Hide and Seek by Naono Yoshiko and Ryan Holmberg (translator) is not a nice book. But an amazing read.
I would have given it a 5 but a few pieces of “scare” and culture might have been lost in translation so I was not sure why the situation was supposed to be “that scary” or the exact “thing” that was going on. Also, the images were a bit “blended together” for my tastes. I do like the black and white look as it keeps it “old school” or less “smoothed over” (color tends to help keep things lighter, where the starkness of black and white keeps the creepy factor). Otherwise, it is a good thriller-horror collection. And while intense, it is a bit less intense than Junji Ito’s work, but still not for sensitive readers.
There are several stories that Yoshiko wrote and illustrated for various publications in the 1960s and 1970s. The essay at the end (or beginning because the book is in the traditional manga style, but the essay is written in the western style of right to left and is at the end of the book) has creator explanations. Also included were some of the original covers to some stories. While I was curious about a woman in Japan being an artist in this genre, I am glad we did not get the “politics” of the time or place. I would have liked a smidgen more explanation of what the children’s publications role was (was it just a Ranger Rick or Cricket type collection, but without the games and jokes, just the comics) but again, it is good the way it is.
Stories will talk and show things like death, suicide, scams, fear, guilt, revenge, love, and a lot of doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, but they seemed legitimate to start. Or did they? There is a lot of thinking going on. The best part of the stories for me is that they could happen to anyone. There are no real supernatural events (with the exception of one story) or situations, just people who are human. Sometimes too human.
