In Translation - "Afternoon in the Sunroom" by Fumiko Okada
A stunning one-shot from one of the great forgotten mangaka.
A few months ago I translated a manga from legend Fumiko Okada--her illusory and obscure "The Glass Marble"--and today I'm super excited to bring you another!
I've got a couple more translations of hers in the works (as well as a longer piece digging into her history and impact) so I'll save the detailed rambling for another time. Here, Okada gives just another example of her vague, mist-like storytelling, where characters talk in repetition and poetic soliloquies, where the world shifts to match the inner emotions of the cast, and where clean, definite conclusions are resolutely denied.
Famously, Okada rarely ever drew in the same style twice, her art constantly changing in sometimes small, sometimes major ways. Here, she takes many of the basic visual concepts of "The Glass Marble" and pushes them deeper into abstraction, realistic details stripped for characters that start to display a sort of fairy tale storybook appearance. At the same time, it's incredibly cool and modern--peep the girl with the hair bow on page 25, who looks like she could've been born in fashion hub Harajuku at its height. And that's to say nothing of the shift it takes...
But look at me. I said I'd spare you the rambling and here I am doing just that.
Please enjoy Fumiko Okada's "Afternoon in the Sunroom"!
Music of the Week: Mosiac via Post by Kotobuki Hikaru
Perfectly noisy and obnoxious and headache-inducing to any well-adjusted person; party heaven for me. Non-stop off-kilter skittering plunderphonics over electronic squeaks and belches like a hard-drive failing, cut, chopped, looped and layered in support of underlying funky grooves. A classic Sega game breaking down datamosh style. Deliciously annoying, deliciously addicting, and about as Baxter-core as it gets.
Book of the Week: Tabi no Lagos by Yasutaka Tsutsui
From the author of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Paprika, here is an episodic fantasy following the experience of a man traveling a world where people can teleport, psychically connect to their horses, and melt through walls. Admirable in how much it refuses easy narrative structures and thematic answers, events playing out with the continuing, usually unanswered flow of life. Also takes a slight turn halfway through when it reveals the history of its world that is completely delightful. Total must for fans of things like Kino's Journey.
Movie of the Week: The Black House (dir. Yoshimitsu Miura, 1999)
One of the coolest looking movies I've ever seen. A veritable free jazz set of associative editing and surprising movements. It's astonishing, virtuosic stuff, turning a pitch black horror satire about insurance fraud that skewers a cruelly patriarchal, capitalist society into something a whole lot more...something full of mystery and knots.
Have thoughts about anything covered this week? Got a recommendation you’re dying to share? Want to tell me how handsome and cool I am? Leave a comment below!
oh, and here's an excellent primer on Japanese folk rock from the 70s.