongest possible impression of the collection and only a scant memory of the introductory blandness. It’s a smart choice.

Choi Kyu-Sok opens the collection with “The Fake Dove,” a reminder that pretense is an international language. In it, a manhwa artist tries to live among the homeless for an assignment. It’s exactly what you’d expect – halfhearted, privileged guilt tempered by winking cynicism. “Feel bad about their plight, but you can still complain about the way they smell.”

Catel’s “Dul Lucie” has a promising idea – the creator’s attempts to show South Korea through her trademark character’s eyes. Unfortunately, it ends up being a shapeless blend of travelogue and authorial excuse-making. It’s not without charm, though, and I’d like to read some of Catel’s other work. (This chapter is among those that suffer from sometimes awkward, seemingly rushed translation; happily, none of the really good pieces fall victim to that fate.)

Things start to perk up with “Solego’s Tree,” by Lee Doo-hoo. A gifted artist finds that masterworks can have unintended consequences in a simply structured, beautifully drawn little parable.

Alas, it’s back to the bland with Vanyda’s “Oh Pilsung Korea!” A French brother and sister (whose father is Korean) bemoan the fact that they aren’t seeing “the real Korea” during their visit. Putting aside the fact that they haven’t made any specific efforts in that direction, I always find the notion of finding the “real” anywhere kind of presumptive. If the story had been about the impracticality of expectations or the travelers’ accountability, there might have been something here.

I liked “Cinderella” by Park Heong-yong, a tale of boyhood mischief that morphs into something stranger but still welcoming. I found Mathieu Sapin’s “Beondegi” twee in the way I generally react to “normal person gets dragged into wacky misadventures by a free spirit” fiction. Byun Ki-hyun makes a conscientious effort to illustrate the ways women are underestimated and overlooked in “The Rabbit,” blending elements of fantasy into a realistic urban landscape. The results aren’t especially memorable or persuasive, though.

The anthology really takes off with Igort’s “Letters from Korea.” It displays the sharpest point of view of any of the stories up to this point, and the creator clearly filtered his experiences into a coherent, thematically resonant narrative. He recounts his experiences with artisans of various levels and types, from someone who crafts handmade notebooks to a legendary animator to the people who merely leave notes to loved ones on the border with North Korea. It’s a story with interesting things on its mind, representing a meaty kind of travel experience that’s well worth sharing.

Utterly different and even more glorious is “The Pine Tree,” by Lee Hee-jae. A large family gathers in their rural hometown for the funeral of their patriarch. It speaks clearly and eloquently of the power of tradition and the enduring bonds of home as it articulates, moment by moment, the experience of the wake, the funeral, and the landscape where they’re set. I’d love for someone to publish more of Lee’s comics if they’re even remotely close to the quality of this piece.

We’re back to travelogue with Hervé Tanquerelle’s “A Rat in the Country of Yong,” but what a travelogue it is. Tanquerelle forgoes conventional detail for wordless, anthropomorphous charm. It’s such a treat to see Tanquerelle visually frame the experience of going someplace utterly new in classic, children’s-book fashion. The experiences aren’t exactly novel, but their rendering has such endearing freshness and such a warm point of view that I doubt most readers will care.

Chaemin snaps us back into the real world with “The Rain that Goes Away Comes Back,” a glimpse at what the Korean equivalent of josei must look like. As with “The Rabbit,” Chaemin shows the challenges and choices working women face. Unlike “The Rabbit,” Chaemin doesn’t need to rely on obvious metaphor. Her protagonist, an unmarried woman working at a social service agency, makes eloquent points about the pros and cons of solitude and makes anxiety about the future palpable, while keeping it at a recognizable, human scale.

Things close out on a totally whimsical note with Guillame Bouzard’s “Operation Captain Zidane.” Bouzard, in a hilariously self-parodying frame of mind, paints his trip to Korea as a ridiculous bit of subterfuge tied to the World Cup. Bouzard neatly and winningly satirizes politics, nationalism, and manic sports fandom in this smart and frisky closer to the book.

While Korea isn’t as consistently successful as its predecessor, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, there’s more than enough excellent material here to make it worth your time. Its high points are extremely high, and they’re varied in tone and approach. It’s about two-thirds of a good-to-great anthology, which is a totally acceptable rate of return.

Let me start by saying that Tokyo Is My Garden (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) has clearly been created with talent and professionalism. It’s attractive to look at, thanks to Frédéric Boilet, and it’s got a readable script by Boilet and Benoît Peeters. It paints a vivid picture of urban life in Tokyo. It’s even got “gray tones” by Jiro Taniguchi, whatever that means.

On the down side, it’s got one of those male protagonists I find grating: the lazy schlub who dates way out of his league. This isn’t always an implausible proposition, but you have to work a lot harder than Boilet and Peeters have to sell it. Maybe that’s my problem rather than a serious flaw in the comic, but we can’t help how we engage a work, and as I’ve tried to draft this review in my head, I keep constructing, not an assessment of the work’s value, but a conversation with a theoretical straight woman friend (TSWF).

