A Patch of Dreams
Posted: May 25, 2007 Filed under: Patch of Dreams 4 Comments »A few more items to add to my list of things I’ve read but not talked about include Just a Girl 1-2 and Elemental Gelade 1-2, with 3 being added to the list tonight or tomorrow. Right now though, I get to talk about A Patch of Dreams.
I had heard of the series Ku’s World by the same author some time ago and been intrigued, and I was happy to get this one (which is a sequel, or a continuation of Ku’s World? I’m not sure). This one is by far the best of the Fanfare books I’ve read.
The gist is that the main character has a dream world called Ku’s World that she dreams about continuously, with each dream picking up where the last left off. There are many things that are cool about this world, including a tiny shirtless king, a little Cousin It-looking thing, and a goat with googly eyes that they ride around on. The main character has this dream world, and she meets up with people she has been separated from (by death or other means) in it. She stops dreaming about it in High School, but the dreams come back to her in college as she becomes pregnant. There are issues surrounding that event that are played out in Ku’s World, but basically one of her old friends is trying to drag her back into Ku’s World as a replacement for reality. I think. Something bad will happen if she returns with this friend, at any rate.
She often talks about her going completely insane as she discusses Ku’s World with her partner. There’s not much logic or sense to it, and the real-life people she meets there are given really tragic backgrounds interspersed with lots of little Ku’s World playtime.
I’m sure there was a deep psychological meaning to this that completely flew over my head, but the entire concept of this girl’s dream world and how it played a part in her reality as well was amazing. There were plenty of times I was confused and bored, but I loved this volume so much. A lot of the story is about the main character coming to terms with death as it applies to her and her friends, which is also an interesting theme to use with the dream world.
I can’t say much critical about this, because I’m not exactly sure how to critique its bad points. I know it’s not for everyone, or even most people, but it was amazing all the same. It was not entertaining in the way that I liked to be entertained by manga, but the time spent on this volume was better invested than most of the other stuff I’ve been reading lately, to be sure.
[...] at the Casterman edition, not Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie finds A Patch of Dreams eminently worthwhile. Shandy Casteel reviews vols. 1 and 2 of Q-ko-chan for [...]
Even though I’m someone who enjoys “artsy-fartsy” stuff way more than the average Joe, I just was not impressed with this piece. I feel as if just a bit too much of the story went over my head (and I shall admit that I’m embarrassed to admit to what I had just said). I got really confused over what was “actually happening” in the story and what was supposed to a hallucination. (Then again, perhaps the confusion was intentional…after all, the main character seemed pretty baffled about what was real and what wasn’t herself.)
And as stupid of a nitpick this may be, but I thought that the design of the main character made her look more like a thirteen-year-old instead of a college-aged student…Actually, from what I’ve seen, she pretty much looks the same in this tale as she did in “Ku’s World,” and I believe that she’s in either seventh- or eighth-grade in the earlier of the two pieces. Perhaps her unchanging appearance is supposed to be something psychologically deep within itself and I’m just now getting that.
I did really like it, but it was in spite of the confusion. It was frustrating trying to figure out what was going on most of the time, and I’ll freely admit that whatever subtle message was being conveyed flew straight over my head. Mostly I just really liked the way the dream world itself and how it was used… it was confusing, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Hm. I didn’t really notice her appearance, though. It’s odd that she would look the same in both, I wonder if it’s some indication of arrested development or something. I don’t think I’d be able to read that much into it, even with both volumes in my hand though.
I don’t know why her appearance bothered me as much as it did, considering that there are so many manga titles out there that feature characters with such, uh, unusually youthful facades. I guess it had something to do with the artwork being a more realistic-looking than “typical” manga art.
Despite any complaints of mine, I do think that the book was beautifully illustrated. And I’d much rather read something like this any day than some of the popular, but crappy series that are currently being released.