Tomie was my very first manga, and I am really glad that I went outside my usual and tried something new, so thank you so much to my sweet @nezuu and your brilliant quest! It read very fast, even for being over 700 pages, and it was really fun. I actually genuinely had no idea that Junji Ito was a man at first until I saw a post with he/him pronouns because Tomie is clearly intended to be read as very feminist (esp for 1987!!), very female rage, and I ate it all up, yum yum.

The art itself is wild, bizarre, dark, and just... wonderful. Some of the lines are actually so funny, and I can only imagine that maybe it is even funnier in its original Japanese.

Tomie's origin story is genuinely rage-inducing, so tragic, and... unfortunately not out of the realm of possibility. While it does not sound as though she was a very good person, literally no one around her was either, yet she was the only one who bore the brunt of that, until... [redacted]. After she became... her, she still faced rampant misogyny and justifications of violence being perpetrated against her. Even when she tended toward the outright villainous, I found myself saying,

My first manga, won't be my last :)

in sorrowland, solomon explores the destruction through which america operates. from nature to people, this country is built off of violence, ownership, and exploitation, and sometimes the opps are those who we most expect to protect us.

solomon's writing is, as always, so beautiful. if i had a dime for every time i wanted to post in this forum with a quote of a sentence or paragraph that was constructed so beautifully, i would be a rich person indeed. i truly have no words to express just how well they managed to describe imagery, and how well they hit home with their messaging.

the plot of sorrowland is rich with botany of all sorts. for most of the book, we follow vern's journey through forests at the edge of civilization. but, if anything, i felt that the horrors of this book intensified in the presence of humanity, infrastructure, and society. to vern (and therefore to us, readers), the forest is safe. the forest is kind, and it provides. vern embodies a feeling of awe, gratitude, and oneness towards the natural realms. her feelings towards nature and the natural world at large were so beautiful to read.

vern's yearning to escape, to be herself, to not have to bend to authority, were also so interesting to see. to see the way she sees the world, with her perspective of it tainted with her fear of the cult and falling into the trap that many others did was also genuinely very fascinating, and i greatly appreciated getting into her head about it. her ability to resist, even in the most seemingly hopeless situations was so powerful.

through the book, we also explore vern's identities, with every aspect of her identity a monstrosity to those around her. she is black, albino, lesbian, and (potentially) intersex, and her experience of feeling othered and unaccepted follows her for the most part. she does not have to morph into something horrifying in order for people to view and treat her that way. her gradual journey of exploring the truth of her own identity, coming to terms with it, and embracing herself instead of denying herself was so moving. i was so happy and satisfied with her ending, with the way she learns to trust and be vulnerable around those who truly love her.

the plot of this book is equally important to the character-focused explorations. there were times that i struggled to stay engaged. certain portions of the book were incredibly captivating, while others weren't. some scenes took me entirely out of the book, though it was, for the most part, more so a me problem rather than a book problem. the last 30% of the book was genuinely my favorite part, with how everything comes together. should anyone pick this up, i would encourage you to be patient with this one, and trust that solomon will deliver, because they absolutely will.