GoGo Monster

by Taiyo Matsumoto

A haunting and poetic vision of one boy’s imagination.

Third grader Yuki Tachibana lives in two worlds. In one, he is a loner ridiculed by his classmates and reprimanded by his teachers for telling stories of supernatural beings that only he can see. In the other, those supernatural beings vie for power with malevolent spirits who bring chaos into the school, the students’ lives, and nature itself.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Seinen, Japanese Literature, Fiction

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

See also: 松本大洋 and 松本 大洋

Although Taiyo Matsumoto desired a career as a professional soccerplayer at first, he eventually chose an artistic profession. He gained his first success through the Comic Open contest, held by the magazine Comic Morning, which allowed him to make his professional debut. He started out with 'Straight', a comic about basketball players. Sports remain his main influence in his next comic, 'Zéro', a story about a boxer.

In 1993 Matsumoto started the 'Tekkonkinkurito' trilogy in Big Spirits magazine, which was even adapted to a theatre play. He continued his comics exploits with several short stories for the Comic Aré magazine, which are collected in the book 'Nihon no Kyodai'. Again for Big Spirits, Taiyo Matsumoto started the series 'Ping Pong' in 1996. 'Number Five' followed in 2001, published by Shogakukan.

Source: Lambiek website bio .

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

GoGo Monster has become a reference buoy in my life. When I am adrift (and I am often adrift, sometimes pleasantly sometimes harrowingly) and I need to catch some sight or sign of home, some home lived only ever within my skin, some look-back to a complex of early feelings - feelings of awkwardness and alienation, but also of extreme receptiveness and openness and thus of being in nerve to nerve contact with life, and experiences of friendship as being ever-expanding worlds unto themselves… – I can now look at the spine of this book, or in case of dire need read it yet again, which I did last night. It is a classic tale of childhood crisis, of a pre-teen dark night of the soul, timeless in its articulation. It is a perfectly balanced blend of heightened realism and naturalistic fantasizing detailing a borderline state of mind I for one can call true to life. Three boys, three outcasts, each in his own way – one an artist possibly in touch with the supernatural, one ostracized because he likes the former, and one intellectually brilliant who wears a box on his head (there is an appropriate stereotypicalness to this that actually enhances the tale). There is also an old groundskeeper widower – comfortable outcast - who has seen it all and accepts the three as he accepts the air he breathes. The story is grounded in the naturalism of the classrooms and grounds of its middle school setting – jeering uncomprehending classmates, soccer balls through windows, teachers’ lounge – and in environmental sounds (masterful use of sound, esp the sounds of airplanes passing overhead which serve as a kind of passacaglia of ominous mystery throughout), with only its edges, its unused floor(s), and dripping spigots, haunted. These edges at times seem to be present only in the artist character’s mind, but they are more liminal, objectively there but only visible to some, to the sensitives, and their collective mind. These edges gradually intrude through the seasonal (Spring through next Spring) arc of the story, wreaking compounded subtle havoc, culminating in Winter’s dark night, when a prized rabbit disappears, a non-existent fifth floor appears on the school, the near-future of the Earth itself seems threatened, and each of the three boys enters a harrowing of his own. Timeless classic I say.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matsumoto in transition, halfway between the action and explosive images of Black & White and the modest, perfect naturalism of Sunny. As such, it's totally fantastic,maybe the best of all Matsumotos. A slow creep of the otherworldly into the mundane, to the point of overwhelming, built on majestic image-cadences and associations. Intricate and beautiful.

[Seth T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of us, I am unfortunately bound by certain culturally endowed predispositions that prompt immediate, involuntary reactions to certain encounters. When I see a picture of someone with neurofibromatosis, my initial reaction, sadly enough, is not compassion but revulsion. Compassion may speedily follow, but that was a learned response and not natural to what my society has built into me. When I hear hip hop, my instinct is to brush it off as if it couldn't possibly concern me—causing me to miss out on probably some pretty decent music. Growing up with melody-heavy heavy rock and then straight-ahead jazz has built into my ears an immediate and unfair prejudice toward musical styles that differed too greatly from the mean of my experiences. And growing up with particular tastes in art and in a culture that favoured a narrow ground for appreciation, I have often found it a struggle to approach certain styles of comic art with a neutral eye. Many alt-comic forms leave me cold at a glance and so my predispositions often hinder me from taking the time to explore and then enjoy works that come from sources too far out from the mainstream.

