Barbara, l'entre-deux-mondes, Tome 1

by Moto Hagio, Miyako Slocombe (Translator)

Fantagraphics Books is proud to present the first volume (of two) of Moto Hagio’s Otherworld Barbara, in which Tokio discovers a phantom island named Barbara. Then there’s a mysterious and missing geneticist, an eccentric clergyman, a grieving grandmother granted temporary youth, a psychologist killed by a freak tornado… Hagio offers a sci-fi explanation for these seemingly random paranormal elements, and makes it all matter with believable characters in complex and subtle relationships. This book won the“Nebula Award of Japan” (Nihon SF Taisho Award) in 2006.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction, Josei

390 pages, Paperback

Published January 25, 2024

About the author

Moto Hagio (萩尾望都 Hagio Moto) is a manga artist born in Ōmuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, though she currently lives in Saitama Prefecture.
She is considered a "founding mother" of modern shōjo manga, and a member of the Year 24 Group (24-Gumi). She helped pioneer modern shōjo manga, modern science fiction manga, and BL manga. In addition to being an "industry pioneer", her body of work "shows a maturity, depth and personal vision found only in the finest of creative artists". She has been described as "the most beloved shōjo manga artist of all time."

Moto Hagio made her professional debut in 1969 at the age of 20 with her short story Lulu to Mimi on Kodansha's magazine Nakayoshi. Later she produced a series of short stories for various magazines for Shogakukan.
Two years after her debut, she published Juichigatsu no Gimunajiumu (The November Gymnasium), a short story which dealt openly with love between two boys at a boarding school. The story was part of a larger movement by female manga artists at the time which pioneered a genre of girls' comics about love between young men.
In 1974, Hagio developed this story into the longer Toma no shinzo (The Heart of Thomas). She was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1976 for her science fiction classic Juichinin iru! (They Were Eleven) and her epic tale Poe no ichizoku (The Poe Family).

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Otherworld Barbara is a strange and pretty original work that is at the intersection of the psychological, paranormal and science fiction by manga-ka Moto Hagio that involves a “dream pilot” and many other oddities. So you read the title and you expect this to be about a woman named Barbara who is otherworldly, right? Me, too, right, but nope. So what is Barbara? It’s a place we can go, an island, a place of escape. Did Tokio discover it? Could it be a young coma-ridden child’s dream world? Is it her red moon, or Ezra’s Martian life form? Is it Ezra’s cell-activating drug? Kiriya’s invented world? Is it everyone’s version of Peter Pan’s Neverland? The answer would seem to be yes, that it exists for many characters in the book and for us.

In this tale, lots of strange things happen: brain scans reveal dream states, and in fact very sharp pictures of dream life. Dream invasions by Ezra the dream pilot take place. One, in fact, happens in the dream life of the girl in the coma, Jyujo Aoba. What is this dream world she inhabits? In fact, it looks quite a bit like the drawings John Tenniel created for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland!

Oh, and there’s more. Poltergeists. Anti-aging drugs. Cannibalism (you know the phrase “eating your heart out”? Well, this may be a dream/nightmare, but it “happens” here. . .). Homo-eroticism. Otherworld Barbara, beautifully drawn by Hagio, is an impressive tome about the worlds of dreams: science fiction stories, paranormal stories, fantasy and horror stories, the worlds of escape and imagination we construct through images and story. A strange and wonderful ride!

[Mir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading this, I am very glad I did because there are a large number of significant factors I'd forgotten, especially from later in the book. Eg, I'd completely forgotten about Pine a secondary character from Aoba's dream island Barbara, showing up as a teen at Kiriya's school and knowing him.

In addition to events and information, there are also a startling number of overlapping thematic groupings. And incomplete list:
dreams -- the future -- memory -- unreliability
masks -- appearance -- age -- identification -- names
age -- reincarnation -- youth -- children -- immortality
children -- parents -- abandonment/rejection -- grandparents -- foster parents
red -- blood -- Mars -- goldfish
goldfish -- octopi -- crustaceans allergies -- the coast -- water
dust -- sand -- water -- rivers -- the sea
---
Update: The second volume is out! Time to reread this. Maybe then I will have something to say in a review beyond, "Wow."
---
Wow. When is the next book out?
(Probably not in time for me to not need to reread this, because it was extremely rich and it seemed like every detail meant something.)

