2 out of 5

This thick collection from Vertical Comics brings together several of Satoshi Kon’s early manga shorts.  …And accepting that these were created in Kon’s 20s, and some ten years prior to the amazing OPUS, and, y’know, 15 years before his feature film work… they’re still pretty boring.  The early ones, especially, are nigh incomprehensible, Kon – to my non-manga reading American eyes – having zero grasp on what to capture in a panel, and what to suggest between panels, to actually tell a story.

It’s interesting from a historical standpoint, of course, seeing themes of dream/reality duality pop up right away, and how that translates to the moral greyness (which often translates to dark humor) found in several of these, as well as simply being able to see an auteur develop his skills and perhaps learn the perceived limitations of the medium that would contribute to his shift to another form of expression.  And Vertical gives us a hefty but – with its cheaper pages – light and relatively portable tome, a clear reprinting of the strips, and an interview with frequent Kon anime soundtrack collaborator Susumu Hirasawa, all for a reasonable 25 buck pricetag.  But that doesn’t change how much of a slog a good 70% of the collection is.  I will fully own up to that some cultural context may be lost on me, and I admittedly have only very, very, very barely dabbled in manga.  I do read a lot of foreign comics, though, and I simply must trust my ability to filter out some of that “this reads backwards gold-farbit” ignorance to judge the reading semi-effectively.  So bleep blop my review hasn’t changed.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything worthwhile in here beyond viewing it through a Satoshi-study lens: Guests is a fun spin on the usual Japanese house-with-ghosts yarn, grisly and spooky and funny in turns; Waira is a rewarding and patient brother-vs-brother war story; and Beyond the Sun is a repetitive but hilarious slapstick bit about a runaway gurney.  On the whole, the better stuff comes later (the stories are arranged chronologically), save the oddly flip-flopped Toriko, which suffers from the same pacing problems as the earlier bits because it’s actually from the same time, just presented last… perhaps because it was Kon’s first big story?

The art is pretty consistent, though contributes to the confusing aspects I’ve skimmed over up above.  It has that trained house manga style to it – though Waira shows excessive detailing and is probably the visual standout – but characters often look way too much alike (and this is where American eyes and ears don’t help, as the character names just don’t stick with me, so with 3 or 4 similar looking leads, it all becomes a jumble) and the gap between the impossibilities OPUS was able to portray and the simple moments of action which are completely botched here is astounding.  Framing in general just doesn’t support a smooth read, but again, in retrospect we can maybe see this is a born filmmaker inadvertently filming the shot instead of drawing it.

So: Kon completists will obviously need to own this; casual Kon-ers (me) aren’t missing anything.  There are no “keys” to further exploring Satoshi’s brain as I felt OPUS offered; these are fragments of concepts better used later on.  And those stories which are fun or interesting aren’t worth the price of the book, for better or worse.  In an ideal world, I saw OPUS gets bundled in a “best of” with some select stories from Dream Fossil, though of course “best” is subjective and who am I but, like, the guy who knows everything correctly right all the time and not dumb like you and your dumb beliefs.