Yojigen Sekai

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Yojigen Sekai is a collection of short stories Leiji Matsumoto produced in the late 60s when he wanted to transition from writing shoujo manga to writing shonen manga as he didn’t feel legitimate in understanding what little girls wanted.

This spur basically started in 1968 when he was asked by an editor to write a sci-fi for male adults where he would eventually release Sexaroid which allowed him a newfound artistic and creative freedom and his style will change widely under the influence of western comics such as Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella.

The 25 stories of Yojigen Sekai (published in France under the name “25 histoires ... d’un monde en 4 dimensions”) were created between 1968 and 1970. They show some of the attempts of the author to refine his techniques and use some of the themes that will be prominent in his future hits.

These stories weren’t thought out for a specific magazine so some of the stories are just rehashed from each other with only little variation between each other, and that’s when he even bothers setting up the plots. Length is really a problem here as they often end just as they were starting up without giving us any time to understand what they were about. When it doesn’t fall into any of the cases mentioned above, it’s still generic and the fact that he’s trying his hands into sci-fi and western really shows. There might be 3-4 stories with great concepts in the lot but they don’t help forgetting the rest. His misogynistic side also stands out quite a bit here though it’s also very present in the other works of his career so it might or might not bother you.

In conclusion,only interesting if you want to see Leiji Matsumoto’s evolution and what led him to create his more famous sagas, the stories presented here rarely ever shine and fail to show any subtlety.