From the outside it's an amusing problem, for mainstream American comics art leaves me unimpressed and uninterested as well. Too great an adherence to what I perceive as formula and an artist may lose me. Too slick a presentation, too much style over substance (or at least my so far as my perception of these things go), and I may not ever pick up a book. It's a personal weakness. And one that I think most people suffer from to one degree or another. We tend to couch these prejudices in terms of Taste in order to alleviate the moral burden of expressing what amounts to base intolerance. But all the same, that's what our tastes reveal themselves to be: gently packaged bigotries against those things that we have, for one reason or another, been trained to find repulsive.

And so we come to understand why I almost didn't get more than a handful of pages in Taiyo Matsumoto's Gogo Monster. My own inadequacies as a reader often govern the books I finish and the books I set aside. Too often I put aside books that I may not have given an adequate chance. Probably it's only because I needed something to review that I pressed forward with Gogo Monster, proving that being pushed into action by circumstances can sometimes be a very good thing—because after all is said and done, I really did end up enjoying both the book and its quirky illustrations.

Gogo Monsters straddles some sort of line between absurdist, surrealist, and fantasy. It can be difficult to follow because the reader will often be uncertain whether the experiences depicted should be considered reality, imagination, or metaphor. There are textual cues that led me to vote for Reality, but only having had invested a single reading at this point, I can't speak to that matter with full confidence.

Matsumoto's story, in its most overt, surface reading plays out over the course of a year and follows the story of a school that is increasingly beset by misfortune and misbehaviour. More properly, the plot may be said to concern three children in varying stages of social pariah-dom. Makoto, a third grader, is the most even-keeled of the three and spends most of his time alternating between interest in and alienation from his bizarre classmate Yuki. Yuki sees visions of another world, one that overlaps with our own, and he attributes much of the gathering social darkness to the activity of the other-worldly "others"—though the flame of his faith is being somewhat diminished by recent conversations with IQ. IQ, a mathematical genius, is a fifth grader who wears a cardboard box over his head at all times and sees Yuki's beliefs about the other world as mere psychological extrapolations of his intense feelings of loneliness. IQ and Yuki are explicitly shunned by their classmates, while Makoto hangs on to some degree of social relevance despite concerns about his curiosity toward and friendship with Yuki. As these characters wend their way toward their individual fates, Gogo Monster may or may not (depending on one's interpretation of events) reveal whether Yuki's imagination has gotten away from him or not.



It's a curious book and each reader's interpretation will lead into a variety of questions about authorial intent and whether Matsumoto merely intended to tell the kind of trippy story that high-school–aged writers love to think is amazing and mind-blowing—or whether the author have bigger fish to fry. I'm not entirely sure myself, but my own reading is hopeful that the latter is the case. Matsumoto lays a lot of groundwork for a robust interpretative challenge, but having just finished the book some hours ago, I can't say I've had the time to mull it over enough to know. In any case, Gogo Monster is a thought-provoking work—and that alone is enough to recommend it.


[Isn't that a rad drawing of a kid riding a bike reflected
in one of those fisheye mirrors?]

The art that I earlier found so distracting, nearly prompting me to set the book aside, ended up being a high point of my experience of the book. His linework, shaky and abrupt, initially led me to believe the artist underdeveloped or incompetent. Still, after forty pages or so, I revised my opinion entirely. The page layouts and visual choices propel the work and support the story ably—and even his staggering, drunken line begins to inform the story by creating a particular world through aesthetic revelation. I wouldn't wish that all comics used Matsumoto's style of art but I was glad that Gogo Monster did.

The book is challenging but, I think, rewards the patient and persistent reader. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in a book that falls a little outside the boundaries of the average comic story—especially if one can overlook what may end up being the fetishization of the stereotypical (and therefore infantilizing) mind-blowing trifle. Despite what may (or may not!) end up being weaknesses, Gogo Monster almost certainly demands thoughtfulness of its readers. And that is never a bad thing.


[There are a buttload of drawings of jumbo jets flying overhead.
It's almost like a thing.]

