Books: Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White: All in One (Taiyo Matsumoto)

It’s difficult to write about Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White without explicitly comparing it to the movie that it inspired. I was actually worried the book might not measure up, since Tekkonkinkreet so far outpaced any other animated production I’ve seen this year, and so comparing it with the book might seem unfair. But TK:B&W was written and drawn by Taiyo Matsumoto, whose other works have stood up wonderfully on their own (No. 5) and have also been adapted into live-action films of distinction (Blue Spring, Ping Pong). If Tekkonkinkreet was such a wonderful movie, it was only because the book itself had that much going for it.

Now we have proof of that, in the form of the comic that inspired the film, and I plan on filing it on my shelf along with Sexy Voice and Robo, Hiroki Endo’s Eden, and Robin Nishi’s as-yet-untranslated Mind Game (also made into a stupefyingly wonderful movie, by the same animation studio that brought Tekkonkinkreet to life). I should point out that Black and White was originally published in a set of standalone volumes back in 2000, but those have been out of print for some time, and so having them all restored to print in a single omnibus edition is hugely welcome.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.