Jul 5, 2020
Zettai Anzen Kamisori is the first collected book of short stories released by Fumiko Takano (I already mentionned briefly how important she was in my review of Yellow Book if you want to learn more about her). The stories compiled in that book were originally published between 1977 and 1981 and it won the 12th Japan Cartoonists Award Grand Prize in 1983.
For stories that are supposed to still be quite amateurish, Fumiko Takano already shows that she is immensely talented and it's easy to understand her huge surge in popularity from there.
They're rather short (most are around 8-10 pages with the longest lasting 20 pages)
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and present in a wide spectrum of genres the intricate life of different girls.
This broad type of storytelling she shows in each of her stories I think helped a lot to make her stand out ; sometimes philosophical and suggesting in mesmerizing details an experience of the afterlife, sometimes the adventures of a little girl as she travels around the world, sometimes a simple discussion of a few teenagers inside a bus.
It wouldn't have much point detailing every story without experiencing him as her appeal comes from her newfound sensibility that a new generation was seeking for, thematically or aesthetically. It definitely can't be denied that her often minimalistic style and her choice for the different shots portraying the emotional state of her characters reinforces the true to life women experience of her stories that would also be used by Kyoko Okazaki later on.
There's also times where she likes to pay a tribute to some of her peers like Sugiura Hinako with a chapter drawn in the style ukiyo-e or trying to imitate the type of stories presented by Katsuhiro Otomo in Short Peace, which is far from a bad thing as she knows how to take the best from the works and rearrange them in her own style.
The richness and the many meanings that these tales carry, hidden between lines, make of this a priceless book that can be reread endlessly without getting bored.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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