A decades-spanning collection from the “founding mother” of modern shōjo manga.
Fantagraphics Books’ first volume of manga is a collection of short stories by one of Japan’s most influential and critically lauded comics innovators.Moto Hagio has been reinventing shōjo manga (Japanese comics marketed at 10-18 year-old girls) since 1969. Unconstrained by boundaries of genre, she has sculpted a career characterized by intellectual curiosity, psychological authenticity, and an aesthetic sense that has often been at odds with a shōjo manga mainstream littered with Sailor Moon knockoffs and sub-Harlequin-romance clichés. Now, for the first time in English, we offer a Hagio primer, a selection of short stories spanning four decades of groundbreaking work — 1971-2007 — by an artist who is working at the peak of her creative powers. In “Autumn Journey” (1971), a boy’s pilgrimage to the home of his favorite author has more meaning than either the author or his daughter can imagine. In “Marié, Ten Years Later” (1977), two estranged friends learn too late how their actions had destroyed the balance of a perfect triad of intimacy. In “A Drunken Dream” (1980), two scientists—one a hermaphrodite, the other a tribal priest—meet on a space station orbiting Io; but they have met before and are destined to meet again. In “Iguana Girl” (1991), a girl who appears to her mother and herself to be a hideous anthropoid iguana struggles to overcome her mother’s rejection and find happiness ... but her mother has a secret.
Learn for yourself why the creator of There Were Eleven! (adapted into an anime) and A, A’ has influenced the careers of countless other creators, both within and outside the manga industry, and continues to garner international critical praise and appeal to readers across ages and generations. Illustrated throughout; including 16 pages of full color; 16 pages of two-color
