Drifting Net Cafe (漂流ネットカフェ, Hyōryū Netto Kafe) is a manga written and drawn by Oshimi Shūzō. First published in Japan on Manga Action magazine, its serialization began on February 28, 2009 and ended on the same day in June 2011.
Drifting Net Cafe can be considered Shūzō Oshimi‘s first major work, it was his first serialization to reach an adequate number of chapters (sixty-three) and volumes (seven) to comprehensively collect the author’s thought, obviously given his particular type of writing.
synopsis
Koichi Toki is an office worker or salaryman with a wife. He works hard to bring food home and leads a rather simple and boring life. During a work trip, he decides to spend time in an internet cafe, where he meets an ex-schoolmate after not seeing each other for a while. In the same cafe, several clients begin to have problems with their computers and the cellular signal disappears. The group of clients together with the manager of the place, Toki and his partner are trapped, to discover that they are in a mysterious place that is not Japan. The group suffers from disagreements, several escalations of anger and despair trying to survive while Toki and his friend’s relationship progresses little by little.
-excerpt from wikipedia.org
Critical Review
It is good to begin this analysis from the premise behind this manga. Drifting Net Cafe is openly inspired by Kazuo Umezu‘s work The Drifting Classroom, so much so that it inherits not only part of the title, but especially the incipit of the plot.
Of course, comparisons with the original work came naturally to readers and critics alike. And in my opinion it was precisely this comparison of the two works that led somewhat everyone, especially the critics in the field, to welcome Oshimi‘s manga rather lukewarmly, to not use a worse term.
By this I do not mean to say that it is always wrong to make comparisons with past works, all the more so when the link between them is so overtly explicit, however, it occurs to me that the inspiration from Umezu‘s manga has misled more than a few in the proper interpretation and evaluation of Drifting Net Cafe.
Much of the criticism levelled at Drifting Net Cafe concerns the fact that “the horror element was not well exploited by Oshimi, thus not doing justice to the original work.”
I do not want to be Oshimi‘s advocate, but this is not a flaw in the manga, but rather a thoughtful choice by the author. Let me explain further.
Umezu‘s Drifting Classroom is a horror manga with strong sociological elements (the behavior and experiences of people within a particular social group), elements that give great depth to the work such that it is something more than the usual horror manga; on the other hand, Oshimi‘s Drifting Net Cafe is a purely introspective (psychological) manga that exploits the horror elements to keep the pace of the narrative high, and consequently the reader’s attention.
For this reason, again in my humble opinion, it makes little sense to compare this two manga. Drifting Net Cafe is a very personal work, at times autobiographical, as are most of the works that would follow it over the years, one above all: Aku no Hana.
Mind adrift
I want to begin this analysis with the title of the manga, its meaning. The easiest and most obvious part to explain is, of course, the “net cafe,” an explicit reference to the place where the supernatural episode from which the whole story unfolds, as well as the only setting for the entire duration of the story, except for a few brief other locations.
Now, there is left to analyze the term “drifting,” which, unlike “net cafe,” has no explicit meaning, or a simple explanation. In fact, in addition to the literal interpretation of the term (the fact that the net cafe drifts into another dimension), Oshimi also wanted to give a metaphorical meaning to the word “drifting,” a meaning that I will try to explain in this paragraph.
In the finale of the manga we discover how the trigger for the “drift” of the net cafe is the protagonist Koichi Toki’s desire to escape from his daily life. Why does he want to escape? Does he have such a miserable life that he causes an anomaly in space-time? Actually no, what is repugnant about his life is actually himself. What troubles the protahgonist so much is how he has lived his life up to that moment.
Basically, Koichi never really made a choice in his entire life; everything that happened to him, from his professional career to his sentimental life, he simply accepted what came his way. For work, he followed what was imposed or suggested to him by his parents and school’s teachers, without really looking for or choosing something he liked. The same is true for his partner, Yukie Toki; it was the latter who proposed to Koichi, and he simply accepted her proposal.
Does this mean that Koichi has a miserable life? Absolutely, no. His job is definitely not the best in the world, but it is well paid and he has average colleagues. Yukie is not a bad person; in fact, she is described by Koichi himself as a very kind girl. It’s true, the protagonist often complains about the latest period his partner is experiencing, as pregnancy leads Yukie to have mood swings, but in the end even this is part of the normalcy of living together.
The origin of Koichi’s psychological breakdown is thus solely due to the fact that he has never chosen anything in his life, that he has approached his entire existence passively. Koichi is only mad at himself. And it is precisely this emotional state that leads the protagonist to “drift” into another dimension.
One evening Koichi “decides” to make a break from the norm, and escape for a few hours from the monotony of his daily routine. Before returning home he “decides” to enter a net cafe to spend some time alone. Ironically, of the many people he could meet in a net cafe in a large metropolis like Tokyo, Koichi finds his former classmate, Kaho Tono, with whom he was madly in love in his middle school days.
