Again Umezu Kazuo Box on His Head
Review
by Carlo Santos,True cat Eyed Boy
GN 2
Half demon and one-half man, Cat Eyed Male child lives on the fringes of order and brings bad luck wherever he goes. With the "Band of 1 Hundred Monsters" on the loose, Cat Eyed Male child races to cease them and finally uncovers their baroque origins. His side by side adversary is a fleshy monster that only appears to a single cursed family—so how come he tin see it as well? Another mystery likewise awaits him in a village where a religious statue transforms into a bloodthirsty demon. Only sometimes the problems Cat Eyed Boy witnesses are the ones that humans bring upon themselves: a boy longing for his dead mother, a father making an ill-advised promise, a boy who sees visions of hell, and two childhood friends drifting apart. Whatever happens adjacent, it won't be a happy ending. | ||||||||
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| Synopsis: |  | ||
| Half demon and one-half homo, True cat Eyed Boy lives on the fringes of society and brings bad luck wherever he goes. With the "Band of I Hundred Monsters" on the loose, True cat Eyed Boy races to cease them and finally uncovers their bizarre origins. His side by side adversary is a fleshy monster that only appears to a unmarried cursed family—then how come he can see it also? Another mystery also awaits him in a village where a religious statue transforms into a bloodthirsty demon. But sometimes the problems True cat Eyed Boy witnesses are the ones that humans bring upon themselves: a male child longing for his expressionless female parent, a father making an ill-advised promise, a boy who sees visions of hell, and ii childhood friends drifting apart. Whatever happens next, it won't be a happy catastrophe. | |||
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| Only in case the get-go 500 pages of the Cat Eyed Male child compilation didn't freak you out enough, here'south another 500 pages that are worth a attempt. Over again, each story boasts shocking images designed to casualty on our greatest fears—monsters no i else can see, horrific creatures thirsting for blood, terrible tragedies befalling our loved ones. But peradventure Kazuo Umezu indulges himself a bit too much in these shocking images: "Hundred Monsters" is already a continuation of a sprawling plotline from Volume 1, and "The Meatball Monster" keeps going until information technology skews off into absurd B-movie schlock. To tell the truth, Umezu'due south real mastery lies in the short pieces at the terminate of this book: all information technology takes is a simple premise and several pages to create a chilling portrait of the human soul. But almost those long stories. Even though "Ring of I Hundred Monsters" finally concludes later on the ill-timed cliffhanger in the previous volume, it all the same feels similar so much filler—random acts of cruelty and people yelling at each other until Cat Eyed Boy finally solves a mystery that he should have figured out a hundred pages agone. Similarly, "The Meatball Monster" starts out with a strong, chilling premise but overstays its welcome until it finally descends into one those ridiculous "It Came From Wherever!" brute features. Of course, the similarity between Umezu's work and mid-20th-century lurid horror is clear, just there are some things that but don't historic period well. Even "The One thousand-Handed Demon," which brings up the classic concept of a creepy-looking object coming to life, shoots itself in the human foot with a cop-out ending: It was all a dream ... or was it?! So maybe managing medium-to-long storylines isn't Umezu's greatest strength. Fortunately, his curt horror vignettes in the book's terminal 150 pages are so much more effective: each story relies on a single idea or mood, designed to disturb the reader merely by proffer. "The Stairs" and "The Paw" both focus on the relationship between a mother and child—the most powerful of all familial bonds—and as those relationships go twisted with elements of the supernatural, they get something unsettling yet idea-provoking. Other familiar man relationships also become warped across recognition—father and son in "The Hope," and childhood buddies in "The Friend." These stories are the ones that linger in the mind, considering they focus not on imaginary, cartoony monsters, simply the fears and visions of normal people. However even in those shorter and simpler stories, Umezu can't help but throw in the occasional creature—and really, that's the visual trademark throughout the Cat Eyed Male child compilation. A deformed body part here, an unnecessary appendage in that location, a cantankerous-brood with an beast, perhaps—and voila! Yet some other creature from the macabre chief's inventive mind. Intense black-and-white contrasts, too as detailed textures (used to terrifying effect in "The Meatball Monster"), likewise add to the visual shock factor. But the artwork has its weaknesses besides; the homo characters all kind of look the same, and even if you lot similar the retro designs, the fact remains that they all seem express to a specific set of poses: Shocked Face, Running Away, or Expressionless. The strict rectangular paneling also hinders the horror potential of the art at times; a lot of fundamental action sequences terminate up as lots of little squares crammed together. At least the full-folio spreads make their impact felt, and the occasional color pages in this volume are a pleasant bonus (the blood-blood-red segment of "The Paw" is wonderfully apt). As one can imagine from the subject matter, nuanced dialogue is non to exist plant in these stories. In fact, staying truthful to its B-horror pedigree, most of the writing is simple and expository, nearly similar having the characters narrating directly to the reader: "The monsters are chasing u.s.a.!" "I've got to get abroad!" "They're trying to eat other people!" Not exactly hard work for a translator. Audio furnishings, meanwhile, are handled by replacing them with skillful old retro-horror lettering in English. Because of the dialogue'south simplicity and the fantastical themes of the stories, there aren't too many cultural points to be explained, then this volume just adds the occasional footnote where necessary. However, an afterword past cultural critic Mizuho Hirayama is a nice touch, where readers tin reflect farther on the themes of Umezu's work. Cover flaps, sturdy binding, and a $25 price tag also propose that this is aimed more at the serious collector rather than the casual reader. As Cat Eyed Male child wanders off in search of his adjacent doomed encounter, the most interesting thing to remember virtually is that he isn't inherently bad: he just happens to attract bad things. That moral neutrality, especially inside the last few stories in this volume, reminds us that true horror comes not when gruesome creatures attempt to assail us, merely when people exercise terrible things to themselves. Modern-day artists may take expressed that with better visual technique, and with better control of storytelling, but information technology is Kazuo Umezu who plunges his manus in and pulls out the raw, beating middle of these terrifying emotions. Once you get by practiced and evil, in that location is only mystery and dread, and standing correct in that location in the center of it all is a freaky little half-demon kid with bulbous true cat optics. |
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| Overall : B- Story : C+ Fine art : B + Shorter stories practice a corking job of hitting upon some spooky ideas. Visually intense with bizarre, shocking imagery. | |||
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