Like Solanin, the characters here are urban young adults unsure of their direction or place in life. Unlike that longer work, I found them annoying here when I didn’t before. Maybe it was because the shorter lengths meant less time to get to know them as people, so they become more defined by their traits, which are mostly “aimless” or “depressed”. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

This series consists of a pair of volumes full of short one-shot stories about the lives of average 20-somethings. Even more than josei, this genre of stories about young people not doing anything in particular is one that is infinitely fascinating to me, and I am desperate to see more work just like this.

For those of us who absolutely loved Inio Asano's Solanin, his newest release on these shores might be something of a disappointment, since it seems to cover the same ground (that is, young people unsure about the future), and as a collection of short stories, it doesn't provide the same satisfaction that comes from seeing characters defined and developed over the course of a longer narrative. But while it might suffer in comparison to that earlier work (which was actually published later in Japan), What a Wonderful World! is still a good read, giving Asano the chance to explore a wider variety of characters and tell some fascinating little vignettes that chronicle urban life.