Plot
Fantagraphics Books is proud to launch its manga line with Moto Hagio’s collection of short comics, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. Hagio is one of Japan’s most influential and critically lauded comics innovators; she has been reinventing shojo manga (Japanese comics marketed at 10-18 year-old girls) since 1969. Unconstrained by boundaries of genre, she has sculpted a career characterized by intellectual curiosity, psychological authenticity, and an esthetic sense that has elevated the shojo genre into the literary. In “Autumn Journey” (1971), a boy’s pilgrimage to the home of his favorite author has more meaning than either the author or his daughter can imagine. In “Marie, Ten Years Later” (1977), two estranged friends learn too late how their actions had destroyed the balance of a perfect triad of intimacy. In “A Drunken Dream” (1980), two scientists—one a hermaphrodite, the other a tribal priest—meet on a space station orbiting Io; but they have met before and are destined to meet again. In “Iguana Girl” (1991), a girl who appears to her mother and herself to be a hideous anthropoid iguana struggles to overcome her mother’s rejection and find happiness ... but her mother has a secret. Learn for yourself why the creator of They Were Eleven! (adapted into an anime released on DVD in 2005) continues to garner international critical praise and appeals to readers across ages and generations.