Blue has also been translated into French and German. Originally published in Japan in 1997, Fanfare/Ponent Mon published the English edition of the manga in 2006 after releasing a Spanish-language edition in 2004. She is particularly well-known for her short manga Blue is her only long-form manga to have been released in English. Nananan debuted in the avant-garde manga magazine Garo in 1993, which is one of the reasons her work is found in these 'underground' collections. Another of her short manga, 'Kisses,' was collected in Sake Jock: Comics from Today’s Japanese Underground, an early English anthology of alternative Japanese manga. I was quite taken by the pieces and so was determined to find more of Nananan's manga in English. Two of her short manga-'Heartless Bitch' and 'Painful Love'-were included in the volume. I first discovered Kiriko Nananan's work while reading Secret Comics Japan: Underground Comics Now. But I probably shouldn't believe everything fiction tells me about society.Īdd.: Reading about Kiriko Nananan on wikipedia leads to learning about la nouvelle movement in manga, which is also interesting reading. In my mind this raises the single volume story above the glittering anthology omnibus of SP! to something more literary, cruel and beautiful in its honesty. Though I believe both girls cared for each other very much, and that the feelings were real, and that the sentiments that pushed them apart were sincere, I ultimately think that one of the girls saw the relationship as more tangible and able to last longer than the other did. Though at first the relationship seems sparse, as the artwork is, you feel the connection between the girls as something that might last a long time, you can imagine them moving to Tokyo and starting a life together, as in the Korean tv-movie Daughters of Bilitis Club, or the Japanese manga Girlfriends by Milk Morinaga (no review as yet).Įventually, a couple moments after I'd closed the volume, a single relationship told in just over 200 illustrated pages, I was reminded of Strawberry Panic! and the patina of temporary circumstance.

These relationships may lead to kissing or even groping, but rarely last long, typically never past graduation.** I wonder how that might feel to a girl more like myself.

In hearts and minds they are a sort of 'starter' relationship, a test-run and a safe space for emotions run rampant**. Which occupy a nebulous area of romantic fantasy about a barely physical relationship, a platonic, fiercely romantic friendship between (frequently) two highschool girls a year or two apart*. Specifically, I've read some of those that inspired the manga, anime and probably other stuff, called Strawberry Panic!. In the past, I've read a couple 'light' novels, a type of sparse novella that commuters in japan could theoretically read on their phones*.

Nananan kiriko