Ciudades e infraestructuras

by Shintaro Kago

Este manga recoge una nueva selección de relatos de Shintaro Kago publicados originalmente en la revista AX Magazine. En 35 historias cortas, ‘Ciudades e infraestructuras’ ofrece una mirada a las rarezas de la vida cotidiana, como sólo Shintaro Kago representa con su estilo único, en el que une lo absurdo y lo grotesco para señalar con un humor negro muy poco convencional las fallas de nuestras sociedades.

En esta nueva colección de historias que son parte del tríptico que Ibutsu Konnyû (Cuerpos extraños), el autor brilla una vez más con su espíritu burlón que puede despertarnos disgusto o carcajadas, pero jamás dejarnos indiferentes ante su crítica social. Este volumen incluye también cuatro páginas de ilustraciones a todo color.

Genres: Manga, Short Stories, Horror

164 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2021

About the author

Kago Shintarō ( 駕籠真太郎) is a Japanese illustrator and manga artist. Kano was born in Tokyo in 1969. He debuted in 1988 on the magazine COMIC BOX. Since then his comics, usually short stories, have been published in several adult manga magazines, gaining him considerable popularity around the world.
Kago specialises in ero-guro, a Japanese visual genre that puts its focus on eroticism, sexual corruption, and grotesque body horror. Many of Kago's manga have strongly satirical overtones, and deal with grotesque subjects such as extreme sex, scatology and body modification. His unique style has been called "fashionable paranoia".

Reviews

[Nadia Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ma première incursion avec Shintaro Kago et je suis très impressionnée. Kago a la pensée larérale et s'enjoue de situations quotidiennes pour créer des paraboles critiques. Grotesque et horreur dérangeante qui ne laisse pas du tout indifférent.

[Pilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo primero que leo de ero-guro japonés, con muy poco de erótico y mucho de grotesco. Son treinta y tantos microcuentos de no más de cuatro páginas cada uno cuyo fabuloso dibujo me ha hecho recordar la estética noventera de aquella película de Paul Verhoeven con Schwarzenegger, Total Recall, y la de los cabezones surrealistas de Fang Lijun, de aquel movimiento chino de los Cínicos Realistas. No obstante, los temas tratados son muy siglo XXI. Si se lee entre líneas, el poso que deja cada cuento es desolador, la crítica a la sociedad urbanita es despiadada (acoso, ansiedad, invisibilidad social, explotación de recursos, miedo al inmigrante...) pero todo ello está aderezado, así lo veo yo, con altas dosis de retranca gallega. Los que más me han gustado son los cuentos que tratan la falta de espacio tanto físico como mental, sobre resquicios, callejones sin salida, ciudades amuralladas, vías férreas, y en especial, aquel de la niña que arreglaba el mundo reabrochando los cierres con botones.

[Beatriz Calvo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ninguna historia llega a cuajar, además de que es un guarro

[André Sousa · Rating 2 out of 5]

5/10
A.K.A. = Cities and Infrastructure

[Felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I got a Junji Ito vibe while quickly flipping through it.
But it's more like his weird sexually deviant cousin.

Including a lot of children in, uh.. weird positions, for a lack of better words. Chapter titled "Toilet Paper" made me very uneasy, and while I like being disturbed by horror this is not the type of thing I want to be disturbed by.
As well as the author seemingly having an obsession with sexualizing high school girls. All those scenes also includes family members so that's that.

Some of the chapters are just straight up s*xual assault (p.67 for example). And it honestly doesn't feel like it was put there in a horror context. I didn't enjoy reading through that.

There's also a bunch of Chapters I just straight up didn't really understand completely? (I read this in french so chapter titles might not be 100% accurate) Lost baggage p.59 and Wrist and Handle p.115 are the most confusing ones to me.

Honestly I feel so conflicted about this because it felt very obviously drawn/written by a man (in a bad way). But it sometimes had unexpected good gore ideas I'd never seen before and I really do appreciate that. The author very clearly has experience drawing guts and other unsightly horrors and that's also why I decided to not rate it any lower.

[Ewan Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, this is an anthology. Like most anthologies, there are some decent sections, some good ones, and some duds. I'm not giving this 1 star because I find the horror concepts introduced to be interesting overall, and there are some sections I really liked. However, those aforementioned duds in the case of this book give me a strong desire to bleach my eyes.