Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby
by Takashi Nemoto
Rated: ADULTS ONLY (as is the contents of this review)
As manga has grown in popularity in the US and fans have discovered that Japanese publications are not only shonen and shojo fare, independent publishers have been picking up some under-the-radar titles. Earlier this year Last Gasp brought Tokyo Zombie to English and it has received a positive response from reviewers, despite its radical style and story-line.
Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby reminds me a bit of Tokyo Zombie in that it is an clearly a passion project of an underground manga making the surprising cross across the Pacific. Although both volumes employ the heta-uma style of deceptively rough artwork, there is basically where the similarities end.
Indeed both Tokyo Zombie and Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby are shocking in their own rights, the message and black humor of the first title are more palatable. To be frank, Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby is a collection of tales of sexual depravity that I have not only never seen before, I never even imagined existed.
Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby goes places my brain has never been before, and I am not sure there is a way to properly prepare a person for what they will find if they dare crack open these pages. The introduction by manga critic Tomofusa Kure gives the reader an introduction to the four stories contained in the nearly 200 pages of this volume. The history of the appearances in independent magazines, sometime to the chagrin of their readers, is interesting, but little preparation for the opening and title story. Without giving away too much, a digesting old man who pees on flowers, rapes nuns and flashes children is attacked by his own socially-conscious penis. His little head "takes over" and you can see the results if you look closely at the image on the cover. The new man walks on his hands and his penis takes the form of a human head. What ensues is bizarre and disgusting, but also often clever and very original.
The subsequent stories (divided into chapters as they appeared in magazines) vary in their shock levels when compared to each other, but all are over the top of anything I have come across until now. I have seen and enjoyed (if that is the right word) a variety of guro manga and artwork, but the heta-uma style of Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby is not exactly guro as I am accustomed to. There is not so much blood and death as there is extreme sexual situations which might be criminal if they weren't so clever. For example, how a pregnant woman gets her lesbian lover pregnant with the help of her horny fetus isn't the most disturbing scene in "The Sex Rogue". The stories are filled with boners, masturbation, semen, feces, and other shit you can't imagine.
Interviews with Nemoto and an afterword by Kevin Quigley help to legitimize Takashi Nemoto's place in the Japanese media world for American readers who have likely never heard of him before. However the work itself has to stand on its own. Comparisons to R. Crumb I can stomach. To Mark Twain I find a bit far-reaching.
Although I find Monster men Bureiko Lullaby to be slyly original, it is still incredibly disgusting. Readers who can dredge through the perversion may find the deeper message critics are now discovering from Nemoto in Japan. I won't say it isn't there, but I wasn't the reader able to find the diamond in the [insert least favorite body fluid]-filled rough.
Reading Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby is an experience. It is an experience I do not regret in any way, but I also feel like I need to say ten "Hail Marys" and read five Shojo Beats to cleanse my soul. Proceed at your own risk.
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