Although, I'm still not sure why the book is called Gogo Monster.
_____________________

[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad]

[Moira Macfarlane · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I love a good graphic novel I decided to go and look for a Japanese manga, with the same criterion, it had to be good in multiple ways. I enjoyed my search very much and in the beginning it was hard to find a manga in a style I would appreciate (and even better I finally came to love). Everyone knows the cliches, the big eyes, blue hair, the overload of action and when it only becomes a slightly bit more in the direction of an adult book it shows awkward pictures of schoolgirls in too short skirts and tight blouses. The other manga might not pop up in Google immediately, but they sure are there. That's how I found Matsumoto's work, Gogo Monster and it is one of the best books I've read this year so far. Apart from saying that it was a very intense read, I felt overwhelmed and touched by the way Taiyo Matsumoto told and depicted it, though I find it hard to express myself and tell exactly why.

Gogo Monster is situated on an ordinary Japanese primary school where we follow three children and the care-taker, they're all in a way loners not fitting in as other people do and therefore outcasts. The main character is Yuki Tashibana, a boy in the third grade, living in his own imaginary world of Super Star and monsters on 'the other side' non of the other kids can see. And then there is his fear of growing up: 'When people turn in grown-ups, their insides melt into a mushy glop and their brains get hard and stiff. They're rotten.' That is except for the care-taker Ganz, who has been working on the school for 30 years now. Yuki likes the old man and starts the day talking and working in the school garden together with him. Than there are Makoto Suzuki and Sabaki IQ. Makoto is the new boy, who is weird because he cares for Yuki. IQ is the 5th grader with the box on his head with a hole in it watching from a distance, moving along the edges of the story.

On the outside the book is looking delightful with it's colourful cardboard sleeve on which you see the monsters inside Yuki Tashibana's head pictured. And once you've drawn the book out of the sleeve you find a hardcover book with red-printed page edges where, if you look close, find monsters decorated too. Opening the book I had to start with a mind switch, turning and reading pages from right to the left for the very first time. I liked that, it immediately gave an extra Japanese touch to it. Matsumoto is a very talented mangaka and varies his style to fit the story he is telling. In Gogo Monster, which is in black and white, he makes line drawings, a slightly bit shaken that once you get used to it fits the story entirely. He leaves a lot of white space in the daily school life drawings and turns very dense, dark and detailed, creeping up on you when the story is getting more intense and emotional.

Reading it you need to take your time, the story is layered in many ways, the words don't always match what you see and the pictures tell a story of their own. It is full of fantasy and surrealism. Reaching the end of the 465 pages I turned back to the beginning, I saw so many things in a different light it made me want to start all over again, and I will.

[HOT DOG · Rating 2 out of 5]

La trama mi aveva convinto, ma il manga si è rivelato una delusione. Noioso, ma di un noioso che mi faceva innervosire. Menomale che non è mio, sennò lo avrei usato come carta per la brace, così da fare un bel pranzetto con Ferdi. I disegni non mi sono piaciuti, i bambini sembrano dei dinosauri fatti male, ma perlomeno le ruote delle bici sono disegnate bene. Posso dire che la trama si basa sulla crescita di un bambino allucinato (?), seguito da un altro bambino un pochino più sano di mente. Alla fine cosa mi ha lasciato? Nulla, TABULA RASA, il nulla più assoluto.
PS. (scusa Asia per l'aggressività, puoi continuare ad insultarmi in giapponese).

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt dizzy after reading this. You could categorize this into tons of genres: fantasy, psychological, slice of life, etc. what looks like a cute manga about monsters from the front, is actually horror story in itself, as the main character's illusions lead the story. This manga also deals with not fitting in. Nobody will even talk to Tachibana because he draws scary things on his desk, talks to imaginary monsters, and hangs out with the other weird kid, only known as IQ, who lives in the rabbit pens and always has a bag over his head. but strange things start happening at the school. as 3 new students from another school that was mysteriously closed down come, mischief explodes and accidents nearly kill students throughout the school. Tachibana knows this is his monsters getting angry at kids for misbehaving and the leader of them all, Superstar, or so he is called by Tachibana, is the most angry. As Tachibana and other students see twisted illusions, Tachibana gets help and friendship from one of the new students, Makoto. This is the story of 2 worlds, clashing together, and a boy who has his feet in both of them. the most twisted part is, you never find out which is dream or reality, leaving a mysterious feeling in the reader. A MUST for any manga or even suspense fan.

