Drawn in 1971 and 1972, these stories expand Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s vocabulary for characters contextualized by themes of depravity and disorientation in twentieth-century Japan. Some of the tales focus on the devastation the country felt as a result of World War II, and, while American influence does play a role in the disturbing and bizarre stories contained within this volume, as always, it is Tatsumi’s characters that bear his hallmark, muddling through isolated despair and fleeting pleasure to live out their darkly nuanced lives.
Story and art by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.