A touching tribute interweaves with tough storytelling in Eric Khoo’s poignant portmanteau riff on Japanese graphic artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s works.
Born in 1935, Tatsumi coined the term “gekiga” (dramatic pictures) to separate his comics from mangas: necessarily, since the five tales here explore incest, murder, mutilation, misogyny and Hiroshima.
Yet Khoo combines fearless narrative with scenes from Tatsumi’s graphic autobiography, anchoring the howls of alienation of post-war Japanese life and adding a sweetening lyricism that swoons towards a very moving conclusion.
