Literally Graphic reviewed Cats of the Louvre by Taiyō Matsumoto
Review of 'Cats of the Louvre' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
While the style of storytelling also doesn't really lend itself to an all-ages audience, there is some cat endagerment and classic painting nudity.
If you weren't already aware, Taiyo Matsumoto is one of my favourite mangaka for a number of years now. According to his goodreads profile he apparently wanted to be a professional soccer player first and sports has been an influence on his work throughout. His most notorious work, Tekkonkinkreet, has a similar magical realism feel centred around young men. Class awareness being the biggest difference between this and that, and of course the setting.
To summarize the book, this is another Louvre tie in comic and a melancholic and surreal tale of the secret world of cats. Some cats the musical vibes maybe? We follow a tour guide and night watchmen as they slowly discover the unseen mysteries of the museum. Like a couple of his other …
While the style of storytelling also doesn't really lend itself to an all-ages audience, there is some cat endagerment and classic painting nudity.
If you weren't already aware, Taiyo Matsumoto is one of my favourite mangaka for a number of years now. According to his goodreads profile he apparently wanted to be a professional soccer player first and sports has been an influence on his work throughout. His most notorious work, Tekkonkinkreet, has a similar magical realism feel centred around young men. Class awareness being the biggest difference between this and that, and of course the setting.
To summarize the book, this is another Louvre tie in comic and a melancholic and surreal tale of the secret world of cats. Some cats the musical vibes maybe? We follow a tour guide and night watchmen as they slowly discover the unseen mysteries of the museum. Like a couple of his other titles, Cats of the Louvre is broken down into seasons of the year.
The art of this stand-alone volume is very much what I've come to expect from Matusmoto, alibi with less nose-picking. Not a typical manga style, Matsumoto's work has a beautiful texture to it.
While I never get the impression that Matsumoto dislikes none men, this book did include an apparently woman character which is somewhat different for him. See my other reviews to find out more about these male-centered stories that I still manage to enjoy so much lol. While we are most focused on the cats and the Louvre, the character development we get for Cecile was very nice - although as a fellow introvert I might be biased - and the growth we get to see her go through is also edifying.
The closest we get to sexuality in this book is that some new kittens appear at the end.
Race, while not really discussed, was still a pretty high point of the manga for me. Namely because one of the main characters is a Black man who is rendered very beautifully. Neither manga nor french comics (to my understanding) is really great about including Black characters in ways that are respectful so this felt like a refreshing inclusion. That said, I feel like some of the cats might be representing caricature that I'm not aware of, so that's worth keeping in mind. I do wonder what a french Japanese accent sounds like, but that's not that important.
Class was interesting to keep in mind because Matsumoto does generally centre poorer more working-class characters. Initially, this volume felt like a deviation from that, but ultimately I don't think so. Because the book is about cats, night watchmen, and a tour guide. That said, the setting of the Louvre does offer a rich backdrop to everything the characters do.