Jan 27, 2022
Suiton Kikou is the first short story collection of Shinya Komatsu which got him a price in the 6th edition of the AX manga newcomers award. Unsurpringly with this kind of underground magazine, it can take a while to get accustomed to the pace of these stories; Shinya Komatsu places the reader as a sheer observer of the wondrous events occuring in the world of Suiton Kikou (which could be translated as “Climate – Slumber – Chaos” )
Phantasmagorical and surrealistic, they are purely meant to surprise the reader at every page and build an unpredictable macrocosm without necessarily bringing answers or conclusions to the
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elements it displays. To corroborate that statement, several stories are only focused on a character traveling from one place to another such as Cycling Life depicting a boy at first riding a normal countryside, the scenery evolving every page to giant trees and honeycombs, clouds, a futuristic megalopolis, to finish his trip on a road among the stars. Some showcase a random supernatural event in our ordinary world like the one where a boy sees mysterious symbols in a rainbow that he’s convinced holds the secrets of the universe or the one where a boy finds a strange egg that turns into the sun; others showcase ordinary events of supernatural world, one where electricity and lightbulbs are created by fairies and giant flying fishes, one where the people are crank handled puppets or one with a clock-head god playing chess with different monuments.
The approach of these short stories feels similar to the series “A Piece of Phantasmagoria” in that Shinya Komatsu likes to connect these bizarro worlds with each other by having reoccuring characters and sceneries interacting the further everything goes along. It create a sense of coherence that is almost dream-like.
If you’d like a more narrative driven manga that still has a fantastical backdrop then I’d recommend checking “Tsurumaki Machi Natsu Jikan” instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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