New York Review Books will publish Nekojiru Udon, by Chiyomi Hashiguchi, an alternative manga that ran in Garo magazine in the 1990s and attracted a cult following in Japan. The stories in the collection follow two cute cartoon cats, Nyaako and her little brother Nyata, through a dreamlike landscape filled with cruelty and horror. The NYRB edition is the first English-language collection of the complete three-volume series. The 448-page paperback will be released on January 12, 2027, with an MSRP of $29.95.
Hashiguchi, who died in 1998, was a self-taught artist married to a professional manga writer, Yoshiaki Yoshinaga, who wrote the first script for the manga. Despite its age, the darkly comic series is likely to appeal to fans of South Park as well as American horror stories such as Patrick Horvath’s Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees and Jay Stephens’ Dwellings and manga such as Yen Press’s Toxy Noxy Foresty Forest and Junko Mizuno’s works.
Hashiguchi’s work, under her pen name Nekojiru, was included in an online version of Garo that was set up in 2001 (see “The Japanese ‘Raw’ Tries Online Sales“), and the anime Cat Soup, based on Nekojiru Udon and described as “Hello Kitty on Acid,” was licensed by Central Park Media in 2003 (see “Cat Soup DVD Set for September Release“).
Source: ICv2