[Skye Kilaen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until I got to the second chapter, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake ordering this book. I’m glad I stuck with it. It’s such a bizarre blend of paranormal and sci-fi-like plot elements, with a dream world thrown in, and it’s completely absorbing once you have a context for the first chapter. The back of the book calls it a “thriller” and I think that’s a bit strong, but there’s definitely complex mystery and shocking, eerie events. One of the stranger comics I’ve read and liked.

UPDSTE: I did read the second volume, and I found it a satisfying though sad conclusion. Don't need to re-read this series ever, but glad I did.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly sophisticated and dense narrative. Tonally, this is dramatically different from The Heart of Thomas, a work that Hagio is perhaps best known for. I think that readers of this manga will immediately think of the film Inception, but it doesn't play around with narrative levels in the same way. In fact, this text's forte is its handling of connections, coincidence, and doppelgängers.

5/4/18 - Rereading before I tackle volume 2

[Rose]

Fun fact: According to Wiki, “Hagio 'wanted to do something about meat' when she created the story for Otherworld Barbara, and felt that the story 'turned out kind of gross'.”

Hagio uses her world to explore the psychology of belief. She navigates the balance between the emotional consolations of escapism and the disappointments and chaos that come with being mortal and desperately interdependent. She plays on the blurry borders between imagination and memory, posing questions of control to her characters: what of their worlds do they create and what do they accept? And what can't they accept? And how does a mind adapt to the unacceptable and the alienating? And what's in this hamburger?

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and original horror/fantasy/science fiction by a classic shojou manga author. I'm particularly taken by some of the originalities in the setting (such as the island of Barbara), the mix of fantasy and science fiction, the intriguing major characters, and especially the lovely classic Moto Hagio artwork! Highly recommended to Moto Hagio fans and those who enjoy any of the genres (I'm not a horror fan and I loved it!)

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more deeply engrossing manga I've read. We open with a young girl, Aoba, who lives on the island of Barbara. Barbara is an odd, seemingly magical place, where children can float through the air. There is talk of some war in the past, when satellites fell from the sky. Chapter 2 opens with a man called Watarai, whose profession is dream pilot. With the help of a machine, he is able to enter and interact with the dreams of sleeping people. He's been called in to consult on a case involving a girl whose parents were brutally murdered and who's been asleep ever since, a girl named Aoba, who dreams of the island of Barbara ...

The story is multilayered. There are hints about Watarai's past, his estranged son--who believes Barbara is his own creation, a childhood fantasy, and is at a loss as to how Aoba can be dreaming of it. There are hints of life extension, war with Mars, things dreamed about appearing in real life ... Volume 1 presents us with many mysteries. Voume 2 will, no doubt, offer solutions. Moto Hagio definitely has a plan ... This is high quality storytelling, from one of manga's legendary creators. Highly recommended!

[Siobhan Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up on a whim at the library because my book club's theme for the month is graphic novels. This was a weird and wild ride - so trippy and a lot to wrap my head around, but still good. Definitely going to pick up the second volume next time I'm at the library.

[Maëlle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jsp trop quoi en penser parce que c'était bien mais en même temps pour l'instant j'ai rien compris ? Je pense que je lirai le tome 2 parce que je veux vraiment comprendre !!

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little confusing in places but truly Fantastic

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't read Moto Hagio quickly. It's theoretically possible, and you could just look at the gorgeous art (always a delight), but you won't feel the pulse of the story. Hagio writes in a beautiful, paused manner, and her characters never feel like sketches. They have shading, depth, and color, and most importantly, they drive the story just as much as the story drives them toward a single, common precipice.
I didn't expect this to be split into two parts, so I'll hold off on revealing any plot elements. Until Volume 2 comes out, please do yourself a favor, grab some wine/hot chocolate, settle in a comfy chair, and read one of Hagio's heart-wrenching spins on the inherent pathos of living and being human. I recommend "The Heart of Thomas" or, for a collection of short stories, "A Drunken Dream."

