Tatsumi – review

Here is a striking study of the Japanese manga master Yoshihiro Tatsumi (now 76 years old) who invented the adult "gekiga" form of the genre: a kind of psychological noir. The film is rendered in the hand-drawn style of Tatsumi himself: both in the telling of his lifestory, and dramatising some of his classic tales of sexual obsession, violence and fear, particularly the extraordinary Good Bye, the story of a self-hating prostitute in postwar Japan, despised by both her neighbours and clients, who winds up drunkenly seducing her pathetic old father so as to nullify his emotional claim on her. But the slightly slushy tone of celebration rather obtusely fails to engage with the nihilist, pessimist nature of Tatsumi's work. Anyway, an intriguing event.