Anonymous #1 18h

Ooh do tell, please 😈

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Anonymous #1 18h

I think the guy has a foot fetish with how many feet are in the panels

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Anonymous OP 18h

to be clear, this isn’t me condemning him Or saying that the art / book in question is totally ethically acceptable, it’s just kind of a “holy shit, what? a guy this famous and revered created… THAT ?????” moment did you know he published an extremely detailed and jarring collection of illustrations of women in nightmarishly brutal torture scenarios? 😭

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Anonymous #1 18h

Wait REALLY? I know he liked drawing ecchi in his free time, but I did not know that

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Anonymous OP 18h

I wanna discourage you from looking it up if you’re even slightly sensitive to gruesome stuff like that, if you’re aren’t already desensitized it could be lowkey traumatic to see some of those pieces. but if you’re a deranged freak like me who likes to get disturbed and finds guro interesting anyway, I’ll give you the title

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Anonymous #1 18h

I mean, this is my favorite manga and there’s tons of gore/depravity in it, so yeah I’m super curious now. I’d like the title to see what he’s drawn

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Anonymous #1 18h

Also I didn’t know he was crazy respected and popular. I just was looking for some samurai manga and stumbled on this. Before that, I didn’t know this guy existed.

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Anonymous OP 18h

The Love of The Brute, or Hitodenashi no Koi some of the pieces are like, obviously disturbing but still super compelling as art, so not too shocking if you already love his work. but some of them are “oh! god! what the fuck this hurts to look at, I’m gonna be sick, why would you depict this”-level

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Anonymous OP 18h

oh yeah, I’m not actually familiar with his storytelling firsthand but he’s highly revered as a serious mangaka for adults. plus I mean, just as an artist he’s so technically-skilled that it’s clear to me why he’s a big deal! it’s just kinda funny cause a lot of people outside edgy niche shock-gore appreciator communities don’t know about the artbook

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Anonymous #1 18h

Ok, I’ll definitely view cautiously. Have you read blade of the immortal? There’s some pretty messed up themes in there

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Anonymous OP 18h

I haven’t, as far as I can tell it’s not really my thing, never been a fan of samurai narratives or historical dramas like that. no disrespect to the genre obviously, I’m just picky and have a short attention span even for “objectively-good” stuff lol

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Anonymous #1 18h

Yeah that’s fair. I like more slow-burn long form narratives. Hehe.

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Anonymous #1 18h

Yeah this manga goes into some pretty shady stuff with torture, rape, grief, murder. I think the most horror I had in this manga was this kid teaming up with a man and in one of the panels the guy grabbed the kid. And I was like “There is no way”, then it was later confirmed the villain was sexually abusing the kid. I never felt so much disgust in my life for any person as I had for that man. Samura really knew how to show the gritty horrific aspects of mankind in this story

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Anonymous OP 18h

I hear that, like I looooved Blood On The Tracks but it was easy to grab me & hold my interest with that one because psychological horror & bleak family trauma narratives are very much my shit

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Anonymous OP 18h

I can def believe he’d be skillful at depicting similarly horrific stuff in a manner that isn’t tasteless or actively sadistic when he’s telling a story rather than creating stand-alone art pieces, seems like he’s got a lot of “range”, which I respect. that’s part of why I wanted to be clear about not condemning him even though the content of the book in question is so nauseating at times 🫡

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Anonymous #1 18h

Ooh I haven’t heard that one yet, maybe I’ll look into it! I think I just like dark themes in my novels. There’s a certain part of humanity that people try to overlook and I like how some mangaka aren’t afraid to remind us of the depravity. It just sucks cause modern Japan likes to be all kawaii so manga with dark themes really aren’t very popularized.

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Anonymous #1 18h

I’m looking for the artbook and I can’t seem to find it for free. But yeah I totally get the art book is just straight torture drawings so I respect you sharing this info with me!!

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Anonymous OP 18h

there’s a few public google image results to give you an idea, but if you wanna see the full thing, the Scribd link (should be the second or third result) when you google “Hitodenashi no Koi” is a complete scan

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Anonymous OP 18h

+ I forgot but some of these are also depictions of psychological torture, not just physical gore, and I think a few of those are pretty spectacular as horror art

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Anonymous #1 18h

Mm I see. Thank you for letting me know and for the cautions!! I didn’t know other people liked gore so hearing there is a community is pretty nice hah 😅

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Anonymous OP 18h

Blood On The Tracks is hands down my #1 recommendation for anyone who appreciates psychological horror manga that could also be described as “drama”, i.e. it’s not straightforwardly “genre horror” but it’s extremely fuckin emotionally terrifying & devastating 😭 and yeah, part of what I love about it is that it’s actually very compassionate? in the sense that it’s scary because you just want the main kid to be okay. so there’s real depth & thoughtfulness to it