Kaho represents Koichi’s greatest regret, the personification of his mental block. The fact that he did not even try to confess his love to Kaho, despite the fact that he was virtually certain that she also shared the same feeling, represents the emblem of his failure in life. Not a day goes by for Koichi in which he does not think about how his life could have changed if he had managed at least on that occasion to take the first step, to act, to decide something in his life.
This worry is what does not allow Koichi to move forward in his life, to grow as an individual, that keeps him anchored in the past, that does not allow him to become an adult. The question arises: what is this mental block due to, why couldn’t Koichi confess his love to Kaho?
Resolute women
The fear of relating to the female figure is one of the most recurring themes in Oshimi‘s works. Especially in the author’s early period, this theme is often related to physical appearance, to the purely sexual sphere, and then evolves over the years and works into something more psychological.
Just think of manga such as Avant-garde Yumeko, where the eponymous protagonist is obsessed with the male genital organ. Clever caricature of the sex drive that the author stifled/hid in his middle school/high school days (typical of adolescence). And how the male protagonist is overwhelmed by Yumeko’s extravagant behavior.
Another juvenile work is Sweet Poolside in which the protagonist feels he is not a “real man” due to the total absence of hair on his body, this causes him low self-esteem, and as a result he cannot approach the opposite sex, even though he would like to.
The theme of fear of women is central in Devil Ecstasy. The protagonist, after being assaulted at an early age by a rather bursting cousin (both in character and physical appearance), finds himself terrified of all women with large breasts.
Finally, even the protagonist of Yutai Nova is so afraid of confronting the girl he is in love with that he is only able to approach her when he has out-of-body experiences, the so-called astral projections.
These are all works from Oshimi‘s artistic “youth,” in which the author experiments and refines his writing style, and especially where he tries to figure out how to properly express his thoughts and mental turmoil.
We finally arrive at Drifting Net Cafe, in which this theme returns again. This time, however, Oshimi finally manages to describe clearly what it is about the female figure that frightens him (or at any rate frightened him in the past). This makes it possible to reevaluate even the manga just mentioned, as in Drifting Net Cafe the author attempts to explain the red thread of his work up to this point, the evolution of his thinking; also showing the foundation on which he wrote and built the stories of his later works, Aku no hana and Chi no wadachi above all.
In Drifting Net Cafe, it is easy to identify the main scene of the work, the event that triggers the development of the plot, the premise at the origin of the entire story told in the manga: Kaho licking Koichi’s nose during a blackout at school.
This event triggers a feeling of dread in Koichi, so much so that he erects a wall between him and Kaho that will lead the two to “drift apart”, and slowly lose sight of each other, interrupting what would become the typical love story between school desks. Koichi’s greatest regret.
What has just been described all sounds like nonsense. If Koichi is madly in love with Kaho, how is it possible that he is afraid of her to the point of pushing her away? Because Koichi is intimidated by Kaho’s resourcefulness, he feels completely overwhelmed by her firm and resolute character. Feeling uncomfortable, and unable to comprehend Kaho’s impetuous/impulsive/sanguine gesture, Koichi simply run away from her. This is the heart of the matter: the male protagonists in Oshimi‘s works are afraid of resolute women, while they are attracted to innocent, sweet, and gentle ones. More simply, women who act like a mother. Koichi in fact falls in love with Kaho when he thinks she is innocent, but as soon as she licks his nose (an emblematic gesture of steadfastness), the protagonist becomes frightened and run away as far as possible from her.
Obviously this “fear of the resolute female figure” is an autobiographical aspect that the author expresses, with different facets, through his manga. Shūzō Oshimi gives vent to the side he considers the most problematic of his personality, probably the main source of his mental turmoil. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the author will continue to put forward and evolve this theme in the works following Drifting Net Cafe in an attempt to delve deeper and deeper into his unconscious in order to understand the origin of his adolescent turmoil so that he can overcome it and finally grow as a man.
How I became an adult…
In the preceding paragraphs, I have emphasised several times how Drifting Net Cafe is in many aspects an autobiographical work. This is not my personal interpretation, but a fact, based on the argument par excellence: the author’s word.
At the conclusion of the seventh and final volume of the manga, Oshimi writes the usual afterword where he thanks all the people who supported him during the serialisation of Drifting Net Cafe.
Reading it with a modicum of attention, it is possible to understand both from the incipit and the thanks to his wife and daughter, the highly autobiographical nature of the work. I transcribe it below:
Thank you very much for reading this manga to the end. I used my first love delusion in my middle school days as the inspiration for this story. It was a trauma I carried inside of me for years, so you can’t imagine how liberating it was to transfer it to the pages of a manga. I would like to thank Mr Hirata and Mr Zusu, who supervised the project. Another big thank you goes to Mr. Minoura, the former editor-in-chief of Manga Action, and his successor, Mr. Someya, and all the people involved in the production, I also cannot fail to thank my wife, who never stopped supporting me even though I was always busy working on this manga.
