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One of the few new manga which is not a waste of your time nor a neuron-killer.

A very emotionally moving manga from one of the masters of horror, who refuses to be pigeonholed into a niche genre.
Paraíso is different from the usual Maruo manga, which is characterized by a parade of scenes filled with gore, sex and luxury.
Set in the second world war and its aftermath, Paraíso is a collection of loosely related stories about children trying to survive in a world that has just ended: post war Japan; it's also a world that's just starting to come to life. Death and rebirth.
These kids ... are all orphans determined to be free and become the masters of their own fate. Surely, they're taken advantage of by the adults who sorround them and the material conditions of the ruined Japan are enough to make anyone go insane but the overall picture is brighter than in the rest of Maruo's manga: the world is not completely hopeless nor are all humans disgustingly evil.
It's the nuance that makes Paraíso fascinating. The name of the series itself is very alluring: Paradise. We are not really shown any paradise, these people actually live in Hell (the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima) but their hearts want to overcome this Hell, their hearts point towards heaven. Christianity is one of the main themes in this manga, after all Maruo himself is from Hiroshima, one of Japan's historic strongholds of Christianity. Maruo sees Christianity with fascination, he's very aware of the crimes these "holy men" are capable of and of the superiority complex which poisons the heart of a lot of christians (which superiority complex is present in the other two Abrahamic religions by nature of their theology); but he's also very thoughtful of the capacity for profound compassion towards other's suffering that the most pious christians can show and the mental fortitude that a belief in the afterlife can instill, even in the most dire of conditions. Yes, the christian missionaries in Japan were there ALSO with a colonial agenda typical of the proselytizing nature of the Gospel, but at the same time they showed a sort of love that the American soldiers occupying the ravaged streets of Japan didn't. The Japanese in this stories are suspicious of christianity, which they see as a stupid an alien religion but they are also curious, and learn one thing or two from it.
One topic I hadn't seen touched anywhere else in manga is that of the mystical experience, which is explored in the last chapter. It's depiction truly made me tremble and almost moved me to tears, Maruo's sensibility on this topic is commendable. The sole inclusion of this topic in the manga is what exhorts me to recommend you this manga. In this current era of skepticism and total disregard for religion, Maruo raises the question of wether we can dismiss religion -christianity in this particular case- in its totality as something of the past for which we have no use.

The visual aspect of Paraíso is just as good as its literary side, Maruo has only become better with time and his completely analogical technique turn his manga in some of the best looking in the industry. Seriously, go and read it.

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction is not about aliens, it's about love!

This is probably the most significant piece of popular fiction of the century that not enough people are talking about, one which recquires an attentive reader but pays off exponentially.
To understand Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, one must put it in context with the rest of Asano's works and see the theme that has persisted throughout his career. Asano's obsession is the fundamental division between the individual and the collective. This division manifests itself via anxiety about conforming to societal expectations; his most emblematic character, Punpun, is so idealistic about his dreams that ... he percieves his life as a responsible adult as "the life of a ghost... who's pushed around by the wind": such a gloomy worldview!
This constant enemy of individuality, dreams and freedom is dubbed "The World" by Asano's characters: in Ozanari-kun (one of his most underrated works) we see one of the protagonists fantasize about taking revenge on everyone in the world; Punpun wishes that "a meteorite or a comet hit the earth", he wants to "disappear from everyone's memories" and the love of his life says "everyone can drop dead for all I care"; in Nijigahara Holograph a boy carries around a box that will destroy the world after being opened and he doesn't doubt opening it.
But the destruction (hey! one of the nouns in this manga's title!) of The World can be a more symbolic deed achieved through transgression, that is, the active pursuit of the "forbidden"; we can destroy The World by breaking the rules. In Solanin a bunch of twenty somethings destroy their comfortable lives by giving up on their normal jobs after deciding to revive their teenage passion for music; A Girl by the Sea show us a couple of teenagers destroy their own sense of identity and figuratively escape The World by engaging in sex. But all of these examples show us the sentiment that The World (filled with pragmatism, history, context, necessity) and the individual (filled with ideals, detatched and free) cannot be reconciled: entering The World means to lose oneself and those who cannot accept The World as it is and as it recquires them to be more often than not commit suicide. Is Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction another chapter in this pessimistic Asano worldview? My thesis is that it is not; I possit that Asano finally offers a way to overcome this fundamental opposition between the individual and the world and which does not destroy either of them.

