The translated edition of Kylooe was published just a few months ago and includes Little Thunder’s full trilogy in one volume. Each story stars a different protagonist, but a cute and curious creature named Kylooe appears in all of them. I love the slight Totoro aura Kylooe gives off. While the stories within this collection differ, common threads connect them. In one, a girl has trouble making friends in real life, but meets a true friend in a beautiful yet surreal dream world. The next story follows the chaotic relationship between a popular teen and a loner, while the third takes place in a dystopian world where people aren’t allowed to express emotion. The periodic splashes of vivid colors, reality merging with otherworldly, and themes about relatable anxieties all meld together to create an extraordinary, dreamlike experience.
Little Thunder includes an author bio section at the end of Kylooe and within it shares, “I really love color, and one of my goals is to successfully represent dreams. I use color to try to reproduce a state of melancholy or stillness while injecting a little warmth and hysteria in it. I want my works to give off a style in which darkness springs from light, and light springs from darkness.”
I really appreciate how Little Thunder’s stories are tinged with both beauty and melancholy. This feels like the essence of dreams. They can be wonderful, yet also sad, especially knowing that the good dreams are just that, dreams. Life feels this way, too. People are complicated, and we experience ups and downs in life that don’t always tie up neatly in a bow.
In the author bio section, Little Thunder goes on to say, “Whether they are happy ones or sad ones, I hope my stories will touch the hearts of readers by giving them powerful sensations. Ever since I was little, I have had dreams that are both disturbing and pleasant, rather beautiful dreams. Up until now, I have never managed to fully express these feelings with a pencil. So I keep trying, so that I may one day be able to represent what I feel in my dreams.”
When I used to keep dream diaries, I remember waking up from good dreams and diving amongst the clutter of my room, trying to find my notebook and pen. My hand would fly over the pages in my notebook, desperate to capture the dream world before it slipped away. Remembering a dream feels like trying to grasp at a dissipating fog. The dreams I remember best are the ones I was able to pin down in my notebooks. I commend Little Thunder for conveying the feeling of dreaming so well in this new collection. I hope it helps you feel less alone with all of your glorious, strange, and emotional dreaming, as it did for me.
