Junko Mizuno is one of the best known manga artists in Japan, and probably throughout the world. She has written and illustrated several books, and designed vinyl toys as well. She also participated the recent Pony Project in NYC, where a few dozen women artists and designers were each invited to design a one-of-a-kind My Little Pony. (Junko Mizuno's sold for something like $5,000.) She came to San Francisco last year to promote the English translation of her book Pure Trance, and I got to meet her and have my books signed by her. I was shaking in my platforms! She is 33 years old, and so tiny and cute that she looks fifteen, and she had a My Little Pony pencil topper stuck onto the top of the permanent marker she was using to autograph the books.
I absolutely LOVE her work. She's got her own radically distinctive style within the genre of kawaii noir (roughly translated to mean both cute and dark) - you can always tell her work apart from that of other manga artists. She has drawn weird characters like The Meat Twins - voluptuous naked doll-like girls with a taste for blood; wielding cleavers, steaks and sausages, and another girl greedily slurping soba noodles with spiders in the noodles. One of my favorites is Miss Mushroom; a purple-haired beauty sitting on a mushroom, showering in a spray of little mushrooms under a mushroom shower. If you're going to buy just one Junko Mizuno book - get Hellbabies! It is filled with full-color illustrations and every single one of them will delight and horrify you!
Visit Junko Mizuno's Official Site here.
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