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rushthatspeaksA kid's book written by Katsuhiro Otomo (the author of Akira and Domu) and illustrated by Shinji Kimura, who has worked for Ghibli and other animation studios.
The mode is a Nightmare Before Christmas-type wackiness, in which the title character, Hipira, is a juvenile delinquent vampire who lives with his pet floating soul in a town full of other vampires. His principal recreational activity is shouting 'Sunrise!' at people, which as the sun has not risen there for two thousand years is both alarming and unbelievable to them.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't a good book. The English adaptation totally removes whatever nuance might exist in the Japanese; the text is clunky, ungrammatical, and painfully sparse. The illustrations are lovely, with a richly nuanced blocky feel highly reminiscent of Beetlejuice or something of that sort, but in the absence of interesting dialogue or description to link them they fall flat. Some illustrated books can get by without good linking text because the images flow out of one another, and some are meant to have longer patches of explanation. This is clearly one of the latter sort and the translation tries, and fails, to make it comprehensible as the former.
I am also sad that Otomo did not draw this himself, as he is, after all, one of the great manga artists. Kimura's work here is fascinating, but it isn't what I'm most interested in.
In short: skip it.
The mode is a Nightmare Before Christmas-type wackiness, in which the title character, Hipira, is a juvenile delinquent vampire who lives with his pet floating soul in a town full of other vampires. His principal recreational activity is shouting 'Sunrise!' at people, which as the sun has not risen there for two thousand years is both alarming and unbelievable to them.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't a good book. The English adaptation totally removes whatever nuance might exist in the Japanese; the text is clunky, ungrammatical, and painfully sparse. The illustrations are lovely, with a richly nuanced blocky feel highly reminiscent of Beetlejuice or something of that sort, but in the absence of interesting dialogue or description to link them they fall flat. Some illustrated books can get by without good linking text because the images flow out of one another, and some are meant to have longer patches of explanation. This is clearly one of the latter sort and the translation tries, and fails, to make it comprehensible as the former.
I am also sad that Otomo did not draw this himself, as he is, after all, one of the great manga artists. Kimura's work here is fascinating, but it isn't what I'm most interested in.
In short: skip it.
