Long, long ago, back in March (it feels like a lifetime, doesn’t it?), I interviewed Alison Wilgus about Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back for Book Riot. If you missed it, the gist of the story is that in the not too distant future, a history program at an American university has developed time travel technology as a means of studying the past. There are strict rules, of course, to prevent students from altering events that have already happened, though scholars have figured out history will self-correct to a certain extent and that such small things as stepping on an ant or even saying hello to a denizen of the past on the street won’t prevent Miyazaki from being born.

Students being stranded in the past as Mirai has been, however, or staying in the past beyond the length of their assignment as her ex-boyfriend Kuji has chosen to do, attempting to change the outcome of a battle that should have changed the course of Japanese history… those are other stories entirely.

When we left Mirai, she was trying desperately to get home with Gilbert and Hatsu’s assistance. She has no time to regroup after her recovered beacon fails to take her home before two men come for her and her compatriots, leading them into the forest where the remaining rebel forces have gathered under their remaining commander: Kuji.

Once the students are reunited, they surmise that their various actions, not only Kuji’s but also Gilbert’s (I’m not going to spoil it, but it’s really good), have so altered the timeline that it can no longer self-correct. That a new future has diverged, so distant from the one the left, that Mirai’s beacon will no longer work because the system to which it is attach no longer exists.

So now what?

Well, I’m not going to tell you. That would spoil the excitement of reading the graphic novel.

I’ve read it though. And I loved it, if possible, even more than the first volume.

Wilgus’ black and white interior design and clean, simple lines are a great service to a complex story, the art adding to the experience without detracting from the flow of words and events. It also allows the reader to use their imagination to do some of the work and places them within a specific historical context, making the book both an interactive and shared experience. As someone who reads a lot of graphic novels and comics, I also appreciate the variation in number of panels per page. It makes the entire book feel more kinetic than a standard nine panel broken up with an occasional splash page. Since the characters are constantly learning and adapting, it’s only fair the reader should do the same.

In terms of the story: I absolutely love learning through fiction and I knew very little about this period in Japanese history before reading Chronin and speaking with Alison last spring. There is, of course, much more to learn, but the foundations here are excellent and provide a wide and deep base upon which to build.

One of my favorite things about the Chronin-verse, however, is that, unlike the majority of time travel stories, in which the good guys are trying to preserve the timeline against the bad guys who are seeking to change it for some nefarious purpose, those who feel they have the right to alter their own pasts (and/or futures) also feel they have the obligation to do so. They may be right or wrong by our standards (and thus Mirai’s) but they have what they believe to be the best interests of their nation at heart. That Azai (the ostensible villain of the piece) and Kuji are at odds is a fascinating character and morality study because they have the exact same motivations to fight for goals that are the polar opposite of one another. Which leaves the reader to ponder how, exactly, such a thing can happen.

Another aspect of the story I particularly enjoy is the time spent on developing individual personalities, even those of minor characters. We have seen ourselves how one person, one personality, can change the face of an entire nation or the world along with it, thus changing history. We forget sometimes  that history is a patchwork of individual lives, of individual decisions: loyalty or betrayal, love or hate, forgiveness or grudge, kindness or cruelty, punishment or mercy. It is the weaving together of individual stories that intersect and tangle and fray and are repaired or detach. While this great social revolution is happening in Japan, there are people making it happen or trying to stop it from happening, and those people are just as important as the event itself. We are lucky to live with them, even in fictional form, even if only for a little while.

Also, consider how important it is that Chronin acknowledges the existence of LGBTQIA+ people in history. Queerness is not new. It didn’t suddenly emerge in the mid-twentieth century. So much historical fiction, though, either misses that point entirely or works hard to frame gay, lesbian, transgendered, and other such characters as anomalous. Were they sometimes less public about their relationships? Yes. Either by desire or necessity, but that doesn’t mean they were strange or rare or missing from the record. And in Chronin LGBTQIA+ characters not only cross previously held sexual boundaries, but also those of caste, culture, and even time.

Chronin is a beautiful story with fantastic action, wonderfully drawn characters, social commentary, history lessons, and a whole lot of feels. Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back was released February 19th, 2019 and Volume 2: The Sword in Your Hand drops September 10, 2019. You should read them.