Extremely Graphic

• Home
• About
• NewsOK | Comics

Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu – Review

After much anticipation, I finally got ahold of Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu.  Finally.  But I won’t go into the drama that surrounded getting my copy, instead I’ll just talk about the drama of Pelu.

Now I won’t claim to completely understand anything that goes on in Junko Mizuno manga.  A lot of times I just open it up and go for the ride, then try and wrap my head around it later.  Sometimes much later.  I’m still rereading part of Pure Trance,  looking for some clue as to what it all means.  If it means anything.

Pelu is essentially a fluffyball little male creature that used to live in the body of a female alien.  Also in the body was a female version of Pelu and the biology of this planet dictates that Pelu and his wife (?) would make a baby inside the alien then the alien births the baby who is just like the alien.  It’s an all female planet so all the babies are female with little fluffy balls inside of them.  But Pelu escapes when the space hippo eats his host, biting her in half and he crawls out.  Yeah.  I’m serious.

Alone and wanting a baby of his own because he feels like a child will make him belong, he decides to head to the Space Hippo’s home planet, Earth.  Once there he begins his quest to find a wife and have a baby.  He encounters a singer, a rich girl, a clam diver and a highschooler.

The thing I love about Mizuno is that she writes about women as if the whole world were women, and in some cases, it literally is.  Most literature written for and by men is this way.  We even have the saying “it’s a man’s world” because, well, it is.   A male protagonist means the book is for everyone.  To set up a female protagonist is to write for women.  The experience of femininity is singular while the experience of being a man is universal.  Mizuno flips that.  Men in her stories are often caricatures, sad, lonely desperate creatures who’s destinies are tied to the destiny of a woman.  Though Pelu is technically male, he is not a man.  He is desire.  Not just sexual but the desire to belong, to relate and to procreate.  Should men read this I think they would be liberated.  Literature has denied men these feelings for too long.

Then there is, of course, the artwork.  Mizuno’s style is hyper-color.  Her eyes are wider, breasts bouncier, bodies rounder creating a sense of unease and awe.  Like you’ve eaten too much candy.   There’s so much to look at.  Her worlds overflow with flowers and bunnies, so cute but sinister.  As if she’s reminding her reader that the world, for all it’s beauty, is also withering and rotting.  Her characters live their lives and make their choices within the limitations of the world they live in.

I don’t think I could hate a Mizuno manga if I tried.   I knew I would love Pelu and I did.   Some may not like the short story format but I enjoyed seeing so many ideas in one volume.  I would want every page of this manga displayed on my wall!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Powered by Wordpress | WP Premium theme by WP Remix
Copyright 2007. Extremely Graphic. All rights reserved

• Home
• About
• NewsOK | Comics