Gallery Fake

Gallery Fake (ギャラリーフェイク, Gyararī Feiku) is a Japanese manga by Fujihiko Hosono. In 1996, it received the Shogakukan Manga Award.^[1]

Story

On a wharf on Tokyo Bay is a small gallery named Gallery Fake. The owner of the gallery, Reiji Fujita (藤田 玲司, Fujita Reiji), was once a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He was a learned curator with remarkable memory, keen aesthetic sense, great skill in restoration of paintings and knowledge of many languages, so he was called the "Professor." However, because of trouble in the workplace, Fujita was forced to quit the museum. Now he is an art dealer who sells paintings, authentic and fake alike, at extraordinary prices. His motto is "One without aesthetic sense can't help being cheated out of his money. And by being deceived, one may learn to distinguish real ones from the counterfeit."

However, Fujita is not a villain. He truly appreciates art and the artists who spent their lives to create it. He is not someone who just earns money by selling fake paintings. Sometimes he takes paintings from a wicked politician who considers art only as a means of exchanging bribes. Sometimes he tries to restore destroyed paintings. He often touches the lives of those he encounters and people are attracted to him in spite of himself.

Characters

Reiji Fujita (藤田玲司, Fujita Reiji)

The main character of the series, he is an art dealer. He was a former curator of the Metropolitan museum but he now owns a gallery called Gallery Fake. He is an expert at repairing paintings and can tell if any painting is real or fake. Fujita is shown to have painting skills. He often makes promises he can't keep (mostly to Sara) and will sometimes play dirty to get certain artifacts. He is the main source of Sara's anger. Fujita hates exercise, therefore, when hiking or walking he is easily exhausted. Fujita is also seen to become extremely worried about Sara when she is in danger though claims to be fine. Fujita is also a smoker and has a love for crab. He also has a daughter from a previous relationship, named Elizabeth, his love child with Flora Joconda (A descendant of Mona Lisa). The two had met when Fujita was still a penniless guy and not yet an employee of Metropolitan Museum.

Sara Halifa (サラ・ハリファ, Sara Halifa)

Fujita's assistant. She accompanies Fujita on trips though she is not knowledgeable about art. She has a crush on Fujita and will constantly become angry when he visits Fei. She adopts a stray cat which she often uses to attack Fujita though Sara always defends Fujita when someone talks bad about him. She is an optimistic person and has a somewhat childish personality though she is persistent and unforgiving at times. It is revealed that Sara hates war because it killed her family. Sara is a member of Kerabia's royal family.

Fei Cui (翡翠)

She is a proclaimed jewelry thief and is obsessed with them. She often calls Fujita to gloat about her latest items of which she stole. She has an obsessive fascination for certain items and will sometimes do whatever it takes to get them. Sara sees her as an evil woman. As said by her assistant, Fei can be sunny one day and stormy the next. She owns a store called Jade. She has a problem with her eyes and fears she may go blind and she states that if she goes blind she will die of not being able to see the beauty in things. Fujita claims that the jewels affect her eyes.

Sayoko Mitamura (三田村小夜子, Mitamura Sayoko)

She is the director at Takada Art Museum. She thinks of Fujita as someone who will not help the art world but destroy it. She states that Fujita is a cold-blooded scam artist. She is a stiff confident person who works too much. She somewhat harbors some feelings for Fujita, as it shown in episode 12.

Episode list

References

1. ↑ "小学館漫画賞：歴代受賞者" (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2007-08-19.