Cigarette Girl

Cigarette Girl was created by Masahiko Matsumoto in the Gekiga category. It's Genre is more slice of life. Actually, extremely slice of life. Its difficult to say if it was shocking to me because most graphic novels these days are really honest with life. Sex, violence, and relationships have been popularized in most graphic novels these days. However, Cigarette Girl was never intended to be read over-seas by Masamoto. His friend, Yoshiro Tatsumi made that possible when it was translated and re-published in 2016, but it originally published in 1974.

Its a sweet group of stories told in a funny caricature style of the daily lives of Japanese adults. Most of the stories have males as the main characters, I don't think that Masamoto didn't want to have women as main characters, I just think it was easier for him to tell stories close to the truth of his own perspective. However we do get both sides with the very first story as our protagonist is a female adult who deals with, I think, her lazy boyfriend. It was a little difficult to establish the relationship of certain characters. The stories all started to merge a bit with each other because the characters look really similar. Some of the women look really alike, which made it most difficult to understand some stories, but after reading a few stories I started to get the hang of it.

My favorite story was the one actually about the cigarette girl. It was the least confusing and most repeatable. We have all had crushes and had a difficult time to express our feelings for people that we admire but hardly know. It was a little hard to relate to other stories because they're more exaggerated, like the one about the man who would die for ume-chan. I don't think I would die for someone but it was still a charming story. Cigarette girl however was a little bitter sweet. The main character has a huge crush on this lady who works a like a window-convenience store, she sells cigarettes mostly (I think; im not sure what kind of establishment that was) and everyday he buys cigarettes but never smokes them. He receives advice from his friend over time until one day they go to see if she would marry the guy, and it turns out she moved away. So maybe the message is, take advantage of your opportunities before they're gone. Not sure, but I like to think that was the message. He was a naive virgin though. Although it is never said, he struggles with his sexual thoughts of the cigarette girl and they overflow him with feelings. He never tells he how he feels.

Overall, a good book. I can see myself reading it on the way to school or on the way back home when I was in high school. It's a slow slice of life with some comedy spread throughout each story, I would recommend it to people who are curious about life in japan around the 70's.