Guyabano Holiday is a work of genius and yet if youve been following panpanyas work thats hardly even a statement to make. After the dreamlike Ashizuri Aquarium and the surreal An Invitation from a Crab Guyabano Holiday is practically a victory lap. Of course panpanya makes manga this good of course one of the most memorable artists and interesting minds in the industry continues to impress. You cant apply a neat timeline to this of course Guyabano Holiday is a collection of short stories from throughout the years so its not a clean progression from the prior work. Yet there are still comparisons to be made this collection was curated well. Ashizuri Aquarium was like a collection of dreams. Completely surreal and often abstract with art that felt closer to real dreams Ive had than anything else Ive seen in the world. An Invitation from a Crab felt less like a dream and more like the things you see when halfasleep when the world blurs and shapes form in the darkness. Still surreal but more of a surreal slice of life than stories beyond life. Compared to those Guyabano Holiday is grounded yet still plays to one of panpanyas greatest strengths the ability to look at ordinary things in surreal ways. Take the chapter The Mechanism of Homework which sees the protagonist bored with summer work. She decides to construct a machine that can solve math problems mechanically and the way she accomplishes this and how the story ends are ideas that could only have come from a unique mind. It involves a parrot believe it or not. The relatable scenario is exaggerated into something out of an old cartoon yet is treated seriously by the characters. Its easy to see how many of these chapters start from a simple feeling havent you ever seen a weirdly large pigeon wondered if you could can your own fish or seen a strange circling bird in the distant sky? If you havent dont worry panpanya follows these thoughts through in the strangest ways. Its like watching improv for it never betrays the Yes And attitude as you never deny a thought but just go with whatever is suggested. I wouldnt be surprised if many of panpanyas stories began as daydreams daydreams that began at seeing something odd in the distance or on a shelf. Yet this is contrasted with objective truth in factoids or even scientific diagrams in the most unexpected places. If you ever wanted to learn how far electric poles go underground in Japan at least youll learn it here. Genuine research is baked into this as much as daydreams are. The thirst for knowledge in its purest form. Im not sure if they help emphasize the surreality of the rest or help you mind pretend that what happens could really happen but they add to the atmosphere of the work. Truth can often spark the imagination further than lies. Birds have been mentioned three times now and I truly believe this gets at the core of panpanyas kind of surrealism. Its not separate from reality but exists relative to it manifests when you simply look at things and realize how strange they are realize youve never looked at them so closely before. Thats what panpanyas art incites you to do look at things in shapes you never quite thought about. I have a longrunning theory that all surrealist mangaka love to draw fish because theres honestly just something funny about the way they look. And while they certainly make their appearances here birds get a spotlight of their own today. The art is in some ways standard for panpanya here which is still exemplary. Even the intentionally simplistic characters are rendered in such soft cozy almost crayonlike lines. The simpler the face the easier it is to relate to it. And the easier they stand out against the impossibly detailed backgrounds detailed without chasing realism caring more about the feeling of light and shadow the texture of a view than however they might have originally looked. It goes without saying that perspective and form are still played with to great effect. Theres a few more subtle tricks of visual creativity than usual as well in ways I hadnt seen before from panpanya. A short chapter where the characters move in real time but months subtly pass in the backgrounds if you squint and read the details. Or the chapter Signs of a Coincidence which I wont spoil but might be my favorite manga chapter Ive ever read. Certainly its a hilarious and clever visual gimmick all the while being something you might genuinely think about yourself while walking down the street. It doesnt often have the heavy moody watercolor environments of An Invitation for a Crab or the insane imagery of Ashizuri Aquarium but that matches the more realistic approach perfectly as seen in the titular collection of stories Guyabano Holiday. There panpanya abandons even the pretense of surrealism and simply draws a travelogue of their trip to the Phillipines in search of the Guyabano Fruit. If youre experienced with panpanyas past work you might expect this to be a completely fictional fruit but its very real and this story made me want to try it. Even for a travelogue panpanya approaches things strangely. Things you might expect to be the highlight of a trip like seeing whale sharks in the ocean are glossed over in a couple of goofy images. Most of the time is spent on noticing ordinary things the way traveling brings you new experiences by making everything subtly different. The billboards the items sold in stores the way people travel the way people look at dogs. Its not about seeing the big tourist attractions. Its about comparing the way wild dogs in the street are ignored to a heartfelt movie about a mans relationship with a dog thats played while on a ferry and wondering what the exact cultural view of dogs is knowing you cant truly understand things like that as a tourist. It could have been drawn in an accurate photorealistic way that would show you how these places and things looked. Instead its drawn as panpanya draws that shows you how they felt. All autobiographies but especially those in manga form abridge and simplify and make more entertaining but it feels like a lot of truth leaks into this travelogue in both reallife photos and sketches that seem like panpanya made while there while looking out the window of a car. Truth in other forms too. Theres a part where the protagonist runs through an almostclosed shopping mall hoping to find dried guyabano to take back home to Japan. That mall doesnt have it but they do reflect upon how the experience itself of wandering through a foreign shopping mall powerless and barely able to communicate with anyone was a rare and valuable one. This kind of simple yet relatable profundity is yet another thing that makes this work special and it permeates the whole of it. Its an aspect of the human condition the way we need to embrace and experience everything from the simple things to the struggles. That if we focus too hard on where were going and what we need rather than what we have we fail to appreciate life. Maybe we should play more frustrating and confusing video games instead of the ones that hold our hands. Maybe we should watch more movies with plots we cant follow listen to poetry in languages we dont know or buy foods weve never heard of. Maybe we should let ourselves get lost whether its in the wilderness or a foreign shopping mall. Or maybe we need to grab some object in our room and let our imaginations wander thinking of where it was created what could be done with it what its existence says about humanity and come to wrong but interesting answers. I doubt panpanya is some kind of buddha immune to the anxieties and needs of ordinary life. Its because we dislike getting lost that we have to remind ourselves the value we can get out of it. But theyre able to identify emotions with a rare amount of truth and communicate it with a vulnerable honesty through the veneer of absurdist fiction. And sometimes its just fun. Its not all existential emotions but is dense with comedy. Its the simple feelings the goofy ones the questions you ask when you know you have better things to do but cant help but be bored. Who wants to do summer homework when you can start using your brain instead and think?