Asadora! (vol. 3) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]
The third volume of Naoki Urasawa’s latest superb spectacle begins to distinguish individual story lines while overlapping various subplots. It’s 1964, five years since Japan’s deadliest typhoon. Asa is as righteously spunky as ever, determined to expose what happened the morning after she witnessed what couldn’t possibly exist.
With three (of 11) siblings who survived, she’s living in Tokyo with café owner Kinuyo, whose acerbic façade can’t hide her utter devotion to the children who, though not her own, are as close as blood. Kasuga remains both Asa’s protector and enabler, and he’s about to drag her into a mysterious mission to keep the country safe when the rest of the world arrives in a week (!) for the 1964 Summer Olympics. Meanwhile, Asa’s childhood friend, aspiring Olympian Shota, is still running … to deliver newspapers.
Savior-to-be Asa suddenly has a bodyguard/chauffer who ferries her to officially meet Keiichi, the former science museum scholar dismissed for continuing the blasphemous research of his dead, unorthodox biologist mentor. Of course, his controversial images are all too familiar to Asa and Kasuga.
Superbly entwining later-20th-century Japanese history with a colossal monster hunt in the making, Urasawa (translated, as the other volumes, by John Werry) provokes and enthralls.
Review: “Graphic Novels,” Booklist Online, October 22, 2021
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2019 (Japan), 2021 (United States)
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