Category Archives: gente

Gente Volume 3

By Natsume Ono. Released in Japan by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America by Viz.

I had mentioned at the end of my review of the second volume of Gente that it led into the events of Ristorante Paradiso, and that this volume would be a sequel. Which is not quite the case. Yes, it takes place after that book, and Nicoletta is present throughout. But while her issues with Claudio are an ongoing small plot in the book, for the most part she’s not the focus, and there’s nothing approaching plot resolution here.

Nothing really changes or wraps up here as Gente has always been a series of vignettes. The end of the manga comes, and it doesn’t so much end as stop. This is not to say that it’s not an excellent volume, for those who don’t mind that sort of thing. Several times as I read along I was thinking that I’d hit a lull, or a chapter that didn’t work as well as the others, only to find by the end of it that I had been pulled in and was reading with rapt attention. Even the one-shot people I’d never heard of managed to make me interested in their lives.

My favorite chapters in the book were probably the two that dealt with the Rizzos, a middle-aged married couple who have lost whatever spark they had in their marriage, and compensate by having constant affairs. Signore Rizzo proved to be far more than just a womanizing jerk… while still not being terribly likeable. His conversations with Nicoletta, who thinks he’s an absolute ass but can’t quite stop talking to him, are fantastic. There’s even some humor, as all the men in the Ristorante note how they’d like to have a daughter like Nicoletta… including Claudio, who immediately gets slapped down by them. (If you want cute Nicoletta/Claudio moments, you really should go read RP rather than this. Nothing really changes.) And we then get another ending showing that marriages, even ones where the love is lacking and the affairs are constant, are still marriages. It’s sort of a bittersweet comfort.

The other chapter that really felt strong for me was the final one, dealing with a conflict of interest. Nicoletta’s birthday happens to fall on the same day as the death of Gigi’s father, and he goes to visit the grave every year… except this one, where he feels Nicoletta is more important. Unfortunately, Fate seems to want to kick him in the face for that. He goes the following day, and runs into a girl who says she’s been watching him every year he comes by… and also that she’s an orphan living in a treehouse. It’s another chapter where very little happens, but seeing the little girl bond with Gigi and bring him out of his dour shell is quite touching, even if she does turn out to have been fibbing. (Also, Gigi goes from Rome to Turin in one day? That’s quite a haul.)

And so the manga ends, pretty much as it began. There was little to no plot to speak of, but you enjoyed spending time with these people, and were surprised and pleased at how their lives interacted in the most interesting ways. Plus things are open in case Natsume Ono wants to return to the Ristorante later. If RP was the appetizer, and Gente the main course, what about dessert?

Gente Volume 2

By Natsume Ono. Released in Japan by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America by Viz.

Gente is still pretty much a classic example of a Signature title: something with a very narrow audience that Viz nevertheless hopes will do well based on the name recognition of the author. As such, if you’re in that narrow span, you’ll likely enjoy it. If you didn’t like Ristorante Paradiso, you may want to steer clear, as it’s more of the same.

Luckily, I am one of that narrow audience, so I was very pleased with the 2nd volume of Gente. We get some insight into our cast of middle-aged waiters, especially Claudio, the head waiter, and Teo, who rises here to become the main chef. The Claudio chapter was especially appreciated as I had a bit of difficulty connecting with him in Ristorante Paradiso. We get a flashback here to him as an awkward young man, one who is “easy to tease” according to one patron, and still very clumsy. His youth and good looks also get him female attention that he really doesn’t want. It dovetailed nicely with Furio, who, like Vito in the volume before, is one of those men who seems to have it all together early in life.

The meat of the volume goes to the chef, Teo, and his tempestuous relationship with the one woman in the group, Vanna, the head chef. Since Gente is a prequel, we knew that Vanna, like Marzio from the first volume, would be leaving somehow, as she wasn’t around by the time that Nicoletta arrived in Ristorante Paradiso. Teo is particularly uncommunicative, and seems to lack a certain amount of motivation, so these are also the slowest chapters of the book, and can be a little frustrating. That said, Vanna seems to know how to handle him, and I quite liked the mirroring of Teo’s father’s response in flashback and Vanna’s in the main story.

