Wildful

Wildful. By Kengo Kurimoto. Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, ISBN 978-1773068626, February 2024. $US22.99. 216 pages, hardcover, 9.625 in x 6.75 in (landscape format).

Wildful is a beautiful graphic novel about getting yourself lost in the woods. Or, I'd say, about deep ecology, immersion in the environment, and biophily. It at once takes a posthumanist view (avoiding anthropocentrism and decentering human ego) and yet argues a deeply humanist viewpoint, that losing ourselves in the Wild is a way of recovering our best selves. Specifically, it's a book about biophilia as a salve for grief. It is a sparsely dialogued, in fact mostly wordless book in landscape format (for wide vistas), toned in warm sepia, and drawn naturalistically rather than cartoonishly.

Images from the publisher's site, https://houseofanansi.com/

​I hadn't known about the author, Kengo Kurimoto, til I picked up this book on a whim at my local library. Kurimoto is a game designer (LittleBigPlanet; Dreams) and animator, and Wildful is his first graphic novel. Its organic look differs from the obviously digital artwork that tends to dominate his website (though if you dig deeply enough, you'll find analog as well as digital treasures there, in plenty). Kurimoto highly values unmediated sensorial experience and close, patient observation, and he prioritizes drawing from life rather than using cartoon schemata. In Wildful, the results are rather stunning. This is a book about patiently, patiently, observing the natural world and finding yourself changed in the process. 

The plot, in outline, is simplicity itself: A young girl named Poppy and her dog Pepper accidentally discover the wild woods behind their house, where they meet a new friend, Rob, whose loving, unhurried appreciation of the environment rubs off on them. Over the course of several days hanging out with Rob, Poppy begins to notice and question more, and to luxuriate in her surroundings. She comes to experience the natural world more deeply. Poppy longs to bring her Mum out to the woods with her, but Mum, who is still grieving the loss of her own mother, is depressed, withdrawn, and housebound. The book's resolution brings Mum out of the house and involves an overnight kip in the woods. 

The story is that basic. There are four characters: three humans, one dog. We don't learn much about the circumstantial details of their lives. We come to know very little of Poppy's family or backstory, and next to nothing about Rob's other than the fact that he finds solace in the woods. What matters is the process of their shared discoveries and the adventure in perception and empathy that they undergo. On the level of paraphrasable content, or abstracted themes, Wildful is, again, simple, or it's the kind of thing we are tempted to call simple — but as an experience, it's stunning.

The storytelling is mostly mute and relies greatly on Kurimoto's minutely observed, naturalistic drawing, warm shading, and unhurried pace. Most pages are multipanel sequences, but some are single panoramic drawings (see this great page about his process). The book can be read in a few minutes, or, better, reread slowly and luxuriated in. 

You owe it to yourself to experience this.