Here's a rough synopsis of the plot of Seiichi Hayashi's "Red Colored Elegy": A young couple, committed to their art, struggle to keep themselves, their art, and their love alive. This will strike no one as wildly original. What is surprising, however, is that, despite its hoary story line, "Red Colored Elegy" is a success.
This is a testament to Hayashi's artistry. Some artists make a splash with work that appears to be (and occasionally is) entirely original. Other artists, generally the more gifted, are able to take even stories millenniums older than Hayashi's and make them new. Part of the fascination of such artists' work is in seeing how they manage to make us forget that we should have tired of their plots long ago.
"Red Colored Elegy" is a comic book. This probably isn't the first time that la vie boheme has been presented in this form, but the fact that "Red Colored Elegy" is not an opera, novel, or movie may go a little way toward making it new. The genre into which "Elegy" falls, however, is not sufficient to explain the work's success.