Dowman Sayman and his pet project Nickelodeon (named after the short-lived early 20th century nickle theatre project) display a world very much different than ours - limbs are lost at leisure, animals may roam and commute through zoos as they please, and youkai have peacefully immigrated to our world. At it's core this is a story of innocent love overtoned with the supernatural. Each story is presented in an artstyle reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas mixed with Mike Mignola .
This manga dabbles in a little bit of everything from self aware Pokemon parodies to tales of strange animals in the middle of their own forest . The most interesting thing is its ability to baffle the reader with every story. I spent a good amount of time scratching my head at the stories and wondering what the point of it all was before coming to a revelation about its central reccuring theme that connects all the stories -loss.hair, love, limbs and stuffing are amongst the things all neatly ripped from the characters grasp.
Nickelodeon seems to not want to leave us at all fulfilled with anything, but always thirsty for what comes next similar to the cheap nickle theatres the stories namesake comes from . The stories are all fairly short, none surpassing ten pages each seems to build up a repoire with the reader only to pull the wool over our eyes at each curtain raising with bittersweet glee.