I read these three books today as a relaxing re-read of two of my favorite manga artists. Fumi Yoshinaga and Naoki Urasawa have very distinct sensibilities, but I think they both have a facility with emotion and the ability to pack a lot of characterization, both spoken and unspoken, into a drawing. All three of these books are short story collections, which enables you to see more of the breadth of both authors’ work.
All My Darling Daughters is made up of interconnected short stories that center around the themes of motherhood, family, relationships, and the place of women in society. The core characters are in all the stories, but they’re not always the main characters, which makes it fun to spot them around the edges and think about how one person can be in the forefront of one’s own life but a side person in someone else’s. I especially like this book because it does deal with difficult or tumultuous relationships very deftly while showing that you can choose to treat your children differently and try to heal the wound that’s been dealt with you. Yoshinaga often doesn’t go in the direction you’d expect, which makes her work emotionally surprising and novel. Her ability to capture emotion in very few lines is really incredible and moving to see.
Don’t Say Any More, Darling features more of the contemporary BL/gay stories that she’s known for, but it also has some interesting sci-fi stories with some psychological horror elements. I enjoyed getting the chance to see her explore other genres while retaining her facility with character and emotion. I find “Fairyland” to be especially terrifying; it follows two people who find each other in a world where everyone else has vanished, and the final few panels are unremittingly nihilistic and grim, which is pretty unusual for her work. “One May Day” is an unexpectedly bleak story about a later in life marriage and the quiet, devastating disappointment of it not working out. This book overall is very sexually explicit and has a lot of heavy themes (suicide, murder), so just a warning there.
Sneeze is a real grab bag of Urasawa’s short stories, and honestly not one I’d recommend for people who haven’t read him before. His real talent is with psychological horror/sci-fi like Twentieth Century Boys or Monster. I also think if you want to read short stories by him, his Master Keaton series, which follows a brilliant jack of all trades insurance adjuster/archaeology professor/former SAS officer as he solves crimes, is a lot more interesting. That being said, there are strong stories within this collection and I do enjoy it. I especially like the first story, “Damiyan!,” about a man who can kill people by looking at them. His art is evocative throughout. Overall, this is just not his strongest work, but it’s a fun read.