Drip Drip

I actually really like Drip Drip- it's a cultural commentary. It's also definitely not for everyone. I was actually really surprised it got picked up, but it's exciting to see edgier titles that aren't Junji Ito actually getting licensed.

As someone who really enjoys Paru Itagaki's other work, Beastars, I was happily surprised to see the human characters in this one-shot were just as dynamic and expressive as any of the creature characters in Beastars. This tale and the other short story included are sexy, funny, and in Drip Drip's case, a little bit spooky! This is a more mature read, with one story involving trying to successfully have love and sex without bleeding everywhere and on everyone, and other other involves a sex worker trying to seduce and the buffest santa I think I've ever seen. I had fun with both stories. While their work might not be to everyone's taste, I love seeing creators branch out. I will be delighted if Buff Santa appears in a future new series.

Based on Beastars I thought would enjoy Drip Drip (or Bota Bota in Japanese) but I did not know how much I was going click with and end up loving this story and it’s hero Mako. “Drip Drip,” is an oddly moving journey that you will most likely read in one sitting and if you are anything like me. You’ll most likely want to read again right away. Mako Higari’s story is so not at all what you might expect from the description from Viz:

“Whenever Mako Higari comes in contact with something she perceives as dirty, she gets a massive nosebleed. How can she find a loving partner and commit to a meaningful intimate relationship when just touching another person makes her bleed out? Especially when most of the men she meets are sleazy creeps! Her first challenge might be learning to love herself… Plus, a short story starring Santa Claus as we’ve never seen him before!”

I found I really identified with Mako. Her quest for a normal “human relationship” and acceptance despite her “allergies” feels very personal. It is hard not to feel for her with all the bizarre difficulties in her life. She’s plagued by insecurities and problems born out of her childhood traumas (felt for her and cheered for her in this quest to overcome her childhood trauma). Her quest to be “normal,” her search for love/ sex is something so familiar it’s hard not to feel for her. When you learn the life events that traumatized her her extremely germaphobic reactions make sense. Yes she is germaphobic to the point that any time she touched something dirty her nose bleeds, dramatically, profusely, explosively. It’s both comedic and terrible at the same time. Mako Higashi’s story is by turns hilarious and heartbreakingly tragic. Seriously this book will most likely make you laugh out loud, most likely cry and for damn sure want to cheer for Malory by the end.

Paru Itagaki is pretty frank in her writing. This is a story that involves nudity and sex as much as it involves anxiety and disjunction. It’s amazingly deep if you want it to be, and transformative if you want to go on the full trip with Mako. The people she meets make rash human assumptions about who she is, what she wants. They read into her and judge her without actually knowing her. We at least get to see the this whole story, and it’s affects on Mako and on us. You alternatively feel hate or feel for the people who she nearly has sex with. It’s a tribute to Itagki’s art and storytelling that none of the blood and nudity is plays as titillating or salacious and neither is the blood played as gross. It is just how it is for Mako and Paru make you feel it as she would. We get to see her being disturbed by it, trying to overcome it, we see how she lives influenced by it and ultimately we see how she fully embraced it. We find out she’s more than a work legend, there is an urban rumor about her and we see how the urban legend of the dripping girl affects her. Paru Itagaki takes us on a journey and it’s one that ultimately worth taking, most likely multiple times because there is so much here .


Art Paru Itagaki
“Drip Drip” also contains two back ups. One a story called White Beard and Boobs that is, like “Drip Drip,” funny, weird and touching in equal measure. The other is a tale about how Bota Bota/Drip Drip came to be which if true is pretty interesting and there is no reason to doubt it’s veracity. It’s for sure an exaggeration but it’s a good tale.

I have to mention how idiosyncratic and charming her art is. The sketchy energetic line works that made “Beastars” so esthetically pleasing to me works amazingly well for humans as well as anthropomorphic characters. Her style is very cartoonish is a Jim Henson real seeming muppet kind of way. It’s a clumsy way to describe the art but it’s the way the story feels. The art is realistic in a way that is also impressionistic in a warm fuzzy kind of way. Things like cars, water kettles, money, clothes pins, the stuff of life all looks real. Her fashions and food and settings all are real enough that the exaggerated faces, expressions and blood sprays feel real too. Mako’s eyes are stunningly expressive and speak volumes beyond the words. She communicates with pose and posture in ways that are both subtle and dramatic. Itagaki’s art is an experience, she communicates in a way that only manga and comics can. Again I have to cheer for this manga, for Mako and for Itagaki, this is a triumph of a book.


Art Paru Itagaki
I do not know if others will feel this way but Itagai’s work really reminds me in the best way of the works of Kyoto Okozaki. Her storytelling is open and Frank and will possibly offend some people. Paru’s art too like Kyoko really doesn’t look much like anyone else’s. Neither of them follow a popular style and if you like the art you like the art. Their styles have little in common except that their styles are unmistakeable theirs. Itagai and Okozaki both draw with an energy that comes through her line work. “Drip Drip” clearly has something to say much like “Pink” and “Helter Skelter” but the message is not pedantic.

In addition to Mako story there is a short backup that also ran in the seines magazine that printed Bota Bota. It was a one shot called White Beard and Boobs. Like the main feature here it’s a comedy that has a heart and introduced a character that Itagaku is using right now in Sanda. The image below I has to assume was for the foreign edition and captures Itagaki’s humor