I dreamt last night that I had accidentally found myself at a local retrospective of Akari Funato's work. It spanned her entire career, with a welcome (for me) focus on her early work. It included everything, right down to the promotional banners used to advertise her manga in-store. It even showcased her childhood Hot Wheels collection. (Note: I do not know if the Funato actually owned Hot Wheels as a child.) Just jam-packed with attendees, too.
The exhibit included homemade stuff, like this sculpture of Dyne as Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber (wearing Han Solo's outfit, oddly). (It was paired with this Alice in Wonderland figure that had had its head taken off, which I suspected in-dream was because the figure had originally depicted Ghaleon. I should issue a reminder at this point that dreams do not always follow real-world logic.) A great deal of my attention, however, was commanded by a collection of Funato Lunar illustrations bound in these massive leather-bound books, complete with extensive commentary and contextual essays. The organizers had even gone to the trouble of translating the essays, but I felt frustrated, since the translators couldn't even identify Ghaleon, referring to him in illustrations as "an unidentified harpist" (not even naming the correct instrument, dammit).
I'd been spending time photographing stuff for posterity with my little point-and click, but there was so much illuminating supplemental material archived in the books that I realized that I was going to have to come back the next day myself, without my family (I was there with my family) and spend all day at the exhibit. Before the day closed out, though, I wanted at least to see this display of framed artworks they had of the major "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku" characters (I recall a pencil portrait of Tagak and one of Zain with watercolor accents). I weirdly couldn't find them, though, despite recalling them to be in a relatively prominent place in the exhibit. Everything became clear when I circled back to a space I knew held artwork just a few minutes earlier and saw tomato-growing equipment now in its place—I realized that there was no "next day" of the exhibit and that they were turning the exhibition space back into a hardware store, obviously.
I found my way to the back rooms where they were storing the works and ran into whom I believe was the owner of the items shown in the exhibit (an unidentified Funato herself, I later suspected). I explained I was a big fan and wanted to see the Vheen Hikuusen paintings (adding the descriptor of "pale elves" just in case she was just a manager or somesuch who wasn't familiar with Funato's corpus). At first, she listened attentively. At my mention of Vheen Hikuusen, though, she paused for a deliberate beat, then said she didn't know what I was talking about and ordered me to get out. (So, obviously, it was Funato herself.)
I deemed this such bullshit that, while this was at no point previous an "I know I'm just asleep" dream, I consciously decided to wake up immediately right then and there, and so I did. And here I am, no richer in Vheen Hikuusen content for it.
