They circumvent this through a break in the fence. The book begins with three men being refused entry to the titular Garden. In Garden, the task of helping the reader understand what they are seeing passes to the protagonists, who keep up a continual narration of questions, observations, descriptions and comments as they navigate this strange territory. In Travel, the author’s commentary explained what many of the images showed and speculated on what the characters might be doing in a carefully detached, neutral tone as if Yokoyama himself was only an interpreter, with no privileged information about what was happening in those pages. There are speech balloons too, but the way the characters talk to each other hasn’t got much in common with naturalistic dialogue.

The sound effects are also back. Translations of the noises are printed on or directly beneath each sound effect, a clever solution to the usual relettering problem that works surprisingly well. Like Travel, it’s a long (318 pages) continuously unfolding situation, but it features the same kinds of masked and costumed protagonists on a mission that we saw in New Engineering. It continues the style and approach of his earlier books New Engineering and Travel, with a few refinements in presentation.

Garden is the third book by Japanese artist Yuichi Yokoyama.

Travel yuichi yokoyama