No. 5 (2021)

On a future Earth that has mostly turned to desert, No. 5, one of the superpowered guardians of the Rainbow Council, goes rogue with a mysterious companion called Matryoshka, and his fellow guardians are sent to hunt him down. This is Matsumoto at his most experimental: a science fiction chase drawn with the same loose, handmade line as his stories about kids, in a world that seems to invent itself as it goes. Viz abandoned it after two volumes in 2002 and 2003. The four-volume omnibus published from 2021 to 2022 finally finished it in English, and it is the edition to read. Come for the design and the strangeness rather than tidy answers.