Dementia 21 Vol.1 - Shintaro Kago

Dementia 21 Vol.1 by Kago / ISBN 9781683961062 / 290-page book from Fantagraphics

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This is a disturbingly funny manga about plucky home aide tasked with caring for a series of bizarre patients, from one of Japan’s most twisted cartoonists.

Yukie Sakai is a sprightly young home health aide eager to help her elderly clients. But what seems like a straightforward job quickly turns into a series of increasingly surreal and bizarre adventures that put Yukie’s wits to the test! Cartoonist Kago, who is well known for combining a more traditional manga style with hyper realistic illustration technique, an experimental visual storytelling approach, and outrageously sexual and scatological subject matter, has single-handedly created his own genre: “fashionable paranoia." Black & white illustrations throughout

"Showing influences from Salvador Dali to Katsuhiro Otomo, the combination of Kago’s precise, expressive, and kinetic line work with his wacky storytelling is at turns engrossing and repulsive. Mature fans of unconventional manga will appreciate the surreal spiral of body horror, tragicomedy, and dark humor." ― Publishers Weekly