Underground

Set in the vibrant Tokyo of the Sixties, it is the story of young Miguel, who aspires to become a manga author. However, when a comic is drawn by Suehiro Maruo, it is inevitable that it will be, as the promotional band that accompanied the release of the Japanese version states, a “bestial underground journey.” Miguel and Sachiko, unable to follow trends or the student movement, see nothing but hell in glamorous Tokyo, and the popular songs they listen to as a musical backdrop are nothing but a requiem. During their tour of hell, reality and falsehood soon mingle, and the two become confused between fantasy and reality. After his extraordinary manga adaptations of works by Edogawa Ranpo (The Caterpillar; The Strange Tale of Panorama Island), Maruo returns to drawing and writing a manga born from his own passions: underground theater, music, cinema, art, and comics. Among the characters who enliven these pages—in the form of a memory or a simple homage—we find the painter Fujita Tsuguharu and the editor of “Garo” Nagai Katsuichi. A Maruo who is in some ways unprecedented (the setting and the almost autobiographical momentum), but always in top form, in a state of grace.