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Calling You

きみにしか聞こえない

• by Otsu Ichi
• Kadokawa Sneaker
• English version from Tokyopop in June.

There are only three stories and a lot of illustrations in this slim 180 page volume, yet each story is so satisfying you don't feel cheated.

• Calling You

The title story is narrated by a girl so shy she doesn't have a cell phone, because she has no friends. Fixating on this fact, she creates an imaginary cell phone...and one day, it rings. On the other end of the line is a boy, calling on his imaginary cell phone one hour in her past. Like many Otsu Ichi stories, this one starts out whimsical and ends up nail bitingly intense, with a really tight structure.

• Kiz/Kids

A pun on the Japanese word for Wounds, is about an 11-year-old boy placed in the special class after one too many examples of violent behavior. One of Otsu Ichi's strengths is how quickly he establishes the character's voice, and does so without any flash, so that before you know it you are completely inside the boy's head and his POV. He makes friends with another damaged boy in the class, who has the unusual ability of being able to take other people's wounds onto his own body.

• 華歌

And the final story...no idea how they'll translate it, but the Singing Flower would be a fair guess. The narrator is a patient at a hospital, recovering after a terrible train accident. A flower with the face of a girl between the petals hums a song, and brings hope back to the patient's lives.
I remarked before that I was jealous of whoever got to translate this book for Tokyopop, but I changed my mind on this third story -- without being specific at all, the last page twist is pretty much impossible to reproduce in English, since English grammar just doesn't work that way. I imagine the story will read very differently as a result...but oddly, I think it will actually be an improvement. In Japanese, it feels a little gimmicky and contrived, and distances readers, but in English the focus will be on the emotions and the actual events, which are fascinating.