The first authorized anthology to showcase Tsurita’s work in English, it includes an exhaustively researched afterword by Ryan Holmberg (adapted and expanded from a shorter piece by Mitsuhiro Asakawa). The essay, which recounts the story of young Tsurita’s letter in great detail, seeks to explain her place in the heavily gendered world of Japanese manga, particularly alternative or alt-manga. While the comics assembled here are uneven in quality, and though the introductory essay may seem intimidatingly academic to readers unfamiliar with early manga, the book is overall a fantastic, continually surprising look at one of Japan’s most innovative—and least remembered—manga artists ... The quality of Tsurita’s late work is remarkable, given how severely lupus ravaged her ability to draw; before her death, she was barely able to finish tracing the lines of her panels ... The Sky Is Blue With a Single Cloud succeeds in establishing Tsurita as a truly singular cartoonist whose versatile oeuvre deserves more critical attention. Her work, including somber sphinxian riddles and the quiet, unforgettable terror of the titular comic, reflects a complicated artist who fought against the sexist strictures of her era, leaving behind a rich, multivalent collection of art wholly her own.
... the peculiarities of Tsurita’s stories finds them strange and compelling. Coincidentally, they’re also also abstract enough they often move more like music in how they develop and digress, rather than seeming to follow a plot and a three-act structure. Compiled here, they play off each other like songs an an album, or suites in a symphony ... Though the level of ornamental detail feels European, Tsurita’s approach to drawing faces feels closer to the masks of Kabuki theater than celebrity models, and the rest of her drawing follows an approach that favors a neutral distance that allows the reader to consider what is being conveyed without feeling the author’s trying to seduce them ... There’s so much life and so much to love in Tsuritisa’s panel-to-panel transitions, where an engraving-indebted approach to black and white drawing renders light shifting from one moment to another, investing slightly shifts in perspective with gravity, while other panels depict the act of flipping a fried egg with both perfect grace and the implicit humor of a non sequitur. These tones existing alongside one another accrue an unforced beauty. Despite the association with realism, for a stylist like Tsurita, there’s no real distinction between detail and the decorative flourish. Any intensity is rendered exquisite. And yet it still feels loose, cartooned, moving from one panel to the next as naturally as you exhale after an inhale.
... Tsurita’s art explores the corners where people often do not look ... No matter the style through the decades, Tsurita always shows a captivating eye with close-ups, sudden large panels, and heavy inking that frames the light with much darkness ... In addition to Tsurita’s evolution in art, The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud hints at shifts in her perspective ... Tsurita combines...boldness of emotion with captivating plots for her most powerful work. Each of these stories carries a feeling of a twist worthy of the Twilight Zone ... Tsurita still impacts anyone reading her work on a level so deep it seems she might well have been a pen pal.
... a label-defying collection ... Tsurita explores the role of women through numerous shorts in unexpected format ... Drawn & Quarterly's meticulously curated presentation ensures Tsurita's legacy will continue to gain deserved recognition internationally, decades after her untimely death.
One of the most compelling aspects of her work is the way she combined an interest in progressive politics with an unblinkered feminism. Much of her work evokes the ambiance of countercultural protest movements, but there's a critical edge to it, a deliberate irony, revealing the misogyny and hypocrisy that pervaded progressive movements then as now ... The collection does a superb job showcasing the diversity of Tsurita's style ... It also contains an outstanding biographical and critical essay written by Holmberg and Asakawa, introducing Tsurita as a person and a creator and putting her life and work in context ... Her short works virtually demand repeat readings: initially cryptic, always compelling, inviting the reader to try again, and offering new suggestions and meanings with each read. The unrestrained avant-garde nature of her work, with its sparse use of dialogue, facilitates this, and renders most of her work just as readable and relatable today as when it was first penned half a century ago. The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is a superb and beautiful collection, one worth repeated readings for pleasure and reflection alike.
Graced with a thorough, informative afterword by Ryan Holmberg, The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud is a generous, well-annotated retrospective, serving as both a fitting memorial and effective showcase for this iconoclastic artist ... As evidenced here, Kuniko Tsurita began with skillful but unremarkable genre-based work, but continued to dig deeper, drawing more upon real-world events and personal concerns—among them the complications of gender roles—and channeling them into challengingly abstract stories crafted with innovative, often surreal cartooning ... As Tsurita’s illness ground her down and her energies dwindled, perhaps this notion brought her the strength to face her demise—and whatever awaited afterward. It certainly brings this posthumous collection to a satisfying, if bittersweet conclusion. Though Tsurita trafficked in multiple genres and employed any number of artistic styles, her work had scope and poetry—and she gave it all she had to give. Though, perhaps, in the end, her most urgent theme was death itself, she examined it and transformed the dreaded subject into something ultimately life-affirming. The book feels of a piece, a tribute to an artist many of us had never known of previously, but can now honor.
There is a haunting darkness to these nineteen stories. You can see Tsurita’s art skills become more refined over time, but even her early works have a shivering, macabre feeling to them ... These stories are clearly influenced by science fiction, existentialism, and memento mori ... Drawn & Quarterly is saving her from being forgotten and letting a whole new group of people learn about this unique and trailblazing mangaka.
This consummate collection of manga shorts by Tsurita (1947–1985), the first volume of her work to be translated into English, exemplifies how she stood out on the early alternative scene ... An extensive essay by Mitsuhiro Asakawa and Holmberg grants more insight into Tsurita’s life ... Tsurita gets her due in this retrospective ... essential reading for fans of underground comics.
