To The Last Page

Featuring a spectacular flying battle between two opposing individuals with psychic powers,Katsuhiro Otomo's first extended work  Domu, The Dreams of Children is the classic stuff of manga comics, one moreover that sets the tone for the artist's only other major comic work – the masterful Akira . A series of unexplained deaths at a high-rise block have the police baffled, the deaths being too varied and frequent to be explained as suicides, accidents or even the action of a single murderer. This is because the deaths, mostly falls from the upper floors of the tenement building, are being caused by a malevolent person or entity with psychic powers. However there is someone else within the building – a young girl who has noticed who is behind the events and who has the power to oppose his random and senseless actions. There could be some social commentary in the generational struggle that ensues, but principally, and after the slow build-up, what Domu really presents is an oppo...

As the introduction by the writer and artist of Akira notes, this is his eighth collection of his shorter work, but the only one available so far in the west (and even now it sadly seems to be out-of-print). It's an eclectic collection, most of the stories having a science-fiction theme, but within that the tone and quality of the work varies widely. The imagery, the exciting dynamic layouts and many of the themes are however instantly recognisable as the work of one of the best contemporary Japanese manga artists. Like his most famous work in Akira , but also elsewhere in his film and anime work, there is very much a celebration of anti-establishment sentiments – often personified in the form of long-haired hippy characters, whose very existence alone seems to threaten disorder and rebellion. Often the characters battle against mere machines, sentinels sent out to maintain order – which again looking very much like the work in Akira . But the rebelliousness can also be in the ver...