Kadode and Ouran, two best friends, are our protagonists, they're at the threshold of adulthood, graduating highschool. The World of adulthood they're about to enter is mentally overwhelming. A seemingly unsolvable problem hangs over everyone's heads and the sentiment that the state of affairs will only worsen is ubiquitous. Kadode and Ouran are so devoted to each other that at times their friendship seems just enough to put the nausea of the real world aside for a moment (even if at times this can look like indolence); nonetheless The World enters their lives forcefully in one way or another: at best they have to listen to politics obssessed nutjobs and at worst, they lose loved ones. Surpringsingly, for an Asano manga, we are shown how The World operates: that unmovable source of anguish (and of crumbs joy) is the chaotic amalgamation of the selfish interests of politicians, of the shortsightedness of capitalisitic industrialists and and of the neurotic passions of the masses. Kadode and Ouran appear static in their personalities and don't seem to approach the complexity of the World seriously so the author shows us how and why other, secondary characters take a stance and choose their own path in life (a lot of them undesirable and product of fear). But on the second part of the manga we are actually revealed the reason of Kadode and Ouran's indifference about anything that's not their friendship: one of them has chosen (yes, chosen) to love the other despite everything, despite The World. That is, for me, the most beautiful thought Inio Asano has ever given us. The love Kadode and Ouran have for each other is not erotic but platonic; their desire to be together is not a result of the fleeting desires of the body that may or may not be there. Their love stems from a genuine desire of seeing the other as happy as possible, to put a smile on their faces. Like this, Kadode and Ouran can actually enter the World of adulthood and cope with its complexities without giving up their sense of self: they now have a stake in the World , a real reason to participate in the game: each other.

So far I have spoken almost exclusively about Kadode and Ouran's character arcs, but the list of significant characters in here is enormous and covering all of them would be silly. It's clear, though, that Kadode and Ouran are the key to descipher Asano's ideas on the more abstract themes in this particular manga: technology, social isolation, fundamentalism and the geopolitics which permeate the work are examined through the notion of "I don't need power, I need a friend".

Warning: this manga contains depictions of sexual violence, mutilations, psychological abuse and some of the most disturbing paraphilias one could think of.
Despite of the above I rated this manga a 10/10 and I usually will not rate pornographic manga this high if it doesn't contain an additional element which could make it worthy of being discussed. You will ask "ok, so what makes this manga more than just a very disgusting porno?"

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Jun Hayami creates a very "emotional" form of eroguro: all of his stories are extremely psychological; the entire focus is the mental states of the characters during the performances of their depravations: going ... from humilliation fetish to r*pe-m*urder. He suggests that this depraved side of human is a result of obssessions, isolation, trauma and of the very mysterious human body that, in some cases, will associate pain and humilliation with pleasure. But there's no excusing, though, no romatizantion; on the contrary: the focus on the majority of this stories is not on the helpless victim of a faceless abuser, no, the focus is in how pathetic and depressing is to reach such ends of mental degradation that one may yearn to do unspeakable deeds. These are not Suehiro Maruo's stories in which beautiful teenagers located in extravagant lands -or in past times- show us the world of unknown but weirdly attractive pleasures; here we see total freaks who desire the destruction of others, of themselves and of the social world at large as a result of their feelings of loneliness, insufficiency and resentment. One would feel pity for them if they weren't at best disgusting and at worst, evil.
Surprisingly, men are sometimes the ones being abused (and abusing their own bodies) in these stories. This fact makes this collection more fascinating than anything the disgusting Uziga Waita could ever put out. "This is art" is not a simple masturbatory work about an artist's fetishes but a reflexion on them. (There is a suggestion that part of this is autobiographical). It's more about the soul than about the body.
If you thought that eroguro artists were just a bunch of nutcases who fantasize on destroying the bodies of women and girls and using them as objects, Jun Hayami might make you think twice.
The art itself is strange: Hayami is clearly a competent illustrator who's alright at storytelling but his characters may feel a bit stiff at times in their movement and their design is quite samey. Nonetheless he manages to convey the abject mentality of his characters quite well through facial expressions, these wretches do feel alive. And the overall style suits the terrorific content even if it's not that technically impressive.
Yes, the subject matter is vomitive, the characters are all criminals but the author shows an odd depth in his writing and characterization that has made me reread this manga out of fascination.

