The Strange Tale Of Panorama Island h/c back

Quite the revelation, this is a breath-takingly beautiful book whose exotic, erotic island will have you gasping over and again as each new, sweeping panorama is unveiled to startling and spectacular effect just as it is to the wife of phenomenally rich industrialist Genzaburo Komoda.

Truly it is a pleasure paradise sequestered in the middle of a remote island and accessed only via transparent tunnels which snake over the tropical seabed before bursting into the open air and dazzling sunshine to reveal the first of so many set pieces: waterfalls the size of Niagara’s, ornamental edifices, a multi-tiered Indian-themed acropolis and botanical vistas which make the formal French gardens of Loire Châteaux like Villandry and Chambord look tame and restrained. Each of these is populated both by monumental sculptures of dragons and snakes and satyrs and a hundreds of performers paid to be naked at play. And I do mean play – frolicking through meadows – but also at play with each other, yes. Eighteens and over, please.

All of which put me much in mind of Milo Manara but inked with a detailed ligne claire more akin to Jiro Taniguchi’s. It’s gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. And I love a good orgy.

This, then, was constructed as the dream of a lifetime, but here is the rub for Genzaburo Komoda: the dream wasn’t his. The dream was that of failing novelist Hitomi Hirosuke whose manuscript containing this elaborate fantasy was repeatedly rejected. He went to college with Genzaburo Komoda and looked so alike that they were nicknamed twins. So when Hitomi learns of Genzaburo Komoda’s death he hatches a plan fake his own death then to exhume the multi-millionaire’s corpse and take his place, not raised from the dead as a miracle but recovering from a medically well documented cataleptic episode.

Now all he has to do to fool Komoda’s entourage: his managers, his servants, his family… his wife.