March Comes in Like a Lion

## March Comes in Like a Lion *March Comes in Like a Lion* (*3-gatsu no Lion*) by Chica Umino is one of the most emotionally nuanced manga of its generation — a long-running *seinen* series about a teenage professional shogi player and his gradual emergence from crippling isolation, told with warmth, formal inventiveness, and an understanding of depression that few works in any medium have equaled. Serialized in *Young Animal* since 2007, it has been adapted into a celebrated two-season anime by Shaft. Rei Kiriyama is 17 years old, a professional shogi player ranked among Japan's best, and completely alone. Orphaned as a young child, adopted by a shogi family whose eldest son resents him, and now living by himself in a small apartment in Tokyo, Rei has built his life entirely around the game that simultaneously sustains and isolates him. His only human connection comes from the Kawamoto sisters — warm, chaotic Akari; younger, sharp-tongued Hinata; and little Momo — who live near the river and take him in without questions or conditions, simply because he looks like he needs feeding. Over the course of the ongoing series, Rei slowly, painfully, and with frequent reversals, learns to accept care, form connections, and understand what the game he has sacrificed everything for actually means to him. Umino tells this story in art that shifts freely between hyper-realistic emotional close-ups, warm watercolor reveries, and absurdist comedy sequences — a formal range that matches the way depression and recovery actually feel, jagged and nonlinear. *March Comes in Like a Lion* is one of the great portraits of loneliness in contemporary manga.