Recommended to anyone interested in eroguro. Not recommended to anyone under 18 or anyone sensitive to this sort of content.

In hindsight "The Rose Colored Monster" is a very communicative title for this collection of short stories, for it describes perfectly what this is about: the monster of desire with its rose colored object of desire; and though I call them short stories, a considerable part of this manga feels more like an attempt at creating poetry with illustrations.

I wouldn't doubt to say that "Barairo no Kaibutsu" doesn't contain any real story on it and neither any real character. On this manga, most situations are a variation of the others and any character would be easily replaced by any other. The main purpose here -it ... seems- is to portray the lenghts to which desire takes people, it's a comic about extremes and for this reason the actors of these vignettes take either the role of an active subject or an object of desire to be used. People here are mutilated, raped, beaten, killed, terrorized, gored, manipulated and cheated on. But there's a twist that keeps this manga from becoming a simple work of exploitation, several times we are shown a reversal of roles: whom at first appeared as a victim of the more powerful, turns out to be quite the abuser in their own respect; the object becomes the subject. Maruo has also the skill to create subtle moments of tenderness -although in his own idiosyncratic manner- such as in "Putrid Night", "I'm your toilet" and "Sewer Boy" and an unexpectedly adequate sense of humor.

As an eroguro work, the visual aspect of the manga is probably the most important one. Being a collection of Maruo's earliest works, it lacks the ornate style of his later, more ambitious manga and the poetry that often accompanies those collections is also missing to a large extent. Yet it's not a lackluster manga in terms of illustrations; his heavy inks and delicate lines are there, reminiscent of the Ukiyo-e style woodblock printings he so much adores and his composition is as great as always (it's only become better with time). The clarity of the illustrations and neatly arrannged panels here contrast strongly with the energetic, confusing, non-sensical stories of actors and personalities who don't seem to think about their actions a lot, and if they do, they do it to better accoplish their perverse intentions.

Is there a ruler to "rate" a work such as this? I think that I could only say "this is good" if the answer to the question "do I want to own this?" is positive. The Rose Colored Monster is pure eyecandy: it juxtaposes the elegant ornate style of fin du siécle mansions with acts of depravity too good to described and too bad to mention, its panels are barely soiled by dialogue and are filled with the most precious of objects: roses, detailed garments, old fashioned forniture, vases and paintings, beautiful and disgusting people. "The Rose Colored Monster" wants you to be an accomplice in its debauchery. And, just like the characters of these stories when they are confronted with the limits of their experiences, you only have two options: to look away in disgust and run from these freaks or let yourself be seduced by their literal and moral filth, to become an initiate. I would own this manga and keep saved in the same way that we hide our most intimate letters.

"Mangaka are self-centered"
The former sentence is the key to understand "Downfall" (Reiraku). This manga is mainly about the sort of person who becomes an artist and lives for the art. It may be perhaps a confession of life, who knows for sure but Asano himself.

