Why a timeline?

Rumiko Takahashi once said in an interview that one thing she had tried to put in Maison Ikkoku was a sense of the passage of the seasons, and she seemed to feel that was somehow a Japanese thing. It's true that the awareness of the seasons is very much there, in the way the people dress, in little establishing shots, in casual remarks about the weather; and it is also true that you don't see any of that in American (nor, for that matter, European) comics. (Zot! comes to mind as a prime exception, but then, Scott McCloud was influenced by Japanese storytelling, of course!)

Besides the seasons, there are other annual events that are important in the rythm, so to speak, of Maison Ikkoku. The anniversary of Soichiro's death, the New Year's Day visit to the temple, Christmas parties...

With this in mind, I decided to try and lay out my recently-completed collection on a year-by-year basis, picking out the seasonal references, as well as other important events (introductions of characters, and various comings and goings). The result is actually pretty neat. There are always 24 episodes to a calendar year, reflecting the biweekly rate at which episodes were originally published, except for the first few (year zero and the beginning of year one) where the frequency of publication must have been monthly. Soichiro's anniversary is in April (when the cherry trees blossom), and thus it is always the seventh or eighth story of any given year. Kyoko must have started to work at Maison Ikkoku in October, since that is the month of her first "date" with Yusaku, one year later (and, of course, October, 1980 was the date of the publication of MI's first episode). I can even venture the conclusion that the first biweekly episode must have been the one I called 1.7 (in reality, the eleventh), in July of 1981...

I have also marked the episodes where the characters' ages are established. Remarkably, for a story where the characters actually age in "real time," nobody ever celebrates a birthday. I wonder why?

There are a couple of stories which I have identified by name, for reasons of my own (I regard them as important, in one way or another, and it helps me get situated). Initially I had planned to write down each episode's title, but I don't really have that kind of time right now; if you are curious, or maybe looking for back issues, you are encouraged to use the list provided by Jason Wong, where you can even see the cover of every American issue to date!