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Anonymous OP 18h

respectfully though, I think it’s important to remember that the “kawaii” veneer is just our perception of Japanese mainstream culture as people looking at it from overseas—our insight into that stuff as Americans is very surface level, much like how US culture can be oversimplified if your exposure is primarily via pop culture. with both countries I prefer the artsy complex stuff, creative scenes that started out “underground” etc

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Anonymous OP 17h

personally I discovered guro online when I was wayyyyy too young to be looking at that shit, which was definitely not good for me, but now as an adult who can think critically and is less vulnerable to being harmed by what I see, I absolutely Love hanging around spaces for discussing edgy horror and transgressive art like that 🖤

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Anonymous #1 17h

Dang. Looks like a lot of human trafficking and sex slavery. A lot of the offenders look western.

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Anonymous OP 17h

! interesting point, re: the perpetrators. I haven’t examined it enough through a political lens but I do think for a lot of it (though maybe not all), it’s clear he’s not actually trying to romanticize what he’s depicting or present it as sexy or w/e. so the question of intent is intriguing to me

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Anonymous #1 17h

So it’s called guro? Yeah I was on the internet at a young age and saw a bunch of stuff I never should have. Maybe that’s why I’m into these darker aspects? I’m also deeply into art which is why I enjoy manga so much over anime. There’s so many details and themes that can added that anime adaptions just wash away. You’re right about the outside view of Japan for sure. I’m definitely gonna add Blood on the Tracks to my to-read list.

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Anonymous OP 17h

guro is slang for like, anime-style gore art that’s usually also crass or horny in some way, everything from tasteful morbid erotic art all the way to extremely unhinged dismemberment illustrations etc. it’s short for “eroguro”, which is itself a Japanese abbreviation of “erotic-grotesque”. “eroguro nonsense” is also a whole surrealistic creative movement that’s been around for a long time, usually more “highbrow” than the gore-hentai stuff

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Anonymous #1 17h

Yeah I’m maybe 20 pages in just scrolling through. I’m actually studying a bit of Japanese so I’m able to read some of it. There are a couple depictions of the women with signs that read as money signs or as markers of nationality so I wonder if this is his depiction of Japanese slavery in the western world. Of course I could just be reading into it and I haven’t even finished yet. This is very fascinating indeed

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Anonymous #1 17h

Good to know!

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Anonymous #1 17h

THIS IS WILD. Just got to the Spanish section. I’m gonna shut my mouth before I make any more theories

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Anonymous OP 17h

great observations, I actually haven’t looked through this in a long time (a couple of the pieces are a little too much for me) but now you got me wanting to revisit it to analyze that stuff! my kanji knowledge is mediocre but ofc there’s also apps for that

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Anonymous OP 17h

thanks for chatting with me about this stuff, always happy to bump into people who are levelheaded about real-world violence but genuinely enjoy & respect some transgressive art!! I legit appreciate the nuanced attitude

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Anonymous OP 17h

“I need to go back and analyze this extreme eroguro artbook I haven’t flipped through in several years” was not on my bingo card for today, but here I am lmao 🫢

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Anonymous #1 17h

Yeah sorry for my yapping. Just finished looking through it and wow! I think there’s definitely criticisms that Samura illustrated, but not just of modern culture. And it’s interesting how some are fanatical that are usually found in hentai like the tentacles and some seem mirrored to modern BDSM culture (not calling BDSM rape, just that some depictions feel very similar to the way some BDSM positions/play is like).

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Anonymous #2 17h

Blade of the immortal. It’s pretty gruesome but has good plot and doesn’t shy from dark stuff so beware. But yeah the man in the picture is Manji and it’s like a Historical fiction fantasy manga. It’s my fav manga

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Anonymous OP 17h

omg no, no reason to apologize! earnestly really glad I brought it up, thoughtful conversation about transgressive & disturbing art is like, what I live for lol. and yeah, the mix of tones & themes is part of what made it so memorable to me as a collection, it left me with a lot of questions even when I wasn’t doing much intellectual digging beyond the surface level

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Anonymous OP 17h

I completely forgot the tentacle stuff lol, but ofc the cultural history there is fascinating, Dream of The Fisherman’s Wife and whatnot. there’s gotta be a ton more analyzing to do for people who are better informed than me about international history in general

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Anonymous #1 10h

For sure!! I wonder if people have really dug into the themes. Anyways, thanks for chatting and I hope you have a great night!!

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