Kakukaku Shikajika
Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey

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*An eye-opening, butt-moving piece of art striking enough to leave something to ponder on for a lifetime.*
(Written last February 21, 2022)

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!! SPOILER-FILLED REVIEW/REFLECTION !!

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Blind and with low expectations, this manga basically blew me away. It opened my eyes, enlightened me on the significant do's & don'ts of living youth. An honest-to-God touching series which, I believe, could connect to most people in many ways.
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At first, realizing it's an autobiographical manga, I started contemplating on what blurs the line between fiction and reality. "Should I treat it just as a manga?" "How should I feel knowing it's based on a true story?" "Should I really trust what happens here isn't exaggerated to the limits?"

Initially, I was turned off with that notion due to my unfamiliarity with such concept in animanga. However, I could say that the author delivered her own story with proper execution, pacing, and tone. I understood why there were plenty of timeskips and it isn't riddled with numerous interactions. It stays true to life for the most part (though I'm sure there are some parts that are contrived to a degree, but I can't pinpoint which one it is so I've disregarded that now), and it seemed "real", and because of that realness I was able to be vulnerable to the author's intentions and was able to intake the whole brunt of the story's message and lessons.

Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey made me empathize with the mangaka. I admire her being completely open and personal with her personal journey, exposing all of the mistakes she's made throughout her life through the characters.

What struck me the most was the teacher-student relationship which I always love seeing as it is one of my favorite tropes. In this series, the connection is done so well. And about Sensei...Well, what happened to him was depressing to say the least. His impact in life and in death broke my walls and made me contemplate on my own situation. "Just Draw. Draw. Draw. Draw." I could never forget his words. Repeated as it is, cliche as his advices are, harsh as his disciplinary habits were, it made it all the more moving.

We all need someone like Hidaka-sensei in our lives to keep our butts moving. People like him ready us for the harshest points in life and help us adapt when the worst comes. Perhaps it's a mixed view, but personally I would want to be under someone like Sensei. He teaches not only what's within the four confined walls of a classroom, but a world way beyond in distance and in time.

Blank Canvas made me think about my own future. I'm a university student and I'm filled with so many doubts towards myself. I don't have as much privilege as the mangaka had at this stage of her life, so it pushed me to do what counts and to grab any opportunities I can, and not waste 4 years of my college life in passivity and incompetence. I need to improve myself, need to find my dream.

The future is clouded in uncertainties, but life always has something planned for us. It might take a long time, it might be hard to remain optimistic, but to struggle on is one of the biggest achievements and requirements to attain what we deserve.

I like how the author's experience in art and her utilization of art in her story heavily ties to life. Truly, art is closely resembled and synonymous with life. There are endless possibilities, but it is the truth that we are constricted in what we make to pave a path of success. Sometimes we can be in a slump and don't know what to do. Sometimes we love art but aren't good at it, and so we can either work hard or leave the road. Either way, in life the brush is always in our hands. The materials are just scattered around. The canvas is always there, waiting for us for it to be given life.

I would just like to reiterate how grateful I am of the author's openness. In the ending parts of the last chapter, she's shared some of her sentiments. It felt like I'm left with a long-lasting, gentle touch in my heart. It is an inspirational story, and I highly recommend more people to read this.

This book tells the touching story of Akiko Higashimura Sensei, a well-known Manga-ka in Japan. She's famous for fun and cute works like 'Kuragehime' and 'Tokyo Tarareba Musume'.

But this book is different. It's a deep and emotional journey. It's about how Higashimura Sensei became a Manga-ka, and it's a story that made me cry.

A big part of her story is her painting teacher from her hometown, "Hidaka Sensei". His role in her life was so moving that I couldn't read without tears.

If you like Higashimura Sensei's work or are interested in Manga-ka, you should read this. It's a story of her life and how she ... became a Manga-ka. It's a heartfelt, emotional book that's worth reading.

Kakukaku Shikajika is an incredibly frustrating manga. There core aspect of it and message it tries to send are both touching and heartfelt but it’s bogged out by so much extraneous fluff that it almost completely ruins it to me.

KS presents itself as an autobiography of Akiko Higashimura, the mangaka who wrote this. We get a rather general view of her life, all the way from childhood to her current life. Despite this, the real focus of the manga is her relationship with her art teacher, an incredibly important person in her life that for meager fees taught her art, helped her get into an ... arts college and inspired her to move forward when she herself couldn’t. In my opinion it’s also easily the best part of it. It’s very genuine and touching, she portrays her strict but caring teacher in so much detail that it’s easy to grow attached to him yourself which makes the concluding final all the more impactful.

However if you were cut down the content leave in only that part the manga would probably be only like 2 volumes long if not less, so what else is in there? Well, not much. Aside from rare trivia about manga industry I honestly can’t find much of note in this autobiography. To me a good autobiography is one that tells you about the life of an interesting person and I can’t consider this manga author to be one of them. Her life doesn’t come off as anything so exceptional that it needs to be known and while this is incredibly subjective it’s a large part of what kept me from enjoying this manga.

