Books: Faust Vol. #1

There is something very intimidating in the way we have seen more of Japan’s own literary pop culture appear in English in the last few years alone than across almost all the previous years. “Literary pop culture” means the things written in Japan, for Japanese audiences, and not necessarily written to bolster that country’s literary prestige in the eyes of the world. That’s everything from the Vampire Hunter D and Dirty Pair light novels to NISIOISIN, from Miyuki Miyabe’s Crossfire and Brave Story (which are two incredibly dissimilar books for the same author) to the Guin Saga, from Edogawa Rampo’s Black Lizard to Kōji Suzuki’s Ring cycle.

It’s intimidating, because where’s someone supposed to start reading with such a trove of riches now at hand? It’s the same problem I had with the Gundam franchise: there’s just so much of it and in so many incarnations, just picking a starting point has me going in circles. (I’ll probably just give up and start with Gundam SEED. Send hate mail to the email address above.)

For those reasons I’m all the more grateful to Del Rey for hooking up with Kodansha, their perpetual partner in cultural cross-pollination, to bring out a domestic edition of the first volume of Faust. Billed as “fiction and manga from the cutting edge of Japanese pop culture”, it more than lives up to the label. For seventeen bucks you get a nearly four-hundred page anthology of current pop-literary movers, shakers, creators and illustrators — a bentō box of goodies designed to appeal to both existing manga/anime/”visual culture” fans and people from outside that circle looking for a fresh set of cultural diversions. Just the sheer variety of the material sandwiched into this volume would be reason enough to recommend it.

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