[First Second Books]

Books in which children are special, different creatures from those strange adult people tend to be either excellent or terrible. Because there’s so much you can do with that premise – but there’s a danger of it getting to be cloying or precious.

Gogo Monster handles this balance superbly. The book stars a kid named Yuki who’s right on the balance of teenagerhood. For him, getting older means not seeing the world’s wonderful monsters anymore – and he’s desperately scared that no matter what he does, he’ll keep getting older. Taiyo Masumoto handles this superbly, in a psychosis-tinged story that really gets what it means for a kid to choose to be an outcast.

This book: SO GOOD.

[Sonic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant, moving, poetic, surreal story that not only pushes the boundaries of comics and manga, but also shows what is ONLY possible in this medium. The art which seems awkward at first is a language in itself, in a way.
And the more I read the more I became amazed by the art!

Strange as it sounds, I felt this story shares similar themes to those found in the film "Donnie Darko."

And this I think, is a good thing.

[marcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

At this point, I've read enough of Taiyo Matsumoto to admit his stuff aren't for me. As much as I love how he draws and panels, I struggle with his writing. It tends to be very emotionally detached and too esoteric for my taste. I get the gist of what he's going for with GoGo Monster—something about growing up and losing your wonder—yet it never clicks for me.

[Fuego · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Did you get in trouble?” asked Makoto, standing across from the teachers’ lounge.
“I like the office in the summertime/wintertime.” Yuki, who had just got scolded by their teacher, smiled. “It’s air-conditioned/heated.”

D’awww. Isn’t it just too adorable?

I thought I’d give “GoGo Monster” 4 stars after the first read, but I had an inkling I’d need a second, or even a third, read. A week later, I read it the second time, and it still lingers in my mind, meaning it gotta be on my favorite shelf.

“GoGo Monster” was set in an ordinary elementary school in Japan where we follow a third-grader named Yuki and his story. It started off with Yuki realizing things were getting worse and deciding to go to them for help. He asked his teacher and classmates if they had ever seen them , but none of them had. The caretaker, who’d stared at Yuki for so long he got confused, wagered they would be up on the roof and lent him the key. Yuki liked the old man and his flowers because flowers were pretty and they didn’t lie. On the way through the forbidden fourth floor and up to the roof, Yuki met an older kid with a bag on his head and saw airplanes flying very low. He informed the boss of the other side that the Others were growing bigger, but the boss told him not to worry and play his silver wand—a harmonica—instead. When Yuki played it, they spun round and round, and he had lots of fun. But night had come, and it was time to go home. What a bizarre opening!

Yuki’s classmates called him a weirdo because he always drew strange stuff on his desk and said weird crap that they thought to get attention, thereby ignoring him and his existence. He was a child of two worlds; besides the physical world, he also lived in another world where Super Star—the boss of the other side, Chance, and a lot more were his buddies. Those friends were the reason why Yuki kept coming to school, although other kids alienated him. After school classes, Yuki still went up to the roof and played harmonica, but Super Star hardly talked to him these days which made him very sad. He, however, got a friend on this side. It was Ganz, the caretaker, with whom he hung out, chatted about the other side, and did gardening.

At the beginning of the new term, four new kids joined them from Shinmei Elementary School, which was rumored to be closed because the principal hung himself, and one of them was Makoto who sat next to Yuki. Makoto also found Yuki weird and didn’t return his greeting at first. He asked Yuki why he always said stuff weirding people out, and if it bothered him that nobody liked him. But Makoto gradually got accustomed to Yuki’s peculiarity and became friends with him despite their classmates’ warning about catching Yuki’s crazy germs. He even bought a harmonica and learned to play it.

Yuki had a secret: he was terrified of growing up because “when people turn into grown-ups, their insides melt into a mushy glop and their brains get hard and stiff. They get infested with maggots and a purple stink.” So he kept asking Super Star to take him away to the other side, but then it was the Others that tried to drag him away instead of Super Star. This hits too close to home for me because I’m also scared of becoming an adult, and I have a similar prospect of what’ll happen to people when they enter adulthood. I’ve told a few people about that, and it scared the hell out of them, so I learned to keep that ‘spooky’ idea to myself.