Finally, a special thanks to my two-year-old daughter, who finally taught me how to be an adult.
Oshimi Shuzo (afterword Drifting Net Café)
Oshimi‘s words are so clear that it seems pointless to add a comment, but since this is precisely the fundamental principle of Hana Ga Saita Yo, I will try to write a few lines anyway, even at the risk of becoming redundant.
Oshimi begins by explaining what prompted him to write Drifting Net Cafe: ‘the first love delusion in my middle school days’. This is exactly the point I was referring to when I said in the previous paragraphs that this work was totally different from The Drifting Classroom by Umezu. Drifting Net Cafe is a personal, introspective manga that does not follow Umezu‘s work, but only wants to pay homage to it, obviously exploiting the brilliant incipit of its plot.
Moreover, Oshimi, by specifying that the love disappointment dates back to middle school, just like the one between Koichi and Kaho, gives the story an obvious autobiographical side.
By carefully reading the afterword above, it is possible to make other parallels between the author and the protagonist of Drifting Net Cafe:
- they both have a love delusion in their middle school days;
- a disappointment that haunts them into their thirties;
- they both get married relatively early to women older than them despite not being able to overcome the remorse caused by that delusion;
- they become adults through the birth of their respective daughters (both female by the way);
- to not forget what was described in the previous paragraph, the fear of resolute women common to both of them.
With just a few lines of the afterword, Oshimi gives his readers the key to reading his work:
- Koichi is the author’s transposition within the story;
- Kaho represents his first love in middle school;
- Yukie portrays his wife, that mother figure who accepts and waits for him despite his mental turmoil;
- the net cafe that drifts into another dimension is therefore a metaphor for the mental prison in which the author has locked himself up because of his love delusion.
From this premise, it is possible to correctly interpret the story of Drifting Net Cafe. Koichi, the personification of the author, experiences the chance meeting with Kaho as a sign of destiny. However, being an insecure person, Koichi goes into confusion, not quite sure what to do, torn between real life (his wife Yukie and the imminent birth of his daughter), the chance to finally win his first love (the so-called second chance), and his chronic fear of resolute women like Kaho (being licked on the nose).
As the days go by, Koichi becomes convinced that the right path is to choose Kaho, so his mind hardens the bars of the prison, and he resigns himself to remaining forever in this bleak new dimension.
At a certain point in the story, a two-year-old girl appears out of nowhere, barely able to say the word ‘daddy’, just enough to cast doubt into Koichi’s mind. Thanks to the presence of his daughter, Koichi avoids going past the point of no return, the scene in question being that of the failed sexual intercourse with Kaho nipped in the bud when the little girl enters the room.
Finally Koichi realises the responsibility of his choices and decides to return to his “reality”, to his real family. However, he still has to overcome the last hurdle: accepting his past. Hence the surreal scene where Kaho invites him to their middle school, magically appeared out of nowhere, where as soon as Koichi walks through the doors he literally go back to the past, in fact both characters change appearance, transforming into their middle school version respectively. The purpose of this scene is to confront Koichi with the source of his existential turmoil; if he wants to grow as a person, he must reject the version of Kaho he had fallen in love with.
Koichi succeeds, he finally accepts his life for what it is, no longer regrets any of the events that have happened to him up to that point, whether they were his choice or not. Soon after, Koichi wakes up on the futon at home, next to his wife…. it was just a nightmare (?)
Coup de foudre
Over the years, Oshimi has repeatedly shown how his storytelling often relies on the hypothetical period. The author starts from a thought, even an absurd one, that goes through his mind and builds the stories of his manga starting from there.
Let me give some practical examples. In Yutai Nova, the premise could be summarised as: “If I could have out-of-body experiences, what would I do?”; or in Boku wa no Mari no naka where the incipit of the story is: “If one day I woke up in the body of a teenager girl, what would I do?”. The author also uses this same writing method in Drifting Net Cafe, setting as the premise of the manga: “If I was stuck in another dimension with my first love, what would I do?”
In Drifting Net Cafe, the episode that triggered the thought behind this manga in the author’s mind is accurately described, the one that led him to remember his first love in middle school, and to imagine being alone with her in another dimension.
The episode in question is depicted in the image I have used for this paragraph. Koichi, while taking a quiet walk with his wife Yukie through the crowded city centre, is brushed by a woman who reminds him terribly of Kaho Tono, his ‘coup de foudre’. Koichi is so shocked by the fortuitous encounter that he turns towards the woman, as if to make sure she is not an hallucination, or a ghost.
