Buntaro Mori is a withdrawn teenager who climbs a school building on a dare and finds the one thing that makes sense to him. The Climber, serialized as Kokou no Hito from 2007, follows him from amateur scrambling to solo expeditions in the Himalayas. Shinichi Sakamoto reworked an existing novel into something stranger and more personal, about a man who keeps choosing the mountain over other people. The art is the draw. Sakamoto draws rock and ice and exhausted bodies with a photoreal precision that makes the danger feel physical. It can be cold and self-serious, but few comics put you on a cliff this convincingly.
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