Feb 3, 2019
Trigger Warnings: nudity, sexual content, severe gore, brief rape mentions, beastiliaty
Anamorphosis no Meijuu is an ero-guro horror manga by Shintaro Kago. The first half of this features a sick, twisted horror-detective game that leads the reader guessing many things about the story. The second half is made up of one-shots of different horror genres.
The first story was actually pretty thrilling. Unfortunately, I've gotten quite used to guro manga portraying something as one way when it was completely the over - the manga that taught me this was actually Fraction by Kago himself. I was a little disappointed that, although I didn't know what was going
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to happen specifically to this story, I knew that he wasn't portraying it as clearly as the reader thinks.
It's an interesting concept; people are invited to play a game. Inside, they are taken to a model crime scene, exactly how it was upon when the victims died. The spirit is summoned and the guest must survive forty-eight hours within the set. Those that make it are given a split prize between sixty million Yen.
However, of course, there's a catch.
This story was pretty well done. I don't think it was as good as I would have liked it; it focuses more within detective work than the actual horror aspect of it itself, which was a little bit of a letdown for me. This was actually recommended to me as a specific horror manga, so for it to turn out to be most riddles and crime (along with some decent body horror art), I wasn't really entertained. I read this in the mood for horror which is probably why my rating is lower than the majority of guro manga I've rated so far.
The one-shots in this, however, have some potential. Although some are explicitly gross and are pretty much nothing more than drawing sexual scenes (although I do find it hilarious how the author is able to draw explicit scenes, and they can't seem to say vagina nor penis within the writing), some did hold potential. Specifically, Beyond and Weightless held some laughs and some pretty decent body horror.
However, I feel like, as stated before, most of them were just an excuse to draw explicit sexual situations just for the sake of it. The stories did have a humour to them, and perhaps you need to be able to find the dark side of comedy to be able to fully enjoy them. If these were all split up in between different manga collections, I think they would have been better off than having content one after the other after the other. It seemed a little disjointed, and some didn't seem to make sense at all.
A little infuriating, but the two mentioned definitely made the read worth it.
I'm a little off-put from Kago after this. I'm going to read the remaining works I'm able to, but I feel a little disjointed and uneasy after reading this one through.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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