[Comics Alternative · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://comicsalternative.com/manga-re...

[Sassy Sarah Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Moto Hagio is a well-known force in the Shojo manga community. Her work is particularly fundamental in the science fiction and LGBTQ+ (Boys Love) community. This is my first Hagio work, and it was a mixed bag for me. Otherworld Barbara is one of the most entertaining stories despite often being a little too philosophical and a little too on-the-nose, and too wide in scope. This English collection has the first two volumes of the original series and I think having the two volumes is a smart editing choice on the part of the editors and distributors of getting Moto Hagio's work into English readers' hands.

There are multiple plots existing in this series. There is a young girl who lives in the world of Barbara and cannot fly like everyone else in town since she is an outsider, supposedly from Mars. There is a man who can enter into peoples' dreams and help police find bodies of serial killers or, in this story, enter into the dream of a teenage girl who has been in a coma since she consumed the flesh of her parents as a child. There is also the dream-walker's son and his obsession with a world he created called Barbara, which may be an alternate reality. There's talk of Jungian philosophy and robot dolls, as well as cloning. I even forgot to mention the subplot of a woman who was able to become young again. Also, there's a commune/religion that seems super suspicious. There's a little too much going on if you ask me. It made it so hard to feel committed to Otherworld Barbara because I just wanted to stick to the cannibalism plot, but apparently Moto Hagio found that too disturbing that even she went in this direction and I think she threw in a lot of other subplots to lessen the gruesomeness of that being the compelling as well as propelling force that kickstart the narrative behind Barbara's origins/creation. I'm a big horror fan, so I didn't mind the darker overtones. That's kind of my jam.

I do plan on reading volume 2, but not right away. I need some time to digest (ha) what I've just read and get my bearings straight.

[Kaitlin Klak · Rating 5 out of 5]

- i picked up this book at the comic shop i used to work at because i thought the illustrations were gorgeous. and they are beautiful throughout the series! i love this artist’s work so much

- the story itself was extremely surreal, complicated and multi-layered. we follow a dream therapist assigned to a case of a strange sleeping girl named aoba. she’s been in a coma for a number of years after eating her parent’s hearts. no one really knows if she killed them or if they committed suicide. at the same time, tokio (the therapist) is trying to fix his relationship with his son, kiriya. AND there are so many other characters with equally as engaging storylines. by the end of the series, they do sort of fit together nicely. someone mentioned on GD that this story reminded them of inception and it does sort of have those vibes in regards to blurring dreams and reality, skipping through different timelines, reincarnation, etc

- i would not recommend this book if you want to read something relaxing and chill. i felt like i really had to pay attention and think about what i was reading. i normally don’t love surreal stuff but i did feel like everything made sense by the end and tied up nicely! the illustrations definitely helped and added life to the book.

- i also really liked how some of the characters struggled with things like aging (namani to be exact). a very human thing to go through in a crazy sci-fi story.

- aoba’s bed ngl….looked dreamy as hell. i would sleep forever in a set up like that lol

[Nicolas Lontel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je suis content· juste de voir les éblouissantes illustrations de Moto Hagio, mais ici, on a en plus un récit de science-fiction onirique, labyrinthique, complexe et qu'on déplie petit à petit au cours des chapitres et arrivé à la fin de ce premier tome, on ne sait toujours pas où ça va mener, ce qui est vrai et ce qui tient du rêve ce qui complimente certainement la narration impeccable de ce récit.

Les nombreux thèmes et motifs du manga (rêve, immortalité, innocence, cruauté, relationalité, etc.) s'entremêle somptueusement dans le récit même qui nous est présenté. Hagio est-elle capable de créer autre chose que des chef-d'oeuvres de dessins et de narration?