This story starts with a first-person description of one of the protagonist's former lovers. He claims he didn't understand her. We are shown the protagonist's success as an author as he finishes one of his series, but also a deep lack of satisfaction; his marriage is dull, people don't pay him as much attention as he'd like when he speaks; soon ... he walks around the gigantic city of Tokyo like a ghost. At this point in his life he's come to hate his craft.
Through the whole work, every page and every dialogue involves the protagonist and makes him the center of attention. Every decision he makes appears as if he were the omnipotent author of his life, as if he was just expecting the consequences of his actions "to see" what happens, yet none of them fulfill him. In a way he goes through his life as if he was writing manga. the complete subjectivity that Asano portrays on this work is one of the clues of interpretation that we're given. There are moments along the story in which we are shown the total lack of reliability of the narrator, and how biased his worldview is. Is that a requirement for exercising this kind of profession? Is this unique to Asano's line of manga? How do this kind of people go through their interpersonal lives?

This work is short and by talking more about it, I run the risk of spoiling it. Because of that I just leave with these points that want to point towads an interpretation: It seems that Asano here reflects on his own works and his future as a writer, on the kind of person that dedicates their life to artistic self expression and the relation to a capitalistic market, but lastly on what the phenomenom of manga means to the readers.

Here Asano creates an intimate work that gazes upon the individual and their ouvre.

Why read Alice in Hell? I don't think there are compelling arguments one can use to exhort anyone into doing something. Because of this my review will focus on the themes and ideas that the manga presents. It will be on you to decide if they are any good; if they deserve your time.

The set of this story is a post-apocalyptic world. Civilization doesn't exist as we know it and skirmishes for basic resources abound. The characters of this manga behave more like non-human animals than like socialized people. For these characters to live is to fight. In comparison you and I, as habitual readers ... of manga, live confortable lives; if you are reading this review, you probably have a computer, be it in the form of a PC, smartphone, tablet or whatever. We live in a world in which all resources are usually accesible if you have enough money. We, in our current world, work together to build complex systems of resource extraction, exploitation and trading. This recquires firstly abundance and, secondly, a degree of peace. In this manga, the opposite is the norm: scarcity and conflict.

It's in a world of scarcity and conflict in which a proganist as the one of this manga is born: Shuu is a misantropic teenager, a hermit who hunts down plunderers hundreds of yards away. He lives in the ruins of a large city, which he calls "Alamo", these ruins he knows like the palm of his hand. He masses guns and manga inside his fort: the former to keep anyone away and the latter to entertain his mind. Jiro Matsumoto, the author, often uses war as a form of exploring the human soul and intrapersonal relations (see Mikai no Hoshi). On this work of his, he achieves the perfect identity of signifier and signified: Shuu's heavily armed fort is a direct reflection of his mind/psyche/soul. Shuu lives all by himself, his only companion is a pseudo-human android called Alice whom he uses as bait to kill people. Much like his impenetrable fort, he despises human touch, close emotional relationships, his fear of other people is such that he can not bring himself to kill peole if they are close.

The former is but the prologue of the manga. The plot starts with Shuu's need of relying on others when he runs out of food. The manga is basically Shuu's confrontation with the need of being with others. Shuu agrees to work a season for Makilda, the political leader of a refugee community. At that point we are laid before us fundamental philosophical issues: how to build an ideal political body? Makilda's work is basically achieving peace within her community and among its neighbors. Another topic is when can humans trust each other?: Shuu was somewhat safe at Alamo all by himself, but he needed to be always working to get what he needed; within a community he himself does not need go get what he needs; he can buy it in exchange for money he recieved for his labor, though the fact that there are other people around him puts him always in peril. From the issue regarding trust is born another one: after and during times of war, can people regain what we may call an ethical behavior? It is not unknown that in war people usually commit atrocities: rape, torture, pillaging, arson. Such actions hurt the soul of the survivors, the mere sight of these orgies of violence may be as well called a form hell. The emotional scars left by generalized violence take away most of what we call "humanity". It's in that place that forms after emotional trauma where Shuu stands and lives, he was born in war and has always known war. On Plato's dialogue "Phaedo", Socrates says that the misanthrope is born because he has had bad experiences with people after he thought he knew how people were. Shuu at one point on his life had hopes of love but they all were blown away by the sandstorm of war.

