Well, I can safely say that I really don’t know what I just
read. I was digging the whole “wordless” approach, and I was definitely
interested, but I was surprised at how little I was able to piece together
after passing the last page. I could understand when flashbacks were going on,
and I could tell that there were some characters that were consistently
appearing from chapter to chapter, but that may have been it.
Now, one may think that the above paragraph would indicate
that I didn’t enjoy the reading – quite the contrary; the art was phenomenal
and the emotion very real and provocative. There was even an adorable animal
companion, which I can never say no to (especially considering how much I love
chameleons and dogs – the combination of which was much appreciated). And you
know what? That’s as good a start as any for the discussion of what I really
enjoyed about “The Arrival”: the dogmeleon.
I’ll admit, it’s very easy to get me to like cute animals,
but ignoring the visual appeal of the creature, it definitely serves its
purpose by both aiding and humanizing the protagonist. All I really understood
about our main mystery man before the advent of dogmeleon was that he’d left
his family for some then-unknown reason, so as far as I knew he could’ve just been
walking out on them; the tone brought on by the color and lighting certainly
supported that theory. As we see him interact with the dogmeleon, though, by
accepting it into his home, feeding it, and listening to its suggestions of who
to talk to and where to go, we get to see that he’s clearly a man down on his
luck – just looking for some company and a means to support himself. It’s
touching, really.
Then again, I could be missing the point of the character
entirely. I’m not very good at analyzing this surreal kind of stuff.
-Will A.
