Saturday 17 December 2016

A Distant Neighborhood

by Jiro Taniguchi

So. Travelling in time. Ah, to be fourteen-year old again. To find yourself in your family home, with your mum and dad and little sister and granny. To go to your old high school, seeing old friends, allowing yourself this time to fall in love with a beautiful classmate. Leaving behind, that is, far in the future, your wife and children. Wondering if they are worrying about you, whether you’ll ever see them or, indeed, whether you’ll ever have a wife and children.

Hiroshi tries to change his present by changing his past, and also doing his best not to change it. Naturally, you can’t do both things at the same time. You would need at least two time trips, and we all know how easy it is to hitch just one. More interesting dilemmas, apparently not involving any time travel, concern Hiroshi’s father. What happens if you live someone else’s life? It’s difficult to live, difficult — but not impossible — to escape.

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