Satoshi Kon’s Opus Review: Trippy and Special

Satoshi Kon is considered to be one of the greatest anime directors of all time. He was so well known for his anime that many people may not know that he was also a manga artist, thus his manga is obscure and hard to find. Dark Horse has decided to finally release one of his manga to America: the unfinished “Opus,” Good thing it’s about as weird and memorable as his anime.

The story is about manga artist Chikara Nagai who is about the finish his manga series “Resonance.” At the night of the deadline things go wrong when one of his main characters, Lin, takes the last page of the manga. This also causes Chikara to get sucked into the world he created.

The story will sound familiar to anyone who has written or read any kind of fan fiction. Truth be told, this manga came out long before fanfiction.net was a thing. In fact, this story is more akin to only a handful of stories that came out at the time such as the movie “Cool World” and the video game “Comix Zone.” The only difference here is that the story does not feel rushed, does not have a bunch of characters that serve no purpose and there is no lame romance.

What this manga does have is Kon’s classic ultra trippy and philosophical style. The weirdness comes from two of the characters being psychics. The philosophical part comes from the manga characters questioning their existence. Some readers may roll their eyes at this, but once you really think about what the character is feeling you’ll understand. This is basically the “my whole world is lie” trope done well.

The rest of the story is the most interesting and well written metafiction out there. What many stories of this genre get wrong is they draw attention to the fact that it’s metafiction, almost to the point of winking at the camera. This manga succeeds at not doing that and actually tell an engaging story. We also see a rather realistic approach at how the fictional characters would react if they came to our world. It’s not played for laughs and the character’s actions actually make sense. It’s a breath of fresh air to finally see that.

The art may confuse some Kon fans. These fans are so used to Kon’s “Studio Gibli” style art in his anime that they don’t know that Kon was also an (unlisted” co-artist for the “Akira” manga. In fact, you can see “Akira” in this manga. It may seem weird, but once you realize that the manga world is pretty much similar to “Akira” than you can forgive it.

It’s a shame Satoshi Kon never finished “Opus” as there is a lot that can be done with it. It has an interested story, it takes a trope and goes beyond it and is actually smart with its themes. It’s also fitting seeing as how the story is about a manga artist not finishing a manga. In any case, this is one manga that should be read by all despite not having a real ending.