Tag: Manga
Following WWII, there would be a shortage of decent alcohol and before long bootleg, shochu liquor, referred to as kasutori (effectively Japanese moonshine) began to circulate. Being made from whatever ingredients people could scrape together, sometimes even toxic chemicals, kasutori alcohol soon developed an extremely poor reputation in society, with widespread cases of blindness and
Suicide Girl is an ongoing action horror magic girl manga, written and illustrated by Atsushi Nakayama. Atsushi is best known as the creator/illustrator of Uratarou, The Zombie Maria, Nejimaki Kagyu, and Love Suicide. The manga follows Kirari Aokigahara, a high school student contemplating suicide, who decides to go to a “Suicide Café” where a mysterious
Imagine yourself 12 years ago. You are an anime and manga fan who now has even more access to your favorite shows than ever before thanks to internet massification. Things seem to be looking up, but suddenly you get bombarded by a virtual headline like this “JAPAN IS BANNING MANGA TO PROTECT CHILDREN”. At first,
At some point in history, the magical girl genre existed as the pinnacle of wholesomeness. Yet, Madoka Magica became a staple as the deconstruction of it. At this time, it is fair to say that only a few pieces of media have reached the same level of quality and fan devotion. However, does that means
The genre, now referred to as “Pinky Violence”, would absolutely dominate cinema in the early 70’s, which was largely helmed by Toei in their focused attempt to pump out many popular films to quickly and cheaply as possible to meet their quota of two new films every fortnight in order to obtain exclusivity contracts with
Theoretically, a vampire is one of the sexiest supernatural transformations you can have in fiction. You remain young, you become strong and agile, and nothing can kill you. However, Happiness makes us rethink the vampiric mythos by realizing that it would really suck to have those kinds of powers, at least in a world like
I remember the first time I watched Hiroya Oku’s Gantz anime. Let’s set the scene: it was the early 00s and I would hang out with my friends after school to watch whichever anime one of us could get their hands on. Unfortunately, there was this girl I hated that sometimes went to these
Japanese ‘erotic grotesque nonsense’, often abbreviated to ‘ero guro’ or ‘ero guro nansensu’, is a genre of art that extends to various mediums. Consequently, the genre exists as a broad statement to capture the art that puts its focus on eroticism, sexual corruption, and decadence. The art style is not unique to Japan, but is
Horror is a tool. A tool used by the architect in order to design a macabre landscape, layered with mountains of fear and embedded with the riverbanks of mystery. Suehiro Maruo did not appropriate the tool, nor did he simply embellish it, Maruo crafted and invigorated the art with his non-conventional understanding of the grotesque
The Laughing Vampire, or Warau Kyuuketsuki in Japanese, is a shocking two volume series of the Suehiro Maruo and follows the vampire of Rakuda as she first emerges from parallel scenes of atomic destruction in World War 2 – evil was already amongst us as despairing truth. In Japan, she subsequently stalks a corrupted modern