Jun Mayuzuki is one of my current favorite manga authors, mainly for her most recent work on the still-ongoing Kowloon Generic Romance (the excellent single-season anime adaptation concluded only last season). I jumped at the chance to review this collection of her early manga work, some of which predate After the Rain, her other big series, which also received a stunning anime adaptation from Wit Studio back in 2018. Farewell, Daisy spans six stories over ten chapters, and they are all extremely weird, which may surprise Mayuzuki's Western readers more used to her (relatively) grounded longer works.

Mayuzuki, however, has never been an author easy to pigeonhole, steadfastly refusing to conform to genre story conventions. After the Rain's age gap “romance” is nothing of the sort, and Kowloon Generic Romance's central couple's relationship is fractured in ways likely impossible to reconcile by the story's end. Her characters are complex, troubled, eccentric, and always fascinating. They're not always easy to like, either, and it's this intriguing approach to characterisation that makes this collection so memorable.

I should warn potential readers that Farewell, Daisy is unlike Mayuzuki's other English-translated work in that it's sexually explicit (though no genitals are directly depicted). I could never work out why the relatively tame Kowloon Generic Romance was sold shrink-wrapped, whereas there's no surprise here. At least half of Farewell, Daisy's chapters are dripping with sex, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. One character muses on the precariousness of her existence while washing her lover's messily splurted semen from her back in the shower. Another character masturbates furiously with a vibrator, fantasizing about potential lovers, while bringing herself to a shuddering climax. It's all written and drawn in such an indelibly frank and matter-of-fact style, with exaggerated humor to boot. Sex scenes are extended and vigorous, messy and chaotic, though all are envisioned through a female lens.

This is no more prominent than in the two-part story Liver and Garlic Chives, which follows prominent feminist author Kyouko Sakagami, whose recently published book Name Your Vagina proves incredibly popular among her target audience of women seeking empowerment and validation. (Kyouko's vagina, by the way, is named “Amazoness”.) She's prone to ejaculate such statements as “The vagina will seize the penis – and devour it!” Unfortunately, despite her public feminist bravado, she harbors a deep complex in regards to sex – she's unable to orgasm with anyone except her trusty vibrator. Until it breaks, and she throws it out the window in disgust. The only man whom she thinks may be able to satisfy her needs is her downstairs neighbor, a hapless, Golgo 13-esque, perpetually frowning, middle-aged, sketchy “soapland” massage parlor doorman. Her attempts to seduce him are both amusingly desperate but also slightly pathetic. Despite the poor guy's utter bemusement, the story has somewhat of a happy ending. It's a little like “what if Sex and the City, but more insane.”

Opening story Everyday is the only outlier in that it's written from a male perspective. Yohsuke, a currently jobless man in his 20s or 30s, picks up a woman from a bar, fully intending on a night of wild carnal relations, until he sees, unexpectedly, external genitals. His date Emily describes themselves as “female-ish” and “a miserable trans woman,” proceeding to mooch off a very confused Yohsuke for a week, living in his home but cooking and doing the housework, like the “wife” Emily has always dreamed of becoming. Despite himself, Yohsuke begins to fall for Emily, although at one point he states the main thing they have in common is “matching d*cks.” It's quite a sweet story, though at times Mayuzuki's storytelling presents as a little naive. I'm wary of the trope of Emily initially concealing their physical nature, apparently to “entrap” a man. Interestingly, Emily seems to be the only character in the book pining for a traditionally feminine gender role, and I'm unsure if Mayuzuki is trying to say something about this. It's also an odd choice with which to open the book, unless the stories are perhaps arranged in date of publication order?

Refreshing Psychedelic is a three-part tale whose chapters are interspersed between other stories, following the unsettling, eyepatch-wearing Saiko Imawano, a woman whose features are best described as “resting Junji Ito face.” It's not even clear why Saiko wears an eyepatch to work every day, as there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her eye… She also covers her entire apartment in walls and ceilings of crazy: hundreds of drawings of the male coworker she obsesses over. At one point, when he starts to wear glasses, she hurriedly draws spectacles over every drawing, even enlisting her (only) female friend to assist in the madness.