Higahimura liked shoujo manga, she didn’t study too good and decided to go to an arts school. She lived a carefree live during her college years and had some very average parties and past times. She worked at a boring job as one of those telephone tech support/assistants people, I can’t remember the particulars of that but basically she just sat around accepting calls all day, during that time she also started to draw manga in her spare time. When she gathered enough money through manga she quit her job and almost made it a full time thing aside from a period of time helping out at an art class. Does any of this sound interesting to you? If so maybe you’ll be able to enjoy this far more than I did but if you didn’t I hope you’ll understand why I’m so harsh, are these events really worth devoting a huge chunk of the manga to when the rest is so much more meaningful and important? The question is entirely up to whoever reads this because I don’t think you can objectively gouge how interesting someone’s life is.

However there’s other two major downsides to this manga. Second one is about as major to me as the first if not more and it’s about how poorly Higashimura utilizes manga as a medium. Some of the most perceptive people on the planet will able to spot a small difference between manga and normal books. In case you’re not one of those people I consulted one of them to tell me what it is. Turns out manga has visuals, it has pictures, it has panels that separate the narrative into scenes and motions much like sentences, chapters and pages do in a book. Manga allows you to SEE the story and picture the things instead of writing them. Higahimura isn’t very intent on using that aspect of manga however as pages are often filled with walls of text that doesn’t carry as much value as the volume of it would lead to believe. I wish I could embed pictures into reviews cause then I’d be able to put a nice, long gallery of panels filled with just too much text that don’t tell you much and those things build up pretty quick which makes the experience reading this rather exhausting. Like goddamn she actually dedicated about 3 pages to the process they went through at a used books store to package the goods or give them a better look, it has no effect on her life or anything else for that matter, it’s just random trivia for no reason, just cause.

It doesn’t help that art is not really outstanding either. It’s serviceable for sure and it’s not hard on the eyes but there’s also a whole lot of panels that are either completely blank or have barely anything on them or just have a screen tone. For a story so centered about art and how hard the author trained for it I’d expect a bit more. One of the most glaring examples however is how she used a badly filtered photo of a cityscape as background at least 2, maybe 3 times, one of which was on a page where she talks about drawing being the only thing she’s capable of.

Third problem I have with this manga is closely tied to events that happened at the end of 4th and throughout most of 5th volume which is the only stuff I’d consider to be a spoiler when talking about this. As such I suggest you skip this long ass paragraph unless you don’t intent to read this manga. The problem I have is the tone. At the end of volume 4 the art teacher, huge part of Akiko’s life is revealed to have cancer and we learn that he has very little left to live. This is very hard news for Higashimura and a rather relatable event to people who have lost a relative or loved one, especially to cancer. As such it’s a rather tragic and grim thing to take in. This is also the most emotionally loaded part of KS cause you can feel the author’s remorse that she couldn’t do everything she could for her teacher, didn’t treat him the way she should’ve have and laments that her past self didn’t appreciate and value him as much as she should have. There’s entire pages where it feels like she blames herself for this, asking for forgiveness from her now deceased and hoping that he can hear him the same way she can hear his voice in the times she needs him. Those moments are as sweet as they’re heartbreaking cause while you get to see how strong their bond was you also get to feel her sorrow. I’ve went a little too long without saying what’s the actual problem is but now that you see how important this development is I feel like you’ll understand me better when I say that the ramblings about unimportant things and half-assed comedy annoy me even more. Do you want to honor the memory of your teacher who played a large part in you achieving your dream or do you want to fucking tell me pretty the editor you had in Tokio was and how it was totally fun to hang out with her and your other manga author friend? I’m not even kidding moments after a hearbreaking scene on the day funeral it’s followed up by this and her talking about how her husband was so nice that he insisted she moved to another city to help her achieve her dream, a gesture she returned by dating someone else and divorcing her husband shortly after. Either way, even without this particularly jarring examples it’s just shitty to think that the whole manga revolves around such an important and sad topic but instead of committing to that we get to see so much extra info that probably didn’t need to be there at all. There’s even a part where Higashimura herself admits that she didn’t give much thought to this manga and just kinda wrote it as she went without proper planning which really shows in barren panels, lack of structure and her constantly going off to talk about some unrelated rubbish.

In conclusion what did I end up with? An autobiography that recounts countless very insignificant and mundane events. A manga that’s intent on using words more than that visuals. A story that tries to pay respect to someone while actively hindering it by switching the focus to aforementioned dull things. While there’s some very good parts in this they are so heavily bogged down by the bad ones that I can’t recommend this. Judging by the scores and opinions of my friends I’m in minority here however so if you still think this manga is intriguing, give it a go, it’s not like it’s incredibly long anyways.