Every time I read something that is overly long, I remember the oft-quoted line about Dickens – “Well, the guy was paid by the word.”

 

At 464 pages, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Gogo Monster overstays its welcome by probably 300 pages or more.

 

The plot, such as it is, concerns a group of boys at a Japanese primary school who suspect they are in commune with the spirit world. The off-limits fourth floor of their school is where the ghosts roam, they believe.

 

The reader waits and waits and waits for any meaningful action to transpire, but it never really seems to arrive. Kids make fun of other kids, bust out in random declarations the way real kids do, get scolded by their teacher, etc. It all feels as dreary as the slow, day-by-day slog through institutional learning that it envisions. Will the ghosts ever show themselves? After a couple hundred pages without any relief from the tease, I ceased to care. (Actually, in that sense, it reminded me more than a little of the film Paranormal Activity.)

 

The story is enlivened by a kid who draws crazy images onto his desk, another who wears an upturned box with a single eyehole on his head at all times, and a grandfatherly school’s gardener with a terrifying underbite. The art is lovely and expressive, and the choices are interestingly quirky. For instance, when kids act cruelly, mocking their peers, their faces are drawn in the primitive style of a child’s drawing. It’s eerie and effective.

 

It’s certainly conceivable that a tone poem about the fears and social anxieties of childhood that uses the paranormal as a metaphor could be lyrical and moving, as other readers have called Gogo Monster. Unfortunately, I found it repetitive and dull, and ultimately concluded in the lazy manner of the TV show Lost, with a stab at poetry as a substitute for neatly wrapped-up plot points.

 

Matsumoto’s previous opus, Tekkonkinkreet, collected an Eisner Award and was adapted as anime. I am guessing it is more satisfying. | Byron Kerman