Kami no Hidarite Akuma no Migite vol 2

by Kazuo Umezu

Genres: Manga, Horror, Graphic Novels, Weird Fiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Kazuo Umezu or Kazuo Umezz was a Japanese manga artist, musician and actor. Starting his career in the 1950s, he is among the most famous artists of horror manga and has been vital for its development, considered the "god of horror manga". In 1960s shōjo manga like Reptilia, he broke the industry's conventions by combining the aesthetics of the commercial manga industry with gruesome visual imagery inspired by Japanese folktales, which created a boom of horror manga and influenced manga artists of following generations. He created successful manga series such as The Drifting Classroom, Makoto-chan and My Name Is Shingo, until he retired from drawing manga in the mid 1990s. He was a public figure in Japan, known for wearing red-and-white-striped shirts and doing his signature "Gwash" hand gesture.

Reviews

[fonz · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5

Uf, me ha parecido muy flojo, sobretodo si lo comparamos al fantástico primer volumen. Dos historias donde los puntos fuertes de Umezu; su poderosa imaginería del horror, la creación de atmósferas y su tratamiento del lado más desquiciado del ser humano, no acaban de brillar. En la primera historia, la habitual premisa absurda, unos niños que asesinan a su profesora, "para ver su verdadero rostro", deriva en una trama muy convencional (convencional para Umezu, claro) de venganzas desde el más allá. Y la segunda narración, acerca de un súcubo-araña, donde ni siquiera brillan las escenas impactantes del maestro, acaba resultando muy aburrida si exceptuamos la ambigua (y misógina) viñeta final.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read Ito before, but this is my first journey into more shocking, gory manga. Umezu is a skilled artist, but there is somewhat of an unpolished quality to his humans that makes this that much more uncanny. Sou running in stiff, frozen positions while screaming "Ahh!" in panel after panel takes these stories to a strange realm. I know there is worse to come, content-wise, so I may not finish the series, but I'm interested so far, especially because I learned that these were originally sold to young children, which must have fueled countless nightmares in the late 80s.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one with the erasers and the spiders.

Not as good as the first volume. The best part was when he screamed when he saw the toilet in the ground with no seat. I would be horrified too.

The spiders story was pretty good. But a lot of things don’t make sense. Feel like I need to reread these.

[Kurtis Burkhardt · Rating 2 out of 5]

...😮

[BozCitac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Definitely one of the worse, if not the worst, works by Umezu. The first volume was a never-ending ultraviolent nightmare that just kept stacking one outrageous plot twist on top of another to tell a memorable and conclusive story, but this volume serves as a very loose and obviously inferior sequel that instead offers two much shorter and weaker stories – one is a generic story about an evil animal-human hybrid living in a remote lair and messing with people's minds, while the other one is a completely nonsensical and surreal tale in which the protagonists kill their teacher for no reason whatsoever. The first story didn't really have much to offer other than the visuals of the villanous creature, but in that department Umezu actually seemed to even regress compared to his much earlier works, with the drawings being glaringly sloppy. The second story seemed to me like it would be about a naughty child eventually getting punished for his crime, but less than halfway through any sense of a plot or a remotely comprehensible conflict is utterly lost, with everything devolving into a string of barely comprehensible scenes of violence (plus, the fact that the protagonists help the naughty kid kill their teacher for no reason whatsoever is apparently treated as a benign and even good act???).

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. The enemy in this one is basically some sort of spider succubus. Pure scary folk tale here, no ero guro elements. Again, Im surprised at myself for actually caring about and liking the main character who is this supernaturally imbued young boy. The only thing I didnt like about this is that its really leaning heavily on the "nobody believes the protagonist" trope which is increasingly unbelievable as his powers become more and more evident and he accurately predicts all these horrible supernatural events.