Over in Japan, FAUST is considered a “mook” — that’s a magazine and a book — speaking to the disaffected otaku culture, with a mix of cutting-edge fiction and manga. You can see what you’re missing out on with Del Rey’s FAUST: VOLUME TWO, the sophomore edition of the translated anthology. (VOLUME ONE came out last year.)
It opens with “Magical Girl Risuka” by NISIOISIN, which is a pen name, not a brand of ramen. (Strangely, many Japanese authors hide behind these cryptic monikers; others here include VOFAN, x6suke and TAGRO.) The story is a quasi-Lovecraft tribute about a boy who witnesses four people throw themselves in front a moving subway at once, and the titular girl who has the powers to alter time.
Kouhei Kadono’s “Jagdtiger (PorscheLaufwerk)” is an odd, military tale about a new kind of robotic weapon for war, while Otsuichi provides the collection’s best piece in “Where the Wind Blows,” in which objects from years in the future — photographs, newspapers, letters, a cell phone — mysteriously show up at his home.
From Yûya Satô, “Gray-Colored Diet Coke” is a mere excerpt, but long enough for me, being a disturbing, depressing look at the life of a 19-year-old with no idea what to do with his life, beyond hearing stories from his grandfather about killing and raping in the war.
Kozy Watanabe’s “H People” is a brief fantasy about a recluse and the pizza-delivery girl who has sex with him, complete with an out-of-nowhere ending. Speaking of sex, Tatsuhiko Takimoto provides an essay about whether or not to visit a well-known, high-class brothel called Soapland, in “Tatsuhiko Takimoto’s Guru Guru Counseling Session.”
Other essays examine how otaku became big business in Japan; the ins and outs of translating fiction from Japanese into English; and the creators’ feelings of FAUST crossing the oceans to our shores.
Of more appeal to the casual reader will be FAUST’s section of manga in the back. The first three stories are little more than illustrated tone poems, until Katsuhiro Otomo and Katsuya Terada comically run down all the “Old Dudes” they’ve seen on the streets, and Ueda Hajime contributes “Iron Man Military Unit,” about a young soldier more than a little bitter at being the only virgin in his platoon.
This collection’s contents aren’t for everyone, but those with even an inkling of interest toward the Far East should give it a fair chance. —Rod Lott
