西岡兄妹 - The Twisted Harmony of Nishioka Kyodai

The brother and sister team of Nishioka Kyodai (西岡兄妹) create vivid, living images. Their stories are like dreams, floating and vaguely familiar. Beautiful and destroyed, all at once.

It's like, I wanna wallpaper my room with it. Even the weird freaky stuff.








These are scans taken from their book ぼく虫 . (Boku-mushi = Me Bug? Bug Me?)

There's relatively little information out there about them, even in Japanese. I guess they are kind of mysterious. Apparently they look like this. Their Japanese Wikipedia entry says they've been at it since 1989. Their stuff has mostly been published by Seirinkogeisha (青林工藝舎), the publisher who also published most of Mimiyo Tomozawa's work (you know, the artist who did those two Jim O'Rourke record covers and stuff). So, they're down with the cool kids.

Not to be a buster, but I don't see this coming out in English anytime soon. But if you are reading this, Nishioka Kyodai, then 英語訳の本を出すんであれば、私、喜んで翻訳します。

Although most people seem to put them in this category, I wouldn't even really call what they do manga in the traditional sense, just because aside from the text, there is nothing about it that really shows signs of being Japanese or following the usual comic book style. It's as if they have invented their own visual language out of something completely unfamiliar.

I wonder how that works, collaborating the way they do. Is one the DJ and one the rapper?