Horror Manga

Fan Boy Joined: 06 Jul 2004 Posts: 16

Can anyone recommend any good horror manga?

I recently read the Uzumaki and Tomie books by Ito, and while I thought Uzumaki was creative, both manga suffered from slow pacing and rather flat characters.

I would like to try some different authors, if anyone knows some good ones in this genre.

Thanks.

Fan Boy Joined: 20 Aug 2003 Posts: 43 Location: MA

Hideshi Hino, Kazuo Umezu and Shigeru Mizuki are probably the classic names in horror. Hino's "Red Snake" and "The Bug Boy" are great, more absurdist and darkly comic than frightening, but still good for a case of the creeps. I'm not as fond of his acknowledged masterpiece "Panorama of Hell", which has some great ideas (especially at the end) but never manages to mesh its combination of splatter and pained autobiography. The first 20 pages or so of Umezu's "Orochi" are a tour-de-force: fairy-tale like opening lines, pitch-perfect gothic atmosphere, fluid, unexpected switching between viewpoints, expert pacing. Nothing that comes after lives up to those pages, despite a suprisingly cynical ending and some uncomfortable sequences. I haven't read much Mizuki. Much of his best-known work looks to be a combination of comedy, fantasy and horror.

The work of Suehiro Maruo, while usually placed in the art/weird end of the spectrum, is certainly horrific, especially "Ultra-Gash Inferno", a collection of his 80s work for porno mags.

Although it's not likely to qualify for the horror tag even in the broadest sense, Jiro Matsumoto's "Freesia" is the only contemporary comic I can think of that exudes the sweaty-palms shaky-stomach rollercoaster feeling of some of the best horror movies and books.

That's all that immediately come to mind, though there are no doubt reams more.

Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 8:40 pm

Ryuguden.

Okay, that's really pushing it...

Omanga is probably the best scanlating group if you want horror-type stuff. In addition to the aforementioned Freesia, they also do MPD Psycho, Jisatsu Circle, and the spectacular masterpiece by Kazuo Umezu, Drifting Classroom.

Also, although it doesn't even remotely qualify as horror, reading Hanazono Merry Go Round never fail to give me the creeps.

big idjit Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 280

dr_pluto wrote:

Can anyone recommend any good horror manga?

I recently read the Uzumaki and Tomie books by Ito, and while I thought Uzumaki was creative, both manga suffered from slow pacing and rather flat characters.

I would like to try some different authors, if anyone knows some good ones in this genre.

Thanks.

i liked uzumaki. ): tomie i thought was a bit weak. gyo (also by ito) is better than tomie and not as good as uzumaki (in my opinion). it's a strange story that seems to be kind of slow and what not but it slowly gets more and more disgusting. if you don't like the pacing in uzumaki though, i'm not sure how much you'll like gyo.

the second gyo book also has 2 bonus short stories, one of which is absurdly weak (like 4 pages long), and the other which i liked alot.

besides that, gantz and mpd psycho are pretty gory, but i don't think they're creepy. well, mpd psycho was a bit creepy, but it goes from a creepy serial killer mystery to a story so obfuscated that i lost interest in it.

zashiki onna is kinda creepy too.

Groupie Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 118

DH Publishing (http://www.dhp-online.com/HinoHorror/index.html) is releasing a 16 volume collection of Hideshi Hino horror manga, the first being The Red Snake and Bug Boy that Chris V mentioned.

You could try Ito's Flesh-Colored Horror which is a collection of shorter horror one-shots. I haven't read Uzumaki or Tomie yet, so I don't know how they compare...

If you're desperate for anything and everything horror and don't care about quality, there's always Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid Saga. Its not creepy enough, but its there.

But no matter how desperate you are do NOT read Blood the Last Vampire 2002. It sucks. Its the embarrassing cousin of the movie that doesn't deserve to exist. The mangaka seems to think lesbian vampire sex can make up for its complete suckiness. Well no it doesn't!!! He can't even draw good lesbian vampire sex, whatever that would be like. The art sucks, the story sucks, everything about it just sucks. (Why Viz?! I thought you had relatively good taste in manga!?!)

I was just thinking about buying some sort of horror manga. Glad you asked about it, now I can leech off the replies. Wink

Street Musician Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Posts: 530

About the Blood manga: I mean, what did you really expect out of Tamaoki Benkyo?

Groupie Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 118

Emperor Ketchup wrote:

About the Blood manga: I mean, what did you really expect out of Tamaoki Benkyo?

I knew he did some sort of sex manga but I figured this one would have SOME semblence of story since he had to work within the confines of the Blood storyline. I naively expected something like the film. That was a dumb move, I fell for the only marketing gimmick that could sell that crap. I don't fall for that "the anime was good so read the manga!" line anymore thank god. At least this was borrowed from the library and I didn't waste my money.

Fan Boy Joined: 06 Jul 2004 Posts: 16

Thanks for all info. Freesia was the first manga i ever read online. It is pretty creepy and very well done.

I've thumbed through the BTLV manga, and it looked pretty stupid. I thought the movie was good though. I met the director at a con last year and he was a really cool guy who has worked with Otomo and other big names in anime. He seemed really glad to talk with someone that wasn't dressed up like a character from Slayers.

i remember reading about Hino in PULP -- didn't know anything was available from him in America. It's at a good price, too.