On the final chapters of this manga Shuu is shown reading the American comic book The Walking Dead. I don't think that this be just a way for the author to namedrop his influences. The Walking Dead is quite similar regarding the themes with which it deals: a dead civilization and what it means in terms of human survival. How a tough world shapes human psychology and its effects on morality. What is needed to build a state, can trust exist when there is not enough for all of us?. On the TV adaptation of TWD we are shown a character who spends his time coming up with traps to kill anyone who comes close, a character who lives all by himself and can only think of death and dying, much like Shuu. We are faced with the question "is anyone bad enough to be considered unforgivable"? in other words in a life without peace "do humans posses humanity"? That is the question of both Alice in Hell and The Walking Dead. On "Alice in Hell" after a traumatic experience of death, rape and pillaging a woman says "This is Hell", just as Rick Grimes says after having to kill several people for the first time "WE are the walking dead".

10/10. I liked it, here's why:
This manga starts with our hero realising two things: 1) he is alone in his life and 2) he will die. This is a crossroads for him . Dumbstruck by the fear of being alone and by the fear of death, his only option is to face life and, at the very least, get a friend by the end of the year.
Wanitokagegisu is primarly an existential work. And by that I mean this: in Wanitokagegisu the essence and purpose of humans is not something known and eternal -unlike the popular belief before the industrial revolution-; on the contrary, humans exist ... before they learn about their essence -if there's even one. If our hero, Tomioka, knew beforehand his purpose, dispair wouldn't have taken him when he learned of death. After all, if he knew of a purpose, he would have put his energy towards it way earlier in his life and he wouldn't be terribly afraid of death. Most like in the real world, when Tomioka tries to face the world so that he achieve his new goals in life, the world lays on him several boulders and obstacles that introduce themselves to him as moral dilemmas. At some point Tomioka meets two young men that do know for sure what is important in life, what is the purpose of humans: for one it's money and for the other it's love. Tomioka will have a look at where these roads lead. He also sees the path of pure ascetism and where it leads.
In the start I called Tomioka a hero.
I call him a hero because his raison d'être is trascendental. Though he has certain preferences and inclinations in life that will most likely give him some pleasure; he constantly prefers to do what he believes is the right thing, when certain situations force him to choose between righteousness and enjoyment.
But here's where the genius of Furuya, the mangaka, comes: acting "morally" does not always seem like the best of the choices. In some instances, what he believes is the good thing to do leads him into outright peril or makes him commit even further into doing things he would prefer not to. Even at the very end of some of peripecies and the manga itself, Tomioka ends up in a state of ambiguity regarding any future joy (typical from Furuya) and we are led to believe that it's haging from the most thin thread.

Conclusion: this manga's name means "stomiiformes" and is the name of a genera of deep fish; you know, those that live so deep in the ocean their bodies have adapted to the pressure, to the cold, to the dark; and they're able to produce their own light. At the end of these manga you may come to see Tomioka and some of the other characters as similar to these fishes: they have strange appereances, they live amongst some of the most terrifying beings and sorrounded mostly by darkness except for the light they generate out of themselves. Some of these fishes are beautiful if you look from the right angle.

My best guess regarding Punpun's success in the west is that it basically works as a Sophoclean Tragedy.
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I read this work about 4 years ago and haven't actually re-read it all the way through so my review may be all over the place; the method will consist on speaking of the formal aspects and the ideological aspects of the manga.
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We can't deny that there is suffering in the world and that most of us have asked ourselves and the sky "why do I have to suffer? do I deserve this? how can we avoid being wronged and hurting others? is this just a practical joke ... on everyone?"

