[12/75] Stigma by Kazuya Minekura
In a post-apocalyptic world of gray sky void of life,a man with a suitcase full of money but no memory of his past has a fateful encounter with a physically-scarred boy searching for birds and blue sky. Together, they journey away from a man-made purgatory toward hope and freedom. What happens when the past catches up to them?
Reaction shot: FULL COLOUR KAZUYA MINEKURA STORY. *FLAILS* No, I'm serious, you try telling me that Minekura art + colour isn't a combination of awesome. ♥ Stigma is gorgeous, and the choice of which scenes are coloured and which are grey makes me want to babble about symbolism and how things connected to Stork's past lose all their colour like I actually know anything about it. ♥ The overriding story is quite simple - a man who's forgotton his dark past joins a young boy (who seriously looks like Sanzo from Saiyuki when he was younger - only happy.) who is looking for somewhere the sky is blue instead of grey and where there are still birds. As someone who sees only grey skies from about September to April, I don't understand why grey skies are such a big deal, but eh. I'm a philestine. The individual chapters are a little more complicated, and have less to do with finding the sky or the birds than with why or with Stork's past and the man with the butterfly tatoo. And pretty much every scene with Tit in makes me go "♥♥♥♥" a lot - and the ending made me sniffle while I did it, but then I'm a sap. *coughs* It has the same problem as Wild Adapter in that it doesn't feel complete to me, but I'm gonna blame that one on myself and just hug the scans a lot.
To be completely honest; I read Wild Adapter before this, except I thought that Wild Adapter was this story. So I was very bemused when there was no little blond kid in it.
Verdict: Stigma is like most of Minekura's other works - beautiful, full of messed-up people, and generally hopeful at the end. It makes me happy. ♥
For those who're interested: this post has both it and other one-shots by Kazuya Minekura and some doujinshis of her work.