Hone no Oto (or “Sound of Bones”, if you want) is collection of oneshots authored by Iwaaki Hitoshi who I consider to be one of the best storytellers in comic book media. Iwaaki is respected author in Japan who carefully constructs his stories with very smooth and natural flow, solid writing and lively characters. But every author has his/her starting point – a point where ideas become reality for the first time. And these one-shot stories mark starting point of Iwaaki Hitoshi.

Iwaaki’s style is one of these perfectly balanced ones. He can create drama without overblowing it because he is aware of “natural silliness” of some situations. What stroke me while reading Kiseijuu (“Parasyte”) for the first time years ago was incredibly lively dialogues and interactions between various characters. But Hone no Oto precedes Kiseijuu and it shows. Iwaaki’s storytelling style is crude and unpolished, sometimes quite confused and weirdly composed, dialogues can be odd at times and characters act in bizarre manner.

These aspects actually create great standing ground for various self-searching stories with psychological and philosophical touches. Iwaaki asks questions which many young people ask about life, world, universe, society and about themselves. But he also acknowledges futility of these very questions because in the end, life itself is what matters. Why ask and why not? Everyone of us has to deal with the world on his/her own and Iwaaki does just that through this series of one-shot stories.

Drawings are what you would expect from Iwaaki’s beginnings – very crude, unpolished but for these reasons they are appealing to me. They perfectly set up ground for dark, gruesome, psychologically unstable and bizarre stories which you can find in this compilation. Again, Iwaaki is one of the best storytellers I had the honour to read and I can definitely recommend this collection which unfolds more of Iwaaki’s psyche and personality.

... Last updated on August 17th, 2013, 1:40am