An ongoing experimental manga. A recontextualization of German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk, a collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century and its iron-and-glass covered shopping “arcades” (of which Japan has its contemporary corollary in the shōtengai – covered shopping streets), MAN.GAD takes the flaneur into the street of the contemporary city, a model and beacon of Asian development. A collision of “manga” and “gad” (to move restlessly or aimlessly from one place to another), Like Passagenwerk’s flaneur, the man gadding about in MAN.GAD casts a critical eye past the superficial glitz and offers its observations on the sameness of urban devlopment in Asia, but in the form of manga panels.
