Gogo Monster (2009)

Third grader Yuki is sure that unseen beings share his school, and his classmate Makoto sticks by him anyway. Matsumoto builds the whole book around a lonely child's inner world, using huge empty spaces, tiny figures and pages where almost nothing is drawn, so the tension comes from what you cannot see. It is the quietest, strangest entry here, a single volume that works best read in one sitting. It won a special award from the Japan Cartoonists Association in 2001 and was nominated for the artwork prize at Angoulême. Viz's English edition arrived in 2009.