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐

Mi ha ricordato a tratti Liddell di Yoshimi Uchida, ma non per lo stile quanto per le tematiche; chiaramente è scritto dieci volte meglio.

[Eric Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read and enjoyed many English-translated short stories by Moto Hagio – A, A' and A Drunken Dream and Other Stories being particular standout collections – so I was very excited to find the English-translated release of her serialized work, Otherworld Barbara. Having now finished reading Vol 1, I'm disappointed.

The basic premise is about a man with the ability to enter and participate in the dreams of others hired to help wake a teenage girl from her decade-long coma, which she entered into after supposedly murdering her parents and eating their hearts. That was the original pitch had me intrigued. But, there was more to it... a lot more... way too much more...

The dream pilot's son is some kind of masterful theatrical dancer, yet is deeply embarrassed to be such. This son also suspects he was secretly adopted and that he either originates from Mars, or that he is maybe destined to go there and live some day. Some of the characters get together to make a toy robot version of the coma-woman as she appears in her dream child-like form. Everyone starts accuses everyone else of being someone they literally are not, opening up some kind of confusing plot point about everyone having double-lives – maybe a real life persona and a dream persona? There's more, but I think you get the point.

Sadly, the story is just a mess of subplots, which delved into what-the-hell-is-happening?-territory one page one and never left for the next 400 pages. I forced myself to finish, which wasn't that hard thanks to Hagio's beautiful art style, however, I won't be reading Vol 2.

All of the above said, I suspect this story might have been poorly translated to English from Japanese. There are scenes that just are so standalone in their confusion that I can't help but think the original meaning and subtext was completely lost.

Moto Hagio is a superb manga-ka with a large body of work. I hope this is a fluke in her bibliography, but I think I'll be sticking to her short stories for the foreseeable future.

[Calira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un premier tome très intéressant après avoir été à l'exposition consacrée à Moto Hagio à Angoulême qui donne un autre regard sur cette oeuvre.
La SF c'est un peu compliqué ici mais finalement qu'on soit dans l'univers du Clan des Poe ou celui de Barbara les personnages traversent des sentiments bien réels et bien humains qui parle à mon cœur de lectrice !

[Sucre · Rating 4 out of 5]

there's a lot going on in this but it's a beautiful ride

[Sunread26 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronique complète :
https://sunread26.wordpress.com/2024/...

Extrait :
J’ai ce premier tome depuis un petit moment, mais comme il s’agit d’un tome épais, j’avoue ne pas mettre lancé dans sa lecture rapidement. Finalement, j’ai franchi le cap et j’ai lu le tome sur deux jours. La plume de Moto Hagio a vraiment quelque chose d’addictif (surtout quand j’arrive mieux à suivre l’histoire), j’espère pouvoir me prendre la suite rapidement…

L’intrigue est déroutante dès le départ, puisque l’on ne commence pas avec le personnage présenté dans le synopsis, mais avec une bande d’enfants. Un trio plus précisément, composé d’une petite fille, Aoba et de deux frères (pas de sang), Taka et Païn. Le trio semble vivre une vie paisible, mais très vite, on ressent quelque chose qui cloche. Certains enfants peuvent voler, certaines plantes prennent vie… Pour le moment, le protagoniste ne s’est pas présenté, mais ses trois personnages sont clairement importants pour saisir l’histoire. C’est le premier chapitre, l’introduction de la série, qui nous place sur l’île de Barbara, avec le synopsis on peut commencer à saisir certains points. On passe ensuite au chapitre suivant, et là, j’ai l’impression que l’on commence un peu une course, contre le temps, pour fuir quelque chose, par peur de finir dans une situation, je l’ignore, mais le rythme devient de plus en plus rapide. Toute comme les illusions qui nous font douter de la réalité et du rêve, surtout que l’intrigue se déroule déjà dans le futur (donc avec des éléments créés pour cette période, que l’on ne connait pas et qui ne nous permettent pas de définir la réalité). L’auteure a réussie à me perdre un peu, mais pas dans le même sens que Le clan des Poe (là j’étais perdue dans le temps, comme chaque chapitre portait sur une période différente, un coup futur, un coup passé).

