Comments on: Ask John: What Makes Guro Manga Different from Live Action Horror?

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By: John

John — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:06:24 +0000

Jinjuito, thanks for the insightful perspective. It’s definitely not a approach that I would have thought of on my own. I’ll definitely keep this in mind in the future to see whether it’s consistently applicable.

By: jinjuito

jinjuito — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:28:35 +0000

first, it seems to be that you feel it’s ok to watch gore from the criminal point of view (impassive perspective), but not from the victim point of view (protagonists)
second, we must understand that western live-action is a product of ‘body’ focused West, while guro it’s a product of ‘karma’ focused East; consequently, we are shocked (interested) by the body trauma, while they are shocked (interested) in the ‘mind’ trauma – the body is just a vessel; so when you see a girl as a toilet in guro you feel disgusted by her body treatment, while Japanese by the ‘entity’ treatment
but this is just my opinion, Iâ€™m not neither ‘very’ western (as you can see from my English), nor eastern, and I like guro, just like any manga

By: John

John — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:02:01 +0000

Perhaps thankfully for folks like us, though, is the fact that extreme guro doesn’t appear in anime very often.

Good point about the emotional connection otaku have with manga and anime. However, I’m hesitant to address is in further detail myself because I imagine that it’s a tendency that’s not exclusive to just manga/anime. I figure that most die-hard fans of any entertainment medium invest their psyche heavily into that medium.

And cheers for being a Sarai reader. I thought I was the only one who’d ever read that series.

By: PockyBox.com

PockyBox.com — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:52:53 +0000

Totally agree here. Any anime fan who has surfed the web has probably when beseiged by images of cute anime girls twisted into chairs, tables, ect. I can’t understand the appeal of it myself, but I think the misogynistic undertones found in many hentai titles surface here as well. I believe John once commented in an entry regarding Bondage Game that woman are treated as objects and are physically manipulated and altered at will.

I also think part of the shock comes from how anime and manga tap into the minds of some fans. I get more emotional over anime far more often than live actions movies because I tend to care more for anime characters than live actors playing a part. The ending of Berserk destroyed me for a day. The end of Bible Black enraged a friend of mine to a point he tells people never to watch it. We still complain about the ending to Lessons of Darkness (seems like hentai in particular has a lot of emotionally distressing moments. I guess Japanese H fans are into something a little different than fast food for the little brain?)

The fantasy seems all the more real (go figure). When I watch Dead Alive, I point and laugh at the ridiculous gore. When I beheld a victim in the Sarai manga who was ripped in half and then cauterized (and still alive!), I couldn’t forget it ever.

Some of us our just wired a bit differently.