Asano explores human suffering and the tiny bits of happiness in between; a lot of the time this really awful things happen to our characters for no apparent reason: being in the wrong place at the wrong time, snowball effects of petty mistakes, missed opportunities, the inevitable clashing of people's dreams and reality. Punpun, even as a child, percieves these events as terrible and because of his sensitivity his heart is shattered.

I've said that these characters get into bad situations for reasons well beyond their control, situations which put them in really hard disjunctives in which they HAVE to make a choice that will almost always turn bad and they will suffer because of it.

So there seems to be no place for guilt in Punpun. What we are shown is, instead, a bunch of people trying to not get crushed by the enormity of life but they eventually do. We are shown a nasty, brutish world that really is not worth living, indeed, the most "pure" characters here die violently, the rest have to live life, a much worse punishment. It's not the worst people here that get whipped by existence: never mind how much of a good person you are or how good your intentions are, you will get hurt and will hurt someone else. This makes our characters become ugly people, we can understand why.

Another theme running in Punpun is dreams: the want, the desire, the lust for life that makes us not kill ourselves. But dreams end on a rude awakening and are often the very cause of suffering and evil. One of the most moving scenes here shows us a want that is fulfilled for one character at the expense of another's weeping, when Punpun looks at this defeated opponent he's so moved he deposes his want for this "trophy" and feels his opponent's suffering as his own: the winner who pities the loser.
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Visually we see the alienation of living in the megalopolis, how small people are compared to this world, how easy is to get unnoticed: our insignificance.

Asano moves us like in a film: we look at these people like a fly on the wall does. The stylized realism of Asano makes a paradoxically beautiful ugly world that has just the right amount of distance from reality to "feel" like a manga.

"Voiceless" is our main character. It's fascinating how not using speech bubbles brings a whole new level of depth to the work. I still don't know what to make out of it, nonetheless it's a really nice technique.

The contrast between Punpun's cartoony appearance and the realism of the rest of the world allows Asano a richer outlining of emotions using the possibilities of abstraction. The problem of the manga's own reality in which Punpun looks just like any other person to the characters and how we see him is yet another intriguing technique which should be more studied.
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This is one of the few manga I still like: read it.

This will be quick and direct

Story 7/10: A slice-of-life story doesn't need to be deep or complex, because, in the end, nobody's life is complex, quoting Yamazaki from Welcome to the NHK! "A drama has a progressive thought, an emotional climax and a resolution, but our lives aren't like that. All we get day after day, are a bunch of vague anxieties that are never really resolved" .

This is what Pumpkin & Mayonnaise is, a simple and realist despiction of a relationship: the drama isn't chessy, the pacing is slow and mundane, the lives of the characters don't feel like something out of reality, Pumpkin ... & Mayonnaise is realist, in the end the manga shows what it promises us: the everyday life of Sei, an idealistic songwriter, and Miho, the young woman who struggles to support the both of them.

Art 7/10: Clean, minimalistic, relatable, elegant, unlike "Blue", by the same author the art actually can tell the story. Is not realist, nor "moe", the character desings are quite generical, but we all are generic characters.
The backgrounds are there, showing us the enviroment they are not detailed nor realist, so you may not notice them, which, in my opinion gives a feel of desolation.

Character 9/10: Yeah, the most important part of a slice-of-life story are the characters, how can you tell a story about someone's life if they don't feel real?

Kiriko Nananan knows this, so she makes her characters relatable, they make mistakes, they feel annoyed over little things, they acknowledge their mistakes, she gives them small details about their personalities that makes the experience even more real.

This is a josei, the onee-chan of shoujo, this needs to be mature, so, the main character Miho, like any other heroine feels confused and makes stupid decisions, but it doesn't feel like the cliched annoying shoujo girl, you can actually simpathize with her.

Enjoyment ? That's up to you.

Overall 8/10: With a bittersweet ending, and a small but memorable run, Pumpkin & Mayonnaise is way better than most of the popular romance stuff out there