Anamorphosis no Meijuu

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The short stories that are included in this present some of the most depraved, fucked up situations to the reader, but are actually played for laughs, in turn creating some the darkest humor I've came across in some time, and I kinda love it. I've read only the first volume of Dementia 21, so that's all of Kago's work I've been exposed to up until now, and these shorts came out of left field for me, and in the best way possible.

They hit even stranger, because 3/4s of this collection is dedicated to the title story, Anamorphosis, which gave me all the vibes I expected ... to get from Kago. It's twisty and turny and deliciously meta. The story is quite a banger itself and quality wise is every bit as good as those short tales; hell, it may be better than them. But the sheer amount of shocked laughing and excited page turning to see if the weird shit I was seeing could actually get any weirder (SPOILER!!! It can....) that I experienced throughout those 8-page gems is something I won't soon forget!

On the art side of things, while Kago's work doesn't quite hit the level of technical excellence here that he showed in Dementia 21, it's still phenomenal artwork that excels in highlighting all the gore and weird body horror that permeates the collection. If you're easily offended, Anamorphosis is not the manga for you, but if anything I mentioned here or the cover of the book piques your interests, I enthusiastically recommend you spare an hour to check it out.

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 ... 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.

I'd like to start off by saying that I'm not an expert nor a fan of asian horror. Why?, well I'm not too sure myself to be honest, I haven't seen that many asian horror movies so perhaps the bizarre style of this manga feels too foreing to me because of that. While I acknowledge that, I do love horror as a genre in many forms of media such as books, movies, video games, etc. Take my review for what is worth with that in mind.

Introduction:
What makes a good horror story?, Is it the hopelessness we like to see portrayed by the characters in the ... story?, the well managed twists that make everything previously shown understandable?, the unsettling atmosphere that makes you look over your shoulder every couple of minutes?, or perhaps it is the realization that we humans are fragile beings, and our life can end in the blink of a second. Regardless of what's more important to you in a horror story from these elements, It's my personal belief that this manga doesn't succeed in any of them. Let me tell you why.

Plot:
I will divide the review of the plot in two parts. The first part will cover the main story that starts off the manga and the second part will cover the short stories that come afterwards.

-Main Story
Anamorphosis no Meijuu starts off the first of It's stories with a an interesting premise and a lot of potential, unfortunately that potential soon goes down the drain. A group of people are invited to a contest called "Ana Morphosis" in order to survive in a basement floor with a number of rooms for each participant and the recreation of a murder scene in that same basement. A "medium" summons the spirit and then the participants must resist the urge to escape through the elevator and...survive for 48 hours to recieve a cash prize.

The basics for a survival game are set and we can feel the expectation for what's about to happen, questioning ourselves with what we know is the usual formula for this premise, "Who will survive?", "Who's the coward, the gutsy and the comedian of the group?". As such, this set-up is certainly not groundbreaking, but with the correct amount of suspense and atmosphere it can still succeed if it shows us the emotional responses of the characters in an interesting way. This however is one of the many reasons why the manga fails, the characters are bland and predictable in their usual, previously mentioned archetypes with no one becoming remarkable as the story progresses. As such, we feel nothing as the characters die one after another.

The twists that reveal the truth of what's going on are rushed with no time to absorb what's happening to the characters at the end, not only that, but the grand scheme of the perpetrators towards the victims is quite stupid and poorly explained. The story ends with little to no regard towards pacing and an unsatisfying conclusion puts the final nail on the coffin of a story with an interesting premise brought down by an abysmal execution.

-Short Stories
There are 9 short stories after the aforementioned main story. Most of the stories are comedies with a strange and grotesque form of body horror, a branch of the genre that seeks to find horror in the degeneration and corruption of the body.The "body horror comedies" as I prefer to call them, only become more and more bizarre towards the end. A couple of stories are quite sexual, but they all end in a premise strongly sustained in making the human body seem like a sort of meaningless toy that can be played with, with little to no consequence. The stories left me quite perplexed as to what was the author was trying to portray, perhaps it was mostly shock imagery mixed with his own brand of dumb and incoherent humor.

One could call the stories disturbing or perhaps bizarre, but the words that I think describes them the most are incoherent, messy and stupid.

Art:
The art style portrayed in this manga is for the most part very realistic, the first story is very photographic in the character design, with everyone looking almost rotoscoped in the way they look. During the short stories however, the art style continues in a realistic fashion but in a more stylized way, you could compare it with the style of Junji Ito, author of the Uzumaki horror manga.

Overall the art style works well with the often grotesque drawings of the manga, composed mostly of blood and gore, but it's otherwise forgettable. There weren't any illustrations that shocked me or stayed with me after I finished reading, so it all blended in a very mediocre way in my head during the whole read.

Conclusion:
The main story had a lot of potential to craft a well paced survival game, but the author rushed the story and the ending explanation was very dissapointing.

The short stories are incoherent and contain a very dark and disturbing humor that didn't resonate with me to the point that I think most of the comedy was quite dumb, though, If comedies with gore and weird stories are your thing, you might want to give them a look. Be warned though, these are not for the faint of heart.

Recommendations:

If you are looking for a good horror manga to read, these are a couple of my favorites:

Shiki (2007)

A tale of a rural Japanese town in the middle of nowhere where the desire of the townsfolk to maintain their normal lives is crushed beneath the weight of the darkness pouring in.

I am a Hero (2009, ongoing)

View the zombie apocalypse (?) through the eyes of a socially awkward mangaka assistant, his manerisms and kind-hearted personality guiding him in the middle of the breakdown of society.

Thanks for reading!