There was another outcast named Sasaki, nicknamed IQ, wearing a box on his head all the time. He was a fifth-grader who spent most of his time hanging out in the rabbit run and counting the days left until the misery of having to be at school ended; his best friend was a pure white rabbit named Yuki. Rumor had it that IQ’d attacked a sixth-grader and busted his skull. But as far as we could see, he was just a mischievous kid like others of his age: he drew on a dog’s head. And as his nickname suggests, IQ was a very gifted kid who could get into any prestigious junior high schools, but he refused to apply because he couldn’t wear his box to the exams. His reason was very simple yet unarguable:

“Asking me to take an exam without my box is like asking someone without a box to take an exam with one.”

I believe IQ is the older version of Yuki, and he does understand the younger boy well because he’s been there, done that. Both of them were outcasts, but while Yuki clung to the idea of an other side whose the boss wielded a mysterious power and was idolized by children, IQ was more rational and mature. He simply accepted he was different.

“It’s not hard to become accustomed to ridicule and staring.”

He didn’t like social interaction and people, so he wore a box and peeked out at the world through a hole and made friends with rabbits.

There was a scene in which IQ told Yuki what Super Star and the Others really were.

“I know how lonely you are. Your special friend Super Star represents your longing to connect with the outside world. And the so-called Others that you shun represent the isolation of your inner shelf. It’s all in your imagination, Yuki. They don’t exist. It’s a world of your invention that you’ve created using this building. This school is your box, Yuki.”

While I agree with it, I think there could be another interpretation. Super Star represents our childhood, whereas the Others represent an upcoming adulthood. When Yuki was in the first grade, Super Star was always right there by his side and came to listen whenever he played the harmonica. But when the Others got stronger and stronger, older students at school caused more and more behavior problems: truancy, tardiness, unkempt dress, rude words, graffiti on the fourth floor, broken windows and mirrors, boycotting the fifth period, etc. There was a kid named Kenichi getting a leg cramp and swallowing a little water while swimming because his mother seemed to have pressured him to learn. Isn’t it all because they were growing up? Troubles, adversity, and pressure—don’t they sound awfully familiar to an adult? And from a pessimistic point of view, doesn’t adulthood also include having to deal with situations that might result in poignant speculation like:

“Nonetheless, land development forges heedlessly ahead, destroying mountains and clear-cutting forests. According to the United States Council of Environmental Quality, one to three of the Earth’s species goes extinct each day. Human beings are the ones who should go extinct. I say this without reservation. Our planet teeters on the brink of disaster. The extinction of the human species—a species worse than maggots—is the only solution!”

The way I see it, there were two types of adults in “GoGo Monster”: those who were experienced (Ganz and IQ’s teacher) and those who were inexperienced (Yuki’s teacher). Ganz, whose wife had passed on for 5 years, had never met Yuki’s “Super Star” but believed in his words. He’d been working for 30 years and seen lots of things: kids who ran fast, kids who drew well, kids who were good fighters, kids who were good students, and kids could hear and see things that others couldn’t. IQ’s teacher, a middle-aged lady, accepted him for who he was, albeit a bit reluctantly. She even told the teacher who cast him as one of the ringleaders responsible for the current school issues to eff off. (⌐■_■) However, Yuki’s teacher usually reprimanded him for telling lies about his imaginary friends. It wasn’t totally her fault she didn’t believe in that kind of things; it was just that she was still wet behind the ears.

I’m an outcast myself, and this is my favorite line:

“Don’t you ever question the assumption that it’s a bad thing to be alone, cut off from the outside world? Do you think a frog in a well needs to see the ocean?”

Why do people always assume everyone needs a companion? Why do they assume I must be terribly lonely because I'm always on my own? There’re people telling me they’re jealous of me because they constantly need to be with someone, anyone, while I don’t.

“He can’t believe it doesn’t bother me that nobody likes me," said Yuki. "He thinks I should try harder to get along with the other kids.”
“You don’t agree?” asked Ganz.
“It’s hard to talk about dumbs things. I can’t do it.”

This speaks darn well for me. I’m an old soul who, despite being very young, likes books and movies from the 20’s, listens to old-school black metal, and never finds anime, graphic novels, movies with flashy art style and superheroes appealing. Besides, I’m not wired to seek out or enjoy social interaction and companionship which I find very exhausting. Sometimes, I do feel like sitting in silence with somebody, but most of the time, I just prefer to be alone. People like me just function differently. Maybe one day I’ll remove the box from my head like IQ, or I’ll stumble across a friend like Makoto. Who knows? But I’m still enjoying my own company for the time being. So please stop being on our back, people. You either start learning to be like Makoto or leave us alone.

