By Junko Mizuno
Publisher, 172 pp.
Rating: Adults Only

If you’ve never read anything by Junko Mizuno, you should, and maybe you should start with this book (”Adults Only”). Junko Mizuno is an underground manga artist in Japan, made famous by her psychedelic work, Pure Trance. In the U.S. she has several twisted takes on fairy tales available—Hansel and Gretel, the Princess Mermaid, and Cinderella. Recently she’s stepped into the mainstream with her own take on Spiderman in Strange Tales.

My first exposure to Mizuno was in Secret Comics Japan, which I still recommend to people to this day, despite the heavy sexual content. If anyone ever tells you “all manga looks the same” hand them Secret Comics, and you’ll either change their mind, or they’ll be too creeped out to talk to you again. Mizuno’s work always features doe-eyed, doll-like girls with the chunky build of Precious Moments figurines crossed with Hello Kitty. Her cute-Pinky St-like characters inevitably face starvation and/or suffer from some kind of eating disorder. Her most unlucky characters engage in cannibalism.

Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu is much more entertaining than Mizuno’s fairy tale books. Her original storyline is trippy, disturbing, and funny. For example, in one scene a rich girl’s poodles are consumed by acid. If you think that sounds awesome, we’re on the same wavelength.

The story opens on an alien world, where Pelu is the sole fluffy male on a planet populated exclusively by naked ladies and one talking space hippo. After reading the first few pages I had an epiphany followed by a question: 1. I could not read this on the subway. 2. How are these ladies reproducing? (Hint: It’s not with Pelu!) When Pelu discovers the tragic story behind his birth, he departs for Earth with space hippo’s help. Pelu’s goal on Earth is to have a baby, and so he attempts to win the affection of one young lady per chapter. Unfortunately, he’s often mistaken for a pet and “friend-zoned” without making progress.

Structurally, Gigolo is somewhat similar to Black Jack. There’s a little continuity, but for the most part the chapters are stand-alone shorts devoted to each of Pelu’s women. Pelu becomes a background character in the story of their lives; he helps a would-be singer, witnesses a pretty girl and an ugly girl switch bodies, and tries to love the spoiled daughter of a rich romance novel writer.

Most manga is created towards continued serialization; it’s both a flaw and a strength of the medium. Several chapters in I got the feeling Pelu’s story could go on forever—he could just continue meeting girl after girl, each with her own tragic tale. I liked the first alien planet chapter best, so I was sad to see the sci-fi elements fade away. Fortunately, just when I was starting to get bored, the space hippo made a guest appearance.

Gigolo is a larger trim size than usual, at 8×10. The paper quality is kinda crappy, like newspaper, but I’ve heard this is at the request of the author. She wants her aging comics to yellow like old pulp manga magazines.

It’s a bit of a conflict of interest for me to review this since Patrick Macias, the translator, is also editor of Otaku USA magazine, which I write for. Patrick, if you’re reading this, the translation read very smoothly, and nothing caught my attention and made me think about the book as a work in translation. (Unlike, say, the Lucky Star translation from Bandai—did anyone edit that?)

Junko Mizuno apparently lives in San Fransisco now, designing vinyl dolls and her own clothing line.

Volume one of Little Fluffy Gigolo PELU is available now.