Notre protagoniste fini par faire son entrée, on peut dire que son CV n’est pas des plus glorieux, surtout côté famille. Divorcé, père absent mais souhaitant se rattraper, pris par le travail et visiblement régulièrement mis à mal par celui-ci (surtout mentalement). À peine rentré il doit de nouveau partir pour entrer dans les rêves d’une jeune fille dans le coma depuis plusieurs années. L’histoire de cette fille est à la fois mystérieuse, glauque, horrible et sanglante. Rien de bien difficile pour lui à première vue étant donné qu’il entrait dans les rêves de serial killers. Comme il passe son temps à voyager pour son travail (qu’il n’a pas choisi au passage), il a fini par divorcer sa femme n’en pouvait plus qu’il voit ses rêves. Loin de sa famille et surtout de son fils, il ne le verra pas grandir. Mais avec les derniers événements, ils commencent à vivre bien plus de moments ensembles, malheureusement, le mal est peut-être déjà fait et tenter une nouvelle connexion pourrait bien s’avérer dangereux. Celui-ci semble intimement lié à Aoba ainsi qu’à l’île de Barbara. Une mystérieuse entreprise semble aussi assez proche de ses phénomènes étranges, même si le lien ne semble pas avoir été évoqué plus que ça dans le tome. Une gamme porte le même nom Barbara, quel est le but final à tout cela ?

[...]

[Andromeda M31 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otherworld Barbara is a strange one.

Chapter One takes place on an isolated island world where certain children can fly, pancakes are readily available, and a young girl, Aoba is happy to play in fields of grass. There are some hints that not all is quite right. Is there a war on the mainland? Are the inhabitants even allowed to leave? Is the seashore guarded by a rampaging elephant?

And then Chapter Two drops you in future Japan and you meet, Tokio Watarai, a dream pilot a la Inception, and his estranged son Kiriya. Tokio is brought in to delve into the island dreams of a teenage Aoba, who has been in a coma since the death of her parents. Aoba manifests poltergeist powers in her sleep. She can make rain fall, or blood.

And then things get really weird.

Strange links appear between characters who should not know anything about Aoba and her beautiful island world. Kiriya has a connection to the otherworld, along with perhaps his step father. Past lives and future lives are important. Red Mars appears in visions. Rejuvenation and the quest for Immortality. Cannibalism. Robots. It's a lot.

But the emotional threads maintain all the above complexity, with the vast array of characters. Tokio's drive to become a better father and Kiriya's quest for fulfillment anchor all the strangeness. And I appreciate that Aoba changes from a sleeping beauty to the possible villain of the entire tale early on.

Moto Hagio's later artwork features clean lines and rare use of tones compared to other modern mangaka, making her work feel light on the page. It has a distinct manga feel, but character designs are well grounded and lack the more extreme designs of other shoujo styles.

I'm happy that Fantagraphics is translated Hagio's works. I want to like the hardcover binding, but all my library copies are falling apart, which isn't for a $30 book.

[that girl who reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so wonderfully weird! Probably one of the best mangas I've read and I love that it has been created by two women. The concept is just fantastic, so complex and so many layers of interweaving stories. I love the combination of psychological mystery, sci-fi and parallel futuristic realities. And of course a crazy mix of cannabals, dream scientists, robot dolls, martians, kagura dancers, immortal beings and absent fathers (you know, as you do). It was also a lot darker than I expected which was interesting. I would say it's easy to get lost in this as there is just so many characters and so much going on but if you stick with it you can appreciate how well it's been constructed. I truly turned each page with no clue what would happen next as it's so unpredictable and this made for a really exciting reading experience. I can't remember the last time I read something which gave me that feeling. Looking forward to seeing where volume 2 takes the story and hoping some of the narrative threads start to join together.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

