The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud collects the best short stories from Kuniko Tsurita’s remarkable career. While the works of her male peers in literary manga are widely reprinted, this formally ambitious and poetic female voice is like none other currently available to an English readership. A master of the comics form, expert pacing and compositions combined with bold characters are signature qualities of Tsurita's work. Contains all the story of the one shots collection ''Flight'' except 10 stories: The Burial of Mankind, History, What a story, Life's a battle, Struggle, Evaded for the glory, Diary of a Madman, Madame Haruko, A story of a turtle, Knock knock knock, Big Sister. Those ones are translated in the french edition ''L'Envol'' and the italian edition ''Flight''.

Nazuna Saito began making comics late. She was in her forties when she submitted a story to a major Japanese publishing house and won an award for newcomers. She continued to work through the 1990s until she stopped drawing to take care of her ailing parents. In her sixties, she took a job teaching drawing at Kyoto Seika University and became inspired by her talented students. When she returned to teaching, her storytelling interests had shifted. Before suffering a stroke she drew “In Captivity” (2012) and “Solitary Death Building” (2015)—both focused on aging and death. Offshore Lightning collects Saito’s early work as well as these two recent graphic novellas. Stories like “Buy Dog Food and Go Home” and “Offshore Lightning” focus on middle-aged men caught in a cycle of self pity and self reflection. Saito gently pokes fun at their anguish and self-involvement while capturing the pathos of these men as they revisit childhood friendships and lost loves. By contrast, “In Captivity” follows three siblings visiting their ailing mother who is succumbing to dementia and resentful at her loss of agency. The siblings take a drive as they reckon with balancing the painful legacy of her caustic personality with attempting to honor this woman at the end of her life. “Solitary Death Building” documents an eccentric cast of elderly gossips as death descends upon the housing complex where they all live.. 1. **Toward The Sunset** (夕暮れへ) 2. **Offshore Lighting** (沖の稲妻) 3. **Parakeet God** (インコの神) 4. **Buy Dog Food, Then Go Home** (ドッグフードを買ってお家に帰ろう) 5. **Countdown** (カウントダウン) 6. **A Mother of Pearl Ship** (螺鈿の舟) 7. **Gingko** (銀杏) 8. **Upskirt** (スカートの中) 9. **In Captivity** (トラワレノヒト) 10. **House of Solitary Death** (ぼっち死の館) (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

You Xi is composed of fragmented “moments” or “events.” They may be easily overlooked or fleeting: a moment of reverie, a snowflake melting away, overlapping dreams, the alternating of night and day, or the waxing and waning of the moon. They may fill one’s heart with joy, or leave one feeling wistful: a book, clouds drifting freely, a room all to oneself, an ice cream encountered by chance on a rainy or snowy day, or an unexpected turn of events… The little white man and the man in the hat live in solitude and tranquility within their respective worlds, offering both subtle contrasts and romantic, magnificent echoes. (Source: Douban, machine translated)

From Drawn & Quarterly: The wife of Japan’s most lauded manga-ka documents a year in their lives with her own artistry. In 1981, Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary about daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu. Publishing was not her original intention. “I wanted to record our family’s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small. But as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older.” Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge’s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent, Fujiwara’s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband. A touching and inspiring testimony of one Japanese woman's resilience, My Picture Diary is also an important glimpse of the enigma that is Tsuge. Fujiwara’s diary is unsparing. It provides a stark picture of the gender divide in their household: Tsuge sleeps until noon and does practically nothing. He never compliments her cooking and dictates how money is spent. Not once is he shown drawing. And yet Fujiwara remains surprisingly empathetic toward her mercurial husband. Note: Won the Eisner Award for the Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Asia in 2024 and the Harvey Award for Best Manga in 2024.