The remainder of the volume seems to be building up to the point where the restaurant was when Nicoletta arrived – as indeed she does right at the end, giving the volume a cliffhanger that leads immediately into Ristorante Paradiso. We get some discussion of Olga, who, as with prior volumes, is shown to be a woman who seems to have it all. It is hinted that the author is not unaware of her failings as a mother – her friend notes that resolving things with her daughter is the one thing Olga still needs to do – but it’s lampshaded that sometimes people’s lives don’t slot into handy moral lessons. And sometimes the best story to tell is one that’s in shadows – after seeing Vito and his future wife meet in the first volume of Gente, his proposal here takes all of three pages.

Someting about this series’ relaxed, romanza feeling just works for me. Even if it’s a bunch of people sitting around talking, and the plotlines can occasionally be frustratingly obtuse, I still feel that it’s very rewarding. The third volume is out in Spring, and it would appear, judging from the ending we get here, that the third will be a sequel to Ristorante Paradiso, coming after the prequel of the first two volumes. Can’t wait.

Gente Volume 1

By Natsume Ono. Released in Japan by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America by Viz.

I enjoyed reading Ristorante Paradiso, the slice-of-Italian-life manga Viz released back in March, but at times it felt more like a series of snapshots. You got the feeling that there was a lot being left out in order to make Nicoletta and Claudio’s story be the primary focus. Likewise, after reading the flashback with Lorenzo and Gigi, I wanted to see more about the restaurant pre-Nicoletta, how the crew assembled and where they were before.

So did Natsume Ono, as we now get Gente, a 3-volume prequel to the series. Of course, that doesn’t mean that this is any more linear than its companion volume. Reading Gente is a bit like drifting from room to room at a party, picking up scraps of conversation as you go. Luckily, it’s a high-class party, and the people there are intriguing. We sense there will be change right from the ‘cast’ page at the start, which features several people we never met in Ristorante Paradiso.

And so we get an anthology of Gente short stories, which works fine. The volume starts slow, and it’s odd seeing Olga, the mother from RP, being treated so sympathetically here, but it works with the mood. Things pick up with a fascinating story of infidelity, filled with tension as you wait for things to break apart, which is oddly unrelieved as they don’t. Given Olga’s redemption in RP, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that not only one, but TWO questionable couples in this volume decide to stay together and give it another try. It makes for a lack of ‘big moments’, but feels good.

Gente reads well even if you haven’t read RP, but there are stories that reward people who know the previous story. We already know Vito, the bald guy with goatee from the restaurant, was married to a college student in the prior volume; now we see how it happened, with his running into his future wife at the gym. This was my favorite chapter of the volume, even if Vito seems a little too good to be true (but then, I am not this manga’s primary audience). I particularly liked how we were led to believe that he would be following an abusive husband downstairs to ‘give him a good talking to’, but in fact what happens is a real discussion, leading to a better result.

The volume wraps up with an outdoor picnic, as the 4 previous stories all tie together with the 5th, which writes out Lorenzo’s friend Marzio, who is leaving the restaurant due to a bad back. The sense that we’re getting snatches of a conversation is most intense here, when we’re at an actual party, but again the closest we get to a crisis is Claudio and his ex-wife meeting, and even that is merely a conversation.

If you like, well, things actually happening, this is not the manga for you. This is a manga about people talking to each other, and the action is minimal. Still, they’re likeable people, and there are many scenes here that show rather than tell, a nice level up from Ristorante Paradiso. If there’s a fault, it’s that things are a little *too* perfect here. It’s an idealized Italian world of attractive perfect men, and makes no bones about it being anything else. But I found it peaceful, relaxing and enjoyable, and want to read Volume 2.