Moto Hagio helped reinvent and bring critical acclaim to shojo (aimed at 10--18-year-old girls) manga in the 1970s and beyond. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories collects short comics stories originally published in monthly magazines. It begins with 1970's "Bianca" and ends with 2007's "The Willow Tree." In between is "Marié, Ten Years Later" (1977), in which two friends destroy their perfect romantic and creative harmony. Also: the haunting "The Child Who Comes Home" (1998), "Autumn Journey" (1971), "Girl on Porch With Puppy" (1971), "Angel Mimic" (1984), and the conjoined twin tragedy "Hanshin: Half-God" (1984). In the titular title story, "A Drunken Dream" (1980), two scientists, one a priest, meet on a space station orbiting Io. But they have met before and are destined to meet again. In "Iguana Girl" (1991), a child appears to her mother and herself as a hideous anthropoid iguana who will never be able to fit into the human world...but her mother has a secret.

Manga scholar and translator Rachel Thorn also interviews Hagio, who discusses her art, her career, and her life with wit and candor. Lauded in Japan, she has an international following -- her work has been adapted into anime, television, theater, audio dramas, and more -- and appeals to readers across generations.

Author: Moto Hagio
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Published: 09/27/2010
Pages: 288
Weight: 2.12lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.24w x 1.11d
ISBN: 9781606993774
Audience: Young Adult


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/02/2010
Booklist 09/15/2010 pg. 54
Library Journal 09/15/2010 pg. 51

About the Author
Thorn, Rachel: - Rachel Thorn is from in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. She is a cultural anthropologist, writer, and an associate professor in the manga department at Kyoto Seika University. Her translations include the New York Times Best-Seller Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano and Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.Hagio, Moto: - Moto Hagio was born May 12, 1949, in Omuta City, Fukuoka Prefecture. She is one of a group of women born that year that broke into the male-dominated manga industry and pioneered the shojo (girls') movement. Hagio's Heart of Thomas, inspired by the 1964 film A Special Friendship, was one of the early entries in the shonen-ai (boys in love) subgenre. Her major works include A Drunken Dream, A, A', They Were Eleven, and Otherworld Barbara. She's won the Japanese Medal of Honor with the Purple Ribbon (the first woman comics creator to do so), received Japan's SF Grand Prize, the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award Grand Prize, and an Inkpot Award, among other accolades. She lives in the Saitama Prefecture.