ラッキー嬢ちゃんのあたらしい仕事

by Fumiko Takano

Pubblicato a puntate, dal 1986 al 1987 sulle pagine di «Petit Flower», Il nuovo lavoro della signorina Lucky è l’opera più lunga di Takano Fumiko. Liberamente isperata alla serie di romanzi e racconti Tommy e Tuppence di Agatha Christie, quest’opera rivela il talento smisurato di Takano nell’impostazione delle tavole e nella creazione di un plot coinvolgente e narrativamente valido. Lucky, impiegata come nuova commessa di un grande magazzino, si trova all’improvvisa coinvolta in un’avventura che ricorda un film di spionaggio degli anni Cinquanta: riuscirà la giovane Lucky a salvare il grande magazzino e a difendersi dai cattivi di turno?

Genres: Manga

Tankobon Hardcover

About the author

Fumiko Takano (高野文子, Takano Fumiko) is a Japanese cartoonist. She is considered an important figure of the manga 'New Wave' of the late 70's and early 80's.
Takano got interested in making manga in high school, when she discovered the influential work of Moto Hagio. She later moved to Tokyo, where she studied to become a nurse and worked as such for a couple of years. During that time, she continued drawing amateur manga (doujinshi).
Her professional debut happened in 1979, when her story Zettai Anzen Kamisori was published in 'June', an alternative manga magazine coming out of the doujinshi scene. She also collaborated with more mainstream shōjo manga magazines, like 'Petit Flower' and 'Seventeen', while working as a secretary at the small publisher Kitansha.
Starting from the late 80's, Takano became a full time cartoonist. Her most notable works from this period are the series Lucky Jō-chan no Atarashii Shigoto (1986–1987) and Ruki-san (1988–1992). In the following decade she only produced short stories, collected in the books Bō ga Ippon (1995) and Kiiroi Hon (2002). After a long hiatus, Takano came back to manga with the web comic Dimitri Tomkins (2014).
Well known in Japan as a pioneer of literary manga from a female perspective, Takano is relatively unknown abroad, with only a few of her books having appeared in Western languages.

Reviews

[Justin Decloux · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tour de force of a simple comic premise done with the kind of cinematic flair that only a master can pull off. Takano Fumiko is most famous for her gag strip Miss Ruki, but, as the writer of the intro to the new English edition notes, she experimented a lot, and this spy story about a maid getting caught up in a mall chase is pure visual storytelling. My jaw dropped a number of times at how she laid out a scene - seemingly more inspired by French BD than Manga.

This volume recently got an Italian traslation and I hope, against hope, that it comes to English as well.