Spoiler: "GoGo Monster" has one of the best endings ever.

[Michael Bohli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kennengelernt habe ich das Schaffen des Mangaka Taiyo Matsumoto durch seine Reihe "Sunny", die das alltägliche Leben eines Kinderheimes in Japan zeigt. Mit dem prachtvoll aufgemachten Band "GoGo Monster" wird die Realität durch fantastische und stellenweise gruselige Elemente erweitert, im Zentrum bleiben die identifizierbaren Probleme und Emotionen junger Menschen.

Eine Mischung, die dank dem erzählerischen Talent und Feingefühl Matsumotos perfekt aufgeht. Dank den wundervollen Zeichnungen, den dialogfreien und atmosphärischen Passagen und den real wirkenden Charaktere entsteht ein Lesegenuss von höchster Güte.

[Agnese · Rating 1 out of 5]

You give fake deep nerds a senseless plot with a couple of random elements and they'll say that it's a masterpiece that changed their lives.

The panels with cardboard box kid in a random place were fun though

[Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful coming-of-age story that effortlessly marries form and substance. Highly recommended to fans of early Goodnight Punpun or Essex County (specifically Tales from the Farm).

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing beats a Taiyo Matsumoto one-shot.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really a pretty amazing book, one that displays a sophisticated awareness of genre and which uses that to reach past that into some universal realm of growing older and exploring friendship.

Ostensibly the story of two, or maybe three grade school friends, at the center we find reclusive and artistic Yuki Tachibana who draws obsessively on his desk and who can see "others," an extra-dimensional species (?) who threaten this reality from their base on the fourth floor of Yuki's grade school. Or something like that; we catch the story en media res, where Yuki knows he's getting older because even he can't regularly see or access those aliens anymore, and the world is in peril.... it matters that this is comix, I think, because to really empathize with Yuki, we need at least the chance that he is right, that these figures in drops of water and etc are real.

Yuki has a new friend at school, Makoto, and a gentle gardner. There's a boy a little older, nicknamed IQ who is sort of a precursor to Yuki and who watches the world from an eyehole in the cardboard box he wears on his head.... the art is at once scratchy, almost improvised and half-done, but at the same time almost roto-scoped.... the pencil line exists in that space whereby you remove detail and texture from a photograph till its only lines, and not even enough of those to do more than suggest the original. It's a stunning effect in a story that's about the perception of things beyond what we see.... The framing of the story has a lot going on in it, more notable in the final section where Yuki and Makoto ride their bikes, but really, present throughout, where there are some very deliberate panel choices, and etc, but I should admit I'm not sure yet what those mean, except that as in all the other ways already mentioned, Matsumoto is thoughtful in all elements of his craft.

This is a really major accomplishment, a book I imagine I'll come back to often.

[Miss Ryoko · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huh.... I'm not entirely sure what I just read.

I don't often understand these types of books.... but maybe there really isn't anything to understand and people who claim they do really are just trying to boost their egos. Who can say... this manga has some rave reviews, but there really wasn't anything special about it. The artwork was really distracting and hard to look at.... I know that was part Matsumoto-san's plan I'm sure... make everyone look gross and ugly because that's how their personalities are... and the only characters that matter have some sort of distinction from each other and don't look like alien pig species. But, that representation just didn't work for me. I found the art to be poorly executed and often hard to look at.

The storyline was interesting in the aspect that these are relatively young children dealing with some rather deep issues. I do really like that aspect - I feel adults often treat kids as if they are stupid and aren't capable of much of anything other than annoying adults by being loud and out of control. But kids deal with things that affect them deeply just as much as we do. Yuki was dealing with something that was really real to him, and whether or not it really was or wasn't his imagination, it was part of who he was. The adults and the other kids just wrote him off as a weirdo because they couldn't understand, because he wasn't like the rest of them. That is probably one of the few "points" of this manga that I get.

