Otherworld Barbara (バルバラ異界, Barubara Ikai) is a science fictionmanga by Moto Hagio. It is set in a near-future Japan, and begins with a girl, Jyujo Aoba, who has been in a coma since she was nine years old, who was discovered next to her parents' bodies, with their hearts inside her stomach.[1] To discover why she killed her parents, a specialist enters her coma dreams and finds that Jyujo is dreaming about and simultaneously creating the future.[2]Otherworld Barbara was serialised in Shogakukan's Flowers between September 2002 and August 2005 and is collected in 4 volumes. Otherworld Barbara won the 2006 Nihon SF Taisho Award,[3] and was the first manga in 23 years to have won this award.[4] It is published in Traditional Chinese by Sharp Point Press.[5] The series is licensed for release in the United States by Fantagraphics Books.[6]
Hagio "wanted to do something about meat" when she created the story for Otherworld Barbara, and felt that the story "turned out kind of gross".[7] Thorn felt that Hagio also used her interest in the right and left brain, and the origin of language. She read Noam Chomsky's Noam Chomsky on The Generative Enterprise, A discussion with Riny Hyybregts and Henk van Riemsdijk., Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, and Andrew B. Newberg's Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.[8]