Posts Tagged ‘horror’
Bug spray is not optional!
Monday, August 10th, 2009Icky body horror
Monday, August 10th, 2009
In the horror manga Manhole, a worm-like parasite squirms up the infected’s face and attaches itself to an eye, rendering it useless, before burrowing into the brain. It spreads between people via an exchange of blood, and raises the host’s body temperature to attract carnivorous insects like mosquitoes, resulting in one of the nastiest panels yet, when the skin of an infected girl, confined to her apartment, is literally swarming with mosquitoes and horse-flies. The humid, sticky stench is palpable. Why call it ‘Manhole’? When the summer cools, flies retreat to darker, danker places, like the sewers.
The Night the Chimera Cries
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
Anime is good at many things, but scaring people isn’t one of them, so when I do stumble across something that is really creepy, I tend to remember it. One of those is Nina and Tucker of Fullmetal Alchemist. Tucker, the father, ‘combines’ his little girl, Nina, with her pet dog to create a talking Chimera.
The horror lies not just in the shock of realising what the father has done to his daughter, but voice of the Chimera and how it looks, those white, blank, staring eyes, the depressed tone of its voice; the thing feels like an utter perversion of nature, its every movement an unsettling, disgusting picture of abuse. That a father would do something like this to his daughter, and that this thing still seems capable of comprehending what’s going on around it is just too tragic to accept, and it’s also precisely something like this that separates anime from cartoons the world over.
Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood) is airing in Japan at around 6PM on Sundays, so children are sitting with their parents and watching this stuff as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to do, yet if this same scene aired on BBC One at the same time, I’m convinced the complaints would rain in, because this episode abuses that which most of us hold dearest, the bond between a child and her parents.
When the person you trust in more than anyone else in the world abuses you in such a horrible way, all that’s left is the most horrible, desolate sense of loneliness; even as a chimera, Nina stills follows her dad.
The Devil Lady: early impressions
Sunday, March 8th, 2009So far, so good. I have always had a strong liking for gothic horror and Devil Lady ticks all the right boxes; the opening theme is especially Omen-esque and invokes a dark, decadent tone straight from the off, while the story is unpredictable. Lead character Jun is the titular Devil Lady and with each episode, she rages against another gross demon. She’s a conflicted personality, both at odds with her demonic nature but revels in the blood-shed it invites. A big part of her story will revolve around whether or not she’s capable of retaining her humanity. There are big hints that there’s a whole subculture of demons lurking just beneath the surface of the sane world, so, will she remain loyal to the human race?
Anime horror can be a bit weak at times, but a couple of scenes in these opening episodes were thoroughly unsettling; the mother of one of Jun’s friends is murdered, we know this because her gaping mouth and empty eye-sockets are filled with hundreds of squirming little insects! Also, it’s probably worth noting that the main writer is Chiaki J. Konaka, whose many other works of horror and science fiction I really admire. There is a lot of lesbian subtext too, including one outright spurned lover-turned-demon in epiosde 5.
Naturally, I am really enjoying this. It is dark, horrific and interesting. With monsters, etc.