Saiko seems to be one of those fairly harmless eccentrics, despite her terrifying sanpaku-eyed stare. At one point, she purchases bizarre Hawaiian “lucky sticks” that she spends an entire chapter waggling over her head. I honestly didn't know what to make of Refreshing Psychedelic as it doesn't come to any conclusion. It just stops. I wonder if it was meant to comprise more chapters? It's worth reading mainly for Saiko's entertainingly odd eccentricities.

Thumbelina is perhaps the most emotionally upsetting story, in that it follows a young woman strongly implied to suffer from an eating disorder. She loves cooking, and posts pictures online of elaborate meals she cooks for herself and her boyfriend, desperate for the validation that every “like” provides. Sadly, her boyfriend is an asshole; using her for soulless “quickies” in the kitchen while dinner cooks, before leaving her to eat alone, his other appetites sated. Mayuzuki juxtaposes sexual imagery with the use of social media, in one panel depicting free-running fluid spilling onto a glowing smartphone screen.

The protagonist's indifferent boyfriend cares little for her cooking, or anything else about her life, and it's only her eccentric artist neighbor who even notices the calluses on her knuckles from repeated self-induced vomiting. She develops an odd friendship with the artist, who makes a hilariously inappropriate sculpture from casts of the main character's body parts, which makes her incandescent with rage. At least the artist sees her, though. “I won't accept anything other than the real, genuine you,” she says. While this story also doesn't conclude in terms of plot, there is a climactic moment of amusing self-actualization, even if it takes the form of a bare ass posted online.

Speaking of naughty social media pics, the two-part fifth story, Connected Night, follows Yuuki, a coffee shop worker who validates her self-worth by posting upskirt panty shots of herself online. She's stuck in an unsatisfying relationship with a man she performs dutiful sex for, even though she wants to break up with him. Yuuki makes an acquaintance with an expensive jacket-wearing middle-aged woman who stands for hours at a street corner opposite Yuuki's workplace, though she's not engaged in prostitution, as the men who proposition her seem to think. Like Yuuki, she seeks validation of her worth, and seems pleased when a man offers fifty thousand yen to sleep with her.

Yuuki's boyfriend, in turn, seems to gain standing from displaying a girlfriend on his arm in social situations, but Yuuki feels he ignores her feelings; his interest in her is superficial. When they do break up, she falls immediately into the arms of another man, only to check herself and reject his advances. She concludes that she wants to “give herself worth,” which is a respectable aim, even if her attempts at doing so so far haven't exactly been successful. I left this story a little confused by its abrupt ending, though appreciative of its underlying themes.

Finally, the titular story Farewell, Daisy features a completely different, old-school shojo-influenced art style, somewhere between Sailor Moon and Junko Mizuno, with an insane stream-of-consciousness plot to match. Daisy is a sparkly-eyed magical girl character who gets an education in the ways of the world (i.e. sex) from a notorious womanizer, before being sent to “the underworld,” where she almost ends up married to a red oni. It's amusing in a bonkers kind of way, and although its tone and content are markedly different from every other story in the collection, its themes of difficult romantic relationships keep it within the book's overall scope.

Mayuzuki's art is less accomplished here than in her latest work, though that's hardly unexpected. Artists' styles evolve and refine with time, and almost every page of the gorgeous Kowloon Generic Romance could be framed and placed on a wall. It's not fair to expect an artist's older work to hold a candle to their latest, and Farewell, Daisy is a valuable insight into the earlier development of a masterful manga creator. While the stories here are often narratively unsatisfying, that often comes with the territory of short story collections. Mayuzuki's flair for creating genuinely bizarre characters and placing them in deeply odd situations shines through every entry. Her sheer unpredictability and gleefully ribald storytelling are a breath of fresh air. While not as essential as either After the Rain or Kowloon Generic Romance, Farewell, Daisy is an entertainingly bawdy read for Mayuzuki fans keen for a fix during the lengthy wait between volumes of her longer works.