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I didn't enjoy DDT as much as some of the other Suehiro Maruo I've read but I suspect it's because I was on a bender and read three of his books in rapid succession and got burned out on the shock.

Whereas in Ultra Gash Inferno I enjoyed the stories themselves, here the stories aren't that compelling, and they make a lot less sense. The good news is that the art here is very good and interesting, and leans all-in on Maruo's influences from the 1910s-1930s. The first story in particular is a love letter to art movements like surrealism and German expressionism. There's a lot ... of cut-and-paste Constructivist montage here, which fits the scrapbook nature of what Maruo is doing.

A lot of this work is really quite funny, in a sick way, like the story that's Maruo's remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but with added rape. Writing that out, I'm not sure how you could really say 'that's funny' but it is in context?

The best story here is easily the one with the two 'doctors' and their 'clinic' in the middle of a flat surrealist landscape, the trouble they run into, and their attempted solution to that problem. It's the sort of weird, sick story that vindicates the whole concept of ero guro nansensu.

This reads like a dry-run for Hellstar Remina, and I wouldn't be surprised if it inspired the latter. Honestly, I prefer this to Remina--the basic premise (a person's identity becomes entwined with a destructive cosmic force, leading to a parody of celebrity/idol culture) is solid and very Ito, but the ideas here are more horrific and interesting.

I do think cutting it from Uzumaki proper was the right decision, since the cosmology of this piece doesn't really work with the explanation for what happens in the main manga.

Anyway, whether you read it on its own, as part of Uzumaki, or as a Remina prototype, ... this is a good vignette. The art is good as always and it's good apocalyptic fun.

I think I like this stuff more after the fact than I actually do reading it.

Honestly, I skimmed most of the Ice stuff--it gets a little repetitive, although I think that's the point--if the story is about anything (other than depravity and a hot naked girl), I think it's about the power dynamics in BDSM, and sex in general, where power flows back and forth and roles aren't fixed. That really is the theme here--identities flow one into the other, and Ice and her tormentors routinely switch places of dominance. This implies a sort of playfulness, and it's that aspect that makes this sort ... of stuff not only bearable but enjoyable.

In fact, most of the other pieces in this collection live and die by how playful they are--Time Virgin is (oddly) the most playful, and probably the best; Mr. Amputation's Classroom or whatever it's called is relatively playful and falls in the middle, and the "Two Part Cannibal Corpse Song But Rape" or whatever it's called just comes off as unpleasant and boring and unimaginative.

I'll have to visit more of Uziga's work in the future, but I need a break, first.

The first of Jun Hayami's works that I walked away from thinking "I enjoyed reading that." It's obvious from the second page what's going on (think the movie Dogtooth), but it plays out in a different way than you'd expect--especially the ending, which reminded me of the weird swerves something like Bruce Jones' Twisted Tales used to make.

The characterization is a lot better than the two dimensional predators and prey that make up most of the other Hayami I've read--there's still that dynamic here, but there's more agency to both sides.

My only complaint is that the incident that sets the second half of the ... plot in motion doesn't really make sense.