Cigarette Girl is a Japanese short storymanga collection written and illustrated by. Matsumoto originally wrote the stories for several magazines from 1972 to 1974. Seirinkogeisha collected and published these stories on September 20, 2009. Top Shelf licensed the manga in North America in 2010, publishing it on May 24, 2016. The manga has also been published in France by Cambourakis and in Spain by Gallo Nero. The Frenchedition was nominated at the 2011 Angoulême International Comics Festival for "Best Heritage Comic".
Plot
;"Naruko Tsurumaki's Love" ;"The Tobacco Shop Side Street" ;"Far From the Festival" ;"The Heart of Shinjuku" ;"The Taste of Coffee" ;"Cigarette Girl" ;"Slither" ;"Happy-Chan" ;"The Red Shoes" ;"A Scarlet Kiss" ;"To Somewhere"
Release
The manga is a collection of eleven short stories written by Matsumoto from 1972 to 1974 for several magazines, which Seirinkogeisha collected and published on September 20, 2009. Top Shelf announced at Comic-Con International 2010 that it had licensed the manga in North America, expecting to publish it in 2011. The manga was subsequently published on May 24, 2016. The manga has also been published in France by Cambourakis and in Spain by Gallo Nero. On its blog, Seirinkogeisha noted that due to resource constraints and publication deadlines, the Japanese version of the manga used dirty magazine scans, while the French publisher remastered the scans which were also used in the North American edition.
Reception
In a starred review, Publishers Weekly noted Matsumoto's ability for showing how people relate to each other and his simple style which uses sound effects, saying "much of the emotional resonance comes from silence and images". Shea Hennum of The A.V. Club called the manga "engrossing and deeply moving", complimenting the coherency of the anthology and concluding that "Matsumoto's aesthetic and narrative style simultaneously push and pull on the reader, forcing you to confront the universal themes of alienation, ennui, and emotional distance." The French edition of Cigarette Girl was nominated at the 2011 Angoulême International Comics Festival for "Best Heritage Comic". Zainab Akhtar of The Guardian included the manga as part of "the comics and graphic novels to look forward to in 2016". Paul Gravett put the manga on his list of "Top 25 Comics, Graphic Novels & Manga: May 2016". At the "Best and Worst Manga" panel of the 2016 Comic-Con International, the manga was in the list of "Best New Manga for Grown-ups".