When does V.2 hit the states?
Initially, I was like a few people in the reviews, where the first chapter was just everywhere and not at all coherent. I disliked it(the first chapter) so much that I had to read some reviews to see if my reaction was typical. Thankfully, I continued to read and was completely blown away by this story. I went back to re-read chapter one after I finished and the chapter makes much more sense. The reason why the chapter feels the way it does is because is starts in a dream (hence the feeling of it being everywhere). The best way that I can describe this story is like Satoshi Kon meets Inception, but that in itself feels like lack of reverence to her ability (not to discredit S.Kon). There are so many layers to this story and its timeline is quite interesting. All this leaves me back to my initial comment:
When does V.2 hit the states!?!?

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Towards the end of this book I was feeling more positive towards it but it should not have taken nearly as long to get to that point. The fact this is volume one of (presumably?) two does not encourage me. The artwork was also suprisingly disappointing or variable quality, particularly for this being a more recent work of Hagio Moto's. The writing, while there are some very intriguing ideas, similarly seems surprisingly sloppy and muddled compared to other works I've read by her. If this were your first manga, your first sci-fi manga, your first shojo or your first Moto manga, I would not recommend this. If you've read a fair amount of any of the previously mentioned types of manga...I would reluctantly recommend this. I think there are other works that are less ambitious and more focused, but I do appreciate that we're getting more variety in the manga that is translated into English.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really don’t know what to make of this. First, it’s the first volume in a series, and it does not really tie any of the threads it starts. Which are many, but the main one is the existence of Barbara, an island shaped like an open hand, that has apparently been created by dreaming by Aoba, a 9-year old girl whose parents died in a murder-suicide event. Or maybe there was no suicide.
But it’s tightly written and well drawn, in the big-eyes characteristic style of manga. And there are also many more mysteries in the way people look, their names… I guess I’ll have to get to the second installment.

[ava g · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was, overall, stellar. The art and formatting were both beautiful; it really took the themes and depth of the story to a new level. There were some funny parts, but overall it was a surreal story and experience. I'm reserving five stars for books I get unbelievably obsessed with, but this one is as high as it can go without being up there. It kind of felt like it was always at a climactic point, so when a scene was supposed to be the climax it was a little less exciting, but overall the story was still thrilling. Definitely would recommend.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this for so long before finishing it. It has most of the things that makes Moto Hagio's works great, but somehow I still didn't get invested in it. It has a certain lack of drive (?) and there are a bunch of character-tropes that I dislike. The overall story is really interesting, but not enough to weigh up the things I don't like. If I could borrow the next volume at the library I would definitely continue reading this, but I don't like it enough to actually buy it with my own money.

[Clint Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some very solid A-ha! moments here but so often I just had zero clue what was going on, which characters I was looking at and what the words they were saying meant. I found the art style to be mostly hideous, like early drafts rather than finished panels, and had a very hard time keeping the players straight because of it.

It took far too long to grab me and when it did, it couldn't keep ahold of me. The dialogue is so silly in parts that it's like a mix of soap opera and B-movie sci-fi. I don't think I'll be rushing out to grab Vol. 2.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is incredibly weird and intriguing. This has so many elements gently overlapping itself it's really difficult to fully explain this story to someone without needing a power point presentation, which isnt a bad thing! This story has an appropriate dream like quality to it, along with some really interesting concepts (should you ruin something for someone to save them?). There's some Gender moments at well that really intrigued me. Great to see the integrity of the page directions kept! Very invested to read the next volume and find out how deep this rabbit hole goes.

[Tori Seiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this manga at my local library because, tbh, I thought it looked pretty- it ended up being SO COOL. I found myself thinking about when I would get a chance to read more of it when I was away from it~ eager to see how the mystery will unfold. The subject of this manga focuses on the dream-world blending with reality which intrigues me so much!! I cannot wait to read the second one! I HIGHLY SUGGEST THIS!!!

I paired this manga with Ichiko Aoba's music as well as the soundtrack from the video game, Yume Nikki and it fit perfectly<333