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:20 pm

I haven't read Uzumaki for years, ever since its initial run in Spirits back in the late 90s, but I remember finding it to be not creepy or scary, but hilarious. And by hilarious, I don't mean it in the semi-derogatory "so bad it's funny" sense, but just genuinely funny, in an absurd but good way.

I'm suddenly starting to feel an urge to purchase some Uzumaki tanks.

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:25 am

Summer Soldier wrote:

And by hilarious, I don't mean it in the semi-derogatory "so bad it's funny" sense, but just genuinely funny, in an absurd but good way.

There's always the Uzumaki movie if you need that Wink

("that" = so weird in an almost bad way it's funny)

big idjit Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 280

Summer Soldier wrote:

I haven't read Uzumaki for years, ever since its initial run in Spirits back in the late 90s, but I remember finding it to be not creepy or scary, but hilarious. And by hilarious, I don't mean it in the semi-derogatory "so bad it's funny" sense, but just genuinely funny, in an absurd but good way.

I'm suddenly starting to feel an urge to purchase some Uzumaki tanks.

Yeah I don't find most horror manga scary, but I still love reading them. Like Uzumaki I loved, not because it was scary or whatever, but just because it was so goddamn weird and creative. He's got one hell of an imagination and it's kinda neat to read the things he comes up with.

That's the same way I felt about Gyo. Though the second short story in Gyo 2 was kinda creepy in a way.

And I was highly disappointed in the Uzumaki movie. Maybe because I was told it was incredibly great. I thought the manga was many times better.

Fan Boy Joined: 20 Aug 2003 Posts: 43 Location: MA

Quote:

Summer Soldier: And by hilarious, I don't mean it in the semi-derogatory "so bad it's funny" sense, but just genuinely funny, in an absurd but good way.

The chapter where the bully and his victim turn into giant snails and have sex with each other in front of the grossed-out class is comedy gold. Not to mention the hair battle...or, on a dryer note, the fact that the boyfriend was already a muttering nut on the very first page.

Gyo also had its share of absurdity; it doesn't get much more absurd than hundreds of stinking dead fish careening through the streets. But the intentionally obnoxious girlfriend and a gloomy atmosphere made the book less enjoyable.

Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:11 pm

my favorite chapters of uzumaki were towards the end. the 'slowest chase suspense scene ever' bit was priceless. "dont run, slow and steady does it."

my favorite ito comic so far is tomie. a bit more inconsistent than uzumaki but the high points are even better. horny teachers posing as doctors, brainwashed students in knights' armor, and a nerdy bachelor cooking gormet food and buying jewelry for a teenage girl's living severed head.

'majin- devil' had some good moments in a similar vein but made too much sense to really succeed as either 'horror' or 'humor' with me.

while i havent read 'red snake' or 'bug boy' or very much by kazuo umezu neither hino or umezu's manga have really struck much of a chord with me yet.

hino's art and some of his ideas are amongst the best in comics [agree with chris v. on the ending of panorama of hell, but i also really liked the restaurant of cadavers], but i think he tries too hard for easy shocks too often.

as for umezu, it's probably unfair but somehow the fact that his characters somehow recall 'captain tsubasa' drains much of the affect. again he's got some great ideas so i'll continue to read what i can get by him, maybe i just havent found the right one yet.

i actually was pleasantly surprised by blood: the last vampire [both the comic and the movie, though the comic was better]. i usually hate anything that has oshii's name on it so had admittedly lowered expectations for the movie, the action and shortness helped a lot, i think. not terribly good but had some interesting parts.
i think going into the manga helps if you realize that vampirism [or at least, vampire stories] is all about sexual domination. so it follows that it would really take a rather perverse [and luckilly also nihilistic - in an early punkish [think crisis or death in june] sense] mind to bring out well. benkyo tamaoki isnt someone whose manga i really intend to follow but i liked this one quite a bit for what it was. if anything i didnt think it was graphic and ugly enough. and that goes double for the movie.

Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:25 pm

Quote:

as for umezu, it's probably unfair but somehow the fact that his characters somehow recall 'captain tsubasa' drains much of the affect. again he's got some great ideas so i'll continue to read what i can get by him, maybe i just havent found the right one yet.

Hmm, didn't you mention Drifting Classroom in the Top Ten thread?

Fan Boy Joined: 27 Nov 2003 Posts: 2

Recently I read Mantish Woman, it's pretty good too, various short horror story - urban legend, I like the story about Mantish Woman and the family that create Hell and judge people most. The Flesh-Color Horror of Junji Ito is also a must read, it's also a collection of short stories, the chapter about the woman who doesn't have skin is the most memorable, I can't think of beauty like that Twisted Evil

.

I enjoy Uzumaki, Tomie and Gyo too, but I think they drag out too much at the end. Of course I read whole series Uzumaki straight up 8 hours and get a huge headache so maybe that's why it's less enjoyable to me.

I don't consider Freesia a horror story, action and sci-fi and a little creepy maybe, but not horror.

I read The Ring, but not quite what I expect, not horror at all, but maybe that's because I already watched the movie?