FANTAGRAPHICS

A decades-spanning collection from the "founding mother" of modern shojo manga, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by one of Japan's most influential and critically lauded comics innovators.

The setting: a boys' boarding school in Germany, sometime in the mid-20th Century. One winter day, fourteen year-old Thomas Werner falls from a lonely pedestrian overpass to his death, immediately after sending a single, brief letter to another boy at the school: "To Juli, one last time. This is my love. This is the sound of my heart. Surely you must understand." Thomas's death (was it an accident? suicide? or even murder?) immediately throws the school into turmoil, while his letter sets off a chain of emotional upheaval.

The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates, but they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.

Shuichi and Yoshino have now entered the sixth grade. Shuichi spends a precious gift of cash from his grandmother on a special present for himself, a purchase that triggers a chain of events in which his sister Maho learns his secret and Shuichi inadvertently steals the heart of a boy Maho is interested in.

Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. One day, abruptly, their secret is exposed, and the two find themselves the target of sixth-grade cruelty. Their friendship is strained, as Yoshino makes a half-hearted effort at being a "normal girl"... and their mentor, Yuki, reveals the harder reality of being transgendered.

Love is in the air. It's in the trees and on the streets. It's hanging on the walls and piled in great heaps on the floor. Or is it really love? These sixth and seventh graders don't really know. But something is definitely amiss. They can't sleep, and when they do sleep they have strange dreams. They get angry and cry for no reason. They blush and grin like idiots for no reason. And it isn't even spring. But the standard rules apply: if A is in love with B, B is certain to be in love with C, and C is likely to be in love with D, or possibly A.