Tokyo These Days

by Taiyo Matsumoto

Info

Date Finished: 3/18/2026

First Sentence: 'Today's your last day.'

Last Sentence: 'You're always lugging that heavy backpack with you.'

Companion Album:

New Cover

A book cover for "Tokyo These Days" by Taiyo Matsumoto. The background is a pale lavender sky with soft, grey watercolor-style clouds. In the upper-left sky, a black umbrella floats upside down. The bottom right corner features a detailed pen-and-ink illustration of a modern concrete building with an external spiral staircase, with diagonal power lines stretching across the sky from a utility pole on the left. The title and author's name are printed in a clean typewriter-style font in the upper-right corner.

A Few Thoughts

Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto uses burnout as a medium to talk about life. It's about a manga editor who quits his job and plans to quit manga altogether. But once he has some time to breathe, he realizes he wants to do one last project.

By following him and the artists he connects with, Matsumoto uses their lived experiences to ask: What makes life worthwhile? Why do you do the things you do? Why do you love the people and things you love?

Woven into all this are deep, nuanced reflections on topics like failure, exploitation, creativity, art vs. profit, and understanding how you influence other people.

Ping Pong, also by Taiyo Matsumoto, is probably my favorite anime, and Tokyo These Days may just be my favorite manga/comic. I checked it out from the library, and by the end, I wished I had bought it. I can see myself needing to revisit this story from time to time in my life.

Cover Notes

The original covers are so so cool, I wasn't sure exactly where to take this redesigned cover. So, I scanned one of my favorite panels, removed the background, and added a gradient.