Garden

by Usamaru Furuya

古屋兎丸全身全霊！幻想、快楽、目覚め、葛藤、科学、後悔、破滅、……。７つの庭が配置された、天才作家・衝動の初短編集！かつて未完のまま連載を終えた超問題作「エミちゃん」、鬼気迫る１１４枚の描き下ろし全ページ完全収録。「Wsamarus2001」では味わえない、古屋兎丸のアナザーサイドかつエッセンシャル・クオリティ。

Genres: Manga, Horror, Comics, Seinen, Comics Manga

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2000

About the author

Usamaru Furuya (古屋兎丸) is a Japanese manga creator from Tokyo. His production covers a variety of art styles and genres, such as horror, humour, slice-of-life, erotica, sci-fi, always with a personal surrealistic touch. Society oppression and the human condition are common themes in his body of work.
Furuya showed an interest in comics making since elementary school. He graduated from Tama Art University, where he had studied sculpture and oil painting.
His manga career started in the alternative magazine 'Garo', in which he published a series of one-page comics called Palepoli (1994-1995). He then worked on Short Cuts (1996-1999), a gag manga serialised in the mainstream magazine 'Weekly Young Sunday'. Other short stories from the same period were collected in the books Garden (2000) and Plastic Girl (2000).
Over the years Furuya has created work for a number of manga magazines, underground and mainstream. Among his series available in one or more Western languages are: the dystopian The Music of Marie (2000-2001); the surreal horror Lychee Light Club (2005-2006), loosely based on a play by Norimizu Ameya; the post-apocalyptic 51 Ways to Save Her (2006-2007); Genkaku Picasso (2008-2010); No Longer Human (2009-2011), adaptation of a novel by Osamu Dazai; Amane Gymnasium (2017-2020).

Reviews

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 3 out of 5]

A modern parody of The Garden of Earthly Delights. A morbid yet humorous retelling of the Virgin Mary myth. A futuristic island that draws out the souls of orphaned girls to create philosophers eggs... Garden is a collection of very disturbing tales of dark surrealism and sexual corruption, satirizing biblical themes, artists and philosophers in intriguing ways. It combines horror, sci-fi and dark fantasy with twisted religious allegories

Some of the stories relied too heavily on shock value and felt thematically shallow, but others were extremely creative and visually fascinating. My favorite story was the one about the girls being turned into philosophers eggs. It reminded me of those crazy vintage sci-fi anime like Angel's Egg and Serial Experiments Lain.

***

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[s · Rating 3 out of 5]

a few of these stories are very good, the gene wolfe riff in particular, but the final story emi-chan fucked me up for days. it’s probably the apex of a specific strain of deeply inadvisable ero-guro (although the generic function of that term i think glosses over the differences between the reprehensible and worthwhile work) cartooning (see also: jun hayami) focused on the absolute mutilation, degradation, and sexual abuse of women, but often also teenagers and children. i’ve never read anything in this vein as overwhelmingly awful and bleak and disgusting as emi-chan, it’s basically that one chapter of from hell w a 8 year-old, so ... plz just be aware.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garden is a collection of short stories, and there's only one I really liked a lot, which was The Book of the Moon. The rest are just shocking for the sake of being shocking and overall kind of gross and misogynistic and rapey. I like Furuya's art in general, but the stories are just blah.

[Neïla]

I’ve been a big horror fan since Childhood & love Furuya’s drawing style but I wasn’t able to finish this book. Emi-chan’s story which starts exactly halfway through the book was impossible to finish for me, so there’s 50% of the book that I didn’t read. I truly tried, but I mentally/physically react really bad to visual depictions of sexual abuse & the level of rawness with which violence against children are represented in this book is unbelievable. I’m really having a hard time understanding the point.

[bombalobombax · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly, I have read some pages, with drawings and words printed on it. One of the mangas ever.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last story … I’ve never read something more disturbing, big trigger warnings, violent, vile and masterfully drawn. I am traumatized for life.

[Sam (superblomper)]

idk why I thought this would be a good morning coffee read ( ಠ ͜ʖಠ)

[Billie Tyrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a mixed bag but the artwork was very varied and accomplished, going from Bosch to German Expressionism to Francis Bacon. Nothing wrong with the short stories but there is a weird over abundance of sweaty rapists and child killers... and it doesn't really have much of a point to make besides the fact that these things happen to young girls. But the art itself gets across both dreams and reality and how they intersect; the last story in particular how the girl is getting assaulted in the woods and part of her mind is regressing to her childhood in order to deal with the traumatic event... but then it just ends with her getting her face smashed in. The last story actually tainted the rest of the collection for me, as up until then I was pretty much fine with most of it. Maybe that's the point but it would have been nice to have another story just to end it all on a more poignant and less adolescent note.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

glorious surrealism with a hint of eroguro. for the brave

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

a arte é bem legal mas as histórias são tão violentas

[pato]

wow. fucking revolting. depraved beyond redemption. still think about it to this day. haunting.

[Carlo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Manga che ho recuperato in occasione di un bundle edito dalla Coconino, molto