Opus

I really like Satoshi Kon's movies. This is the first book I read by him and I was not disappointed at all. The questioning of reality and personality are there. So while this is incomplete, he died before finishing, and therefore not a great starting point to explore his work, it is a very solid and enjoyable read.

Satoshi Kon's manga Opus is a brilliant work of fiction. Probably the only work of fiction I've encountered that really gets across the interaction between a writer and their characters in the same approachable way that Opus does is the film Stranger Than Fiction. However, I think that Opus does it better.

In Stranger than Fiction, Spoilerthe lead of the story discovers he's a fictional character, and after eventually meeting his creator, and reading the work that will result in his death, decides to accept his fate.

In Opus, by comparison, mangaka Chikara Nagai ends up being confronted by the story's protagonist, Lin, over Nagai's planned ending, where Lin will sacrifice himself to defeat the story's antagonist - Masque. Lin steals the story's conclusion, forcing Nagai and one of the supporting characters from the story, Satoko, to find Lin, and to allow the story to conclude in a fashion that prevents the villain from abusing the fourth wall as well.

Ironically, the story of Opus is also incomplete. The magazine that Opus was serialized in was canceled before Kon could finish the story, and Kon was working on a final chapter for the story for a graphic novel release, but was delayed while working in the anime industry... and was unable to put the finishing touches on that chapter before his death of pancreatic cancer. This makes the final chapter, where Nagai confronts Kon himself over leaving a work half-complete both darkly comic and tragic, as this series ultimately lacks an ending for reasons very much outside of Kon's control.

Anyway, this is a fantastic work of manga, and one that is definitely worth picking up for fans of the medium, of Kon's work, and of literature alike.

I am a huge fan of Satoshi Kon's animation, (as everyone should be) so I was very interested to see his comics work. Opus is not quite his opus. I'd give that title to Paprika or Tokyo Godfathers. (I haven't seen Millennium Actress or Perfect Blue yet.) Opus is a wonderful work of metafiction that uses themes similar to his other works. Kon is a master at manipulating space and time within the camera frame, and it's a blast watching him play around with comic book panels. Resonance is the fictional story within the fictional Opus, and it is the perfect battlefield for Kon's abilities. The author of Resonance gets sucked into his own story, and is forced to confront his own plot holes, has his hastily drawn buildings collapse on top of him, and fights his villain on both sides of the fourth wall. The book was sadly cancelled halfway through, but this collected edition features a bonus chapter where Kon confronts his fictional author and they compare their problems of being unable to end their stories. Kon puts the book on hold and promises to give the main character the ending she deserves, but sadly this cannot happen due to his passing in 2010.

Hm: a mix. On the one hand, character's back stories and situations were engaging; the situation created interesting conflict that must be addresses. Clearly the geography of Manhattan had been studied for the late 70's world building. I liked the author's light touch on race because it's a pet peeve when only the non-white characters are named as non-white, but this author did that kind of description really well–context and exposition clues to fill that in, but not heavy handed–and I appreciate it.
Why did I give up at 30%? Because I felt the connection to characters/setting/conflict at 30% that I had reached at 5%. More development of all those domains of storytelling, please! Interactions felt kind of basic/formulaic when I was ready for them to be nuanced and deeper. Similarly the setting felt sketched in rather than fleshed out at that point–soooo much going on in NYC in the late 70's! It was a totally different city thannow! let's get that world-building goin' on, for the love of gritty walk-ups!!–and the back stories felt flimsier the longer they spent being not developed. A few continuity oddities made it hard to follow–like, some action read like it all happened on one day but apparently there were some months in between there that I skipped, and I'm not a careless reader.