O que é Sunny? Sunny é um carro. Um carro que você usa para passear com sua mente. Ele leva você para os lugares com os quais você sonha. Sunny também é uma história sobre superar as adversidades, das maneiras que importam. Sunny conta as histórias das crianças e jovens que vivem no Jardim Escola Hashinoko, um lar de acolhimento para órfãos e crianças em situação de risco. Seus sonhos e angústias ganham vida e emoção no belo traço de Taiyo Matsumoto, um dos autores mais importantes em atividade no Japão.
A emocionante conclusão do mangá que arrebatou leitores em todas as partes do mundo!
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.
The last volume(s) of this series, developing some of the (loose) plotlines and providing a sort of closure - not to the Hashinoko children's home but some of those children do go elsewhere and it was all oh so heartbreaking but so tender.
The portuguese edition (very very good all round in all details, credit to everybody involved) collects the series into 3 volumes of around 450 pages each, though I think in some languages it is 6 volumes. It's commonly described as slice of life, which I guess is as good as any descriptor, loose threaded, polyphonic (even within the same issue and panel) the story of a small children's home (family owned? a family charity?) in 1970s Japan and the children who live there and their interactions with others and the small Mie Prefecture town where they live. But it's not a story about children for children or teenagers or even a lot of adults, the plot if there is any is wandering (in this issue there is a big gap between the epilogue like last story and the crucial story before that), few conclusions. And there is also a cultural factor where the reader might not be getting everything - dialect is used through, clearly because of mentions, sometimes it is not clear cut why some people react someways, though I guess that is true for everything really meaningful about an unfamiliar culture.
The children with their mix of rebelliousness and trauma and tenderness, the adults with their rules but awareness and love is all so moving. Real, and hopeful, but no easy happy endings.
About the art, because it always matters to me, it's also perfectly to my taste. The core of the art reminds me of 1970s children's book illustrations, and it's all so perfect but there are twists to it, strangeness sometimes in the perspective or layout or composition and it's all so expressive, beautiful, worth staring at. Often with touches of mixed media effect. This edition included colored plates (I guess the covers of the single volumes) and those were particularly beautiful again. The portuguese editors did a great job in everything really, the translation, the small notes translating signs, the paper.
5 stars for sure ( to my taste and just my taste, and I would not recommend it to some friends without a lot of warnings about how loose plotted it is) and I mean to reread it again whole one of these days.
4,5/5 I appreciate the perspective, because it’s rare to see stories told through these type of characters. But, despite some interesting aspects, the plot never hooked me as much as I wanted it to.