It is not known whether this episode really happened to Oshimi, or whether the author created it specifically for the Drifting Net Cafe story.
However, I like to think that my first hypothesis is true. Oshimi during a walk in the city caught a glimpse of a woman who reminded him of his first love delusion, and as soon as he returned home, he started to write down (and draw) the emotions and thoughts that that fortuitous encounter awakened in him.
Dialectic
I want to conclude this article by analysing the most significant character in Drifting Net Cafe, second only to the pair of protagonists, namely: Terasawa.
This character literally covers, on an etymological level, the meaning of the term ‘antagonist’. Terasawa in fact, besides being the undisputed villain of Drifting Net Cafe, personifies the exact opposite of the protagonist, Koichi Toki. And it is precisely on this last statement that I will focus on this paragraph.
The crucial point of my argument is found in the 51st chapter of the manga. The latter is almost entirely focused on Terasawa, more precisely, in it is recounted a flashback focusing on his adolescence, which highlights similarities between him and the protagonist of Drifting Net Cafe, Koichi Toki, in a rather paradoxical way.
The most obvious aspect, to the point that Terasawa himself confirms this several times throughout the story, is the similarity between his first and only love, Shiho, and the Kaho Tono. Hence his obsession with the manga’s female protagonist.
Terasawa falls in love with Shiho in middle school, but his romance is not long-lived; similarly to what happens to Koichi. The ensuing delusion turns into the boulder of remorse that Terasawa drags with him for almost twenty years. Another point in common with the protagonist of this manga.
However, between Terasawa and Koichi, there is one element that makes all the difference in the world: the way the two approach their respective insecurities.
The protagonist of Drifting Net Cafe is subjected to events, is passive, does not have the courage to choose, thinks that his will and interests come after those of others… in a word, Koichi has an inferiority complex, and thus constantly feels insecure about himself.
Terasawa on the other hand, despite suffering from the same inferiority complex, deals with it in an entirely different way, namely by instilling fear in others through violence, forcing others to comply and bend to his will. Terasawa flaunts a confidence he does not really possess, it is merely a mask, a defensive mechanism.
Paradoxically, the result is the same: loneliness.
Koichi passively endures life and is considered a spineless person by other people, no one esteems or wants him as a friend, so much so that he finds himself in his thirties feeling alone and miserable in the world, despite having a wife. If he had not felt miserable, he would not have caused the ‘drifting’ of the net cafe i nthe first place.
Otherwise, Terasawa’s authoritarian behaviour with his group of friends is what will lead him to loneliness. His self-assurance, cockiness, leads him to think that he is always right and above all to think that no one will ever contradict him. He goes so far as to think that the girl he falls in love with is rightfully his ‘property’, precisely because he is convinced that no one can say no to him, least of all her. This pride leads Terasawa to cross the line, what he thinks is a consensual sexual relationship with Shiho turns out to be harassment instead, he rapes the girl without realising it. So much so that he is denounced by Shiho, and for this, Terasawa is arrested by the police. As he is put into the police car, all those he thought were his friends, now free from his psychological grip, pour out all their repressed hatred on him. From that moment on, Terasawa becomes a man alone in the world, unable to relate, unable to love another person, a man imprisoned in his past.
Oshimi uses Terasawa’s character as an antithesis to his existential dialectic.
Through the character of Koichi, the author expounds the thesis (i.e. the problem that afflicts him), while with Terasawa he expounds the opposite concept. By comparing them (synthesis), the message that the work wants to convey to the reader is highlighted even more.
Explaining it in more practical terms. It is as if Oshimi wants to say: ‘I have an inferiority complex, and because of this I cannot make decisions in my life because I feel chronically insecure. What should I do to overcome this problem? Should I impose my will on everyone with arrogance (Terasawa)? I don’t think so, the result would be the same, loneliness. Then what is the solution? … My daughter.”
Afterword
Drifting Net Cafe, again in my humble opinion, must be regarded as Oshimi Shūzō‘s first major work. I am not referring to the fact that it was the first manga with a long serialization, but rather for the refinement of his writing style.
This is why Drifting Net Cafe can be considered Oshimi‘s first authored work. After various experiments with the first short serialisations and the so-called ‘one-shots’, Oshimi finally perfected his formula, that combination of autobiographical, sociological, fantasy/horror, psychological thriller and drama elements. Let us also not forget the use of the hypothetical period as the premise of the story.
I consider Drifting Net Cafe a fundamental work in Oshimi Shūzō‘s repertoire, as it is the first manga that allows the reader to get in touch with the author’s personality. After finishing reading this manga, one has the impression of knowing the author a little better, and this is in my opinion the meaning and purpose that every form of art should have.
Hana Ga Saita Yo 