But... I don't know... there really wasn't anything super special that really caught my attention. I liked the small cast of main characters (Yuki, Makoto, Ganz, and IQ)... the ending was interesting... I don't know... I wrote this as a status update, and it is pretty much exactly how I felt the entire time I was reading this: This is a very interesting and strange manga... some part of me likes it and some part of me is like "wtf?"

[Titus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gogo Monster is – or at least can be read as – several things: a moving story about friendship bringing light to a childhood marked by isolation and alienation; a fantasy tale about a boy with extra-sensory perception and a link to a hidden world; a harrowing depiction of mental illness... It leaves a great deal open to interpretation, and it demands a fair amount of thought and reflection from its readers. One thing is for sure though: it's executed masterfully. Above all, it excels at creating and maintaining atmosphere. Its storytelling is meandering and impressionistic, its plot-driving panels interspersed with quiet, mundane moments from around the school that serves as its setting. Often, panels show things from unusual angles, or only focus on a small part of the object or person being depicted (a close-up of a character's eyes, for example). The result is a mysterious, dreamlike and melancholy tone, with a tangible sense of tension and disconnection. Moreover, this is no case of style over substance; every unusual visual choice has a significant effect, and the pages are laden with symbolism.

Gogo Monster is challenging, even taxing to read – it's not one to attempt when you're feeling drowsy, or when you're surrounded by distractions – but it rewards patient, attentive reading with its masterful craft and great emotional and intellectual depth.

[Peacegal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't really say that GoGo Monster was quite what I was expecting. The hardback edition is a really nice-looking book, with an all over, psychedelic design on the cover. However, the interior of the book was considerably less intriguing, with an overly long and rambling storyline that never seems to get where it's trying to go.

Although, I did like the kid who ran around wearing a cardboard box over his head.

[Giovanni Beltrami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silenzi, dettagli centimetrici e architetture scolastiche sono le fondamenta su cui Matsumoto decide di raccontare le difficoltà di un bambino emarginato e introverso. Un mondo popolato di amici e nemici, immaginari e reali, entrambi determinanti per la crescita emotiva del protagonista, quanto i disegni quasi mistici che compongono le tavole.

[insert-a-snoopy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect summertime read. The illustrations are deceptively simple, like childhood.


I miss being like Yuki, a weird wayward kid…
now I’m a weird wayward adult, minus the sparkle.

My soul got dark and mushy along the way.

[Noran Miss Pumkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got lost with the ending-great ride though. The graphics were great-like a person's sketchbook-random at times.

[Trent]

I loved this a lot. Some very beautiful moments and the themes were interesting and well-handled. It's very much in Matsumoto's wheelhouse, which is to say it's about sad children with some fantastical elements. His art style and the way he handles characters is very understated, and I can see that not resonating with everyone. I personally adore his work and regardless of genre, I've found myself absorbed. There's a childlike quality to the illustration here that you don't see in his other works. The psychology of our main characters is explored with the careful and heavily observant qualities we've come to expect from Matsumoto. I don't know if this is the best starting point for his work, but I think this is a must read for any fans of the author.

[Estibaliz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This one was a bit of a toughie, that's for sure.

I do have to say I enjoyed the whole weirdness of it more than I was anticipating, particularly considering that one can't say there's much of an actual conclusion to this trippy story, beyond the fact of being a metaphor of what means being an outcast at a young age, and the struggles that come with growing up.

The art was kind of weird too, maybe a bit too realistic, quite ugly at times... but it also still captured me and enthralled me in a way.

So, yep... not sure I can't recommend this much in terms of storytelling, but reading this manga sure was a whole new experience on itself.

[Cory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ranks right up there with The Wrenchies. A really beautiful, magical, and amazing book.

[Marme · Rating 1 out of 5]

non ha senso

[chia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Posso dire? È veramente una delusione... A partire dai disegni che sono veramente inquietanti... Ma sarà il caso di consultare uno psichiatra per sti bambini che sono veramente spaventosi?!

[Dylan]

Had decided against logging comics here cause they clog things up and who cares but i read this in german which felt like enough of an achievement to warrant inclusion

[Aldo Verde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah sì, bambini giapponesi pazzi: proprio quello che mi piace!

[Kristian Dobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best manga I have read. Matsumoto gives profundity to what, in lesser hands, would be another stale coming of age story.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love this type of coming-of-age story. felt like donnie darko written by sayaka murata. chef's kiss