So here we go:

TSWF: Who’s that?

ME: (Looking. Grimacing.) Oh, that’s David. He’s from France.

TSWF: Really? That’s kind of… interesting.

ME: (After a moment.) Oh, honey, no.

TSWF: What? It’s just an observation.

ME: It’s a fraught observation.

TSWF: Well, what’s wrong with him?

ME: He’s one of those types that assume things will work out without any effort on his part.

TSWF: What, romantically? Professionally?

ME: In every way. And the worst part is that things do work out for him.

TSWF: Is he dating anyone?

ME: Of course he is. He’s dating this hot fashion publicist named Kimie, who he started dating about five minutes after he got dumped by a hot model.

TSWF: What’s next? Techno enka cabaret singer?

ME: Probably.

TSWF: What does he do for a living?

ME: He claims he’s really a novelist.

TSWF: Has he written anything?

ME: Probably title pages and future reviews of his works.

TSWF: (Snorts.) Ow. Gin burns when it comes out through your nose. What does he really do?

ME: A cognac company is paying him to open up the Japanese market for their brand.

TSWF: That sounds fabulous.

ME: Doesn’t it? But he doesn’t do anything related to that. He dates, and he works at a fish market.

TSWF: Seriously? Like a shop, or one of those warehouse things?

ME: Warehouse things. I’m sure it’s all part of some literary scheme to inform his future prose with the working person’s perspective.

TSWF: So he could be hanging out in clubs and giving people free booze for a living, but he’d rather haul dead fish?

ME: Isn’t that deep?

TSWF: Until you think about it for eight seconds. Can I have his real job?

ME: Me first. Apparently, his boss is coming to Tokyo, and he’s all worried that his Bérnaise train is about to go off the rails.

TSWF: All because he’s never done a lick of the work he’s supposed to be doing. That’s so unfair.

ME: I know! And then he’ll have to go back to France. Can you imagine?

TSWF: God. This economy is cruel.

ME: Don’t worry too much. He got dumped by a beautiful woman only to wind up with a beautiful, smart woman. I’m sure he’ll end up accidentally getting a promotion before his boss goes back to France.

TSWF: Okay, so the down side is he’s a big pile of slack, but at least he’s an extremely lucky pile of slack. A woman could do worse.

ME: Or better. Much, much better.

The end.

The second volume of The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), written by Yumemakura Baku and illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi, delves deeply into both the psychology and behavior of its characters, though one particular aspect of their psychology and the behavior it inspires remains utterly baffling to me. I can think of few things I’d rather do less than dangle from an icy mountain by a rope. Since that’s almost all these characters think about, one might anticipate some remoteness on my part as a reader.

This reaction is averted by the sheer density of the work – the madly detailed illustrations, the tense technicalities of climbing, and the oblique revelation of small aspects of the characters. I say small aspects because Baku and Taniguchi make virtually no attempt to answer the big question of how people can dedicate their lives to an activity that’s almost entirely perilous, no matter how prepared you may be.

There’s a lot of dialogue, but there’s very little in the way of speech-making. Nobody really gazes off into the middle distance and talks about the nobility of the climb or anything of that sort. That, to my way of thinking, would have been insufferable, not to mention unpersuasive. The point-of-view character, Fukamachi, has specific interests instead of theses to prove. His attempts to understand things that have happened are different than grasping at reasons or creating context.

Most of the time in this volume is spent with Fukamachi talking to people who know legendary, troubled climber Habu. He learns of an ill-fated climb in Europe and another in Tibet. He digs into the life story of one of Habu’s rivals, finding new ways that their respective careers intersected and ran parallel. Fukamachi has an ultimate goal and mysteries to solve, but he has no specific urgency in his efforts. He’s hearing too many interesting stories to want to bring the process to a speedy conclusion.

The same can be said of the book itself. It doesn’t really have an overwhelming momentum to it, though individual sequences are often very exciting. There’s a level of remove, an analytical quality even to the nail-biting moments that suggests the perspective of a detached (but not entirely unmoved) observer. It’s a very intellectual, meticulous approach to very visceral material, and a big part of the appeal of the series is that counterpoint.

Another part is Taniguchi’s undeniably beautiful illustrations. He exhibits great restraint and fidelity in the way he renders people, keeping them on the unglamorous side. They look average, if robust, instead of heroic, which raises the stakes when they risk their lives. And his breathtaking vistas are a marvelous substitute for seeing these peaks in person.

I’m not really sure where The Summit of the Gods fits in the seinen universe, with its cerebral muscularity. With the possible exception of Hiroshi Hirata’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse), it’s unlike just about anything else I’ve read, even from Taniguchi. It’s just a tremendously confident work, and it’s rare to feel that quality come through so clearly, yet so modestly at the same time.

Here’s my review of the first volume.