Elisa Menini: Japanese Folklore Meets Italian Comics

Italian comic artist Elisa Menini (Rimini, 1990) is featured in Artribune Magazine #68. Known for reinterpreting Japanese iconography with a fresh contemporary touch, she gained recognition with her debut Nippon Folklore (2019), winning the Premio Boscarato for best artist in 2021 and the Premio Micheluzzi in 2020. Her Japanese trilogy—Nippon Folklore, Nippon Yokai, and Nippon Monogatari—was published by Oblomov Edizioni, led by Igort, whom she credits as a key supporter. Menini's fascination with Japanese culture stems from childhood exposure to anime on Mediaset networks and later exploration of classical Japanese arts. Her new book, La Rosa armata, marks a departure from her Japanese-themed work, created with minimum fax and featuring a different style. For Artribune, she produced a comic inspired by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's La sirena, using a technique of black ink washes. Menini describes her creative process as instinctual and evolving, without formal training.