Review of “Hanshin: Half-God” (1984)

Sequential art with text

Hagio Moto (writer-artist).

Read in the collection Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (2010).

Two conjoined twins, one of whom is parasitic and the other intelligent.

The biology doesn’t make sense, but the poetic metaphor is powerful! This is the sort of writing that could have given real strength to the emperoress Janus-Jana and other motifs of The Incal (1980). Moto’s art is not as luxuriously original as Giraud’s, but there is a beautiful economy to it.

sequential art text Japanese production fiction