Week 3: Cigarette Girl, Masahiko Matsumoto

Cigarette girl is truly a slice of life. I feel like to an extent we can all relate to Hidari-Sans weird quirks and antics. The first thing that popped out to me about this manga was the the jurastic style change compared to the past 2 stories we read. This is a more goofy and simplistic style with pretty structured line art. It feels like everythign is just more refined and cohesive artisticaly compared to pheonix which jumped around a lot from past, to modern day and different ways to render and portray people. Cigarette girl is in my opinion a statement on the times social norms and highlighting Matsumotos realistic perspectve. All the romantic, cultural, and adult themes are addressed in the story and I think gives me a perspective on what life was like for that time in japan.

I did some reasearch on line and found that this Gekiga was one of the first that matsumoto had an english translation for. During the 70's It makes me think how much manga was truly accessable to the western counteries, and how many manga artists were thinking about adapting their stories for english readers.

There were a few main themes I was thinking about when reading the sequence of 11 stories. Each character in the end really struggles with some form of unforfullemnt. Things like solitude, isolation, and melincoly are very prevelant during the manga, and the artstyle's goofy playfullness almost contradicts the topics covered almost creating an unspoken layer of ironey.

Overall I really liked the comics and Im really happy I got exposed to Matsumoto's work. I plan on reading more of it in the future!