絶対安全剃刀―高野文子作品集

by Fumiko Takano

高野文子初の単行本。1977年から81年に発表された17の短編をまとめたもの。死を迎えた少女が観音とともに「祝い」の支度をする「ふとん」。「ただなんとなく」自殺を図る少年を描いた表題作の「絶対安全剃刀」。傍若無人な姉と賢い弟のシニカルなおとぎばなし「アネサとオジ」。「女の子」扱いされることに激しく反発する女子大生を描く「うしろあたま」。静かでありながら、ざわざわと心が揺れるような秀作が並ぶ。
Collection of short stories by Takano Fumiko.

Genres: Manga, Comics

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 19, 1982

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

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolute Safety Razor, a collection of short stories by Fumiko Takano (who designed the characters for the unusual historical anime series The Heike Story, directed by my favourite Japanese anime director, Naoko Yamada… trivia!), is very unusual in terms of its art style, at least for shōjo of this period. It’s cleaner, simpler, relatively unadorned, but so expressive and clean. My favourite I’ve yet encountered.

And some wonderful usages of panelling too; in this case, characters stand on the borders, leaning into the centre of the panel, as though the panels are windows that we are seeing from outside a building, and the characters are cautiously trying to evade our notice. At one point a character is gazing into a mirror and we pass a few panels in this mirror world, complete with mirrored text.

Head Backwards is my favourite, which can be interpreted in many ways but it was lovely to see a more masculine girl and I did interpret some of her struggle as her realising she’s gay. It was so naturalistic compared to some of the other more comedic tales in here; it was richer for being so low-key. A close second is Genkan (“Entryway”), a beautifully observed sliver of a young girl’s life, as she develops a fear of water and comes to realise the emotional landscapes of her mother and best friend are different from her own. Both are fantastic examples of the strengths of this form of sequential storytelling.

[21stpear · Rating 5 out of 5]

陰影和網點太細膩了，電影般的分鏡以及遣詞，每一篇都好有靈氣。特別喜歡的應該是《花》《特別安全剃刀》《後腦勺》《玄關》（好慶幸活在能看到高野文子的年代

[L D · Rating 3 out of 5]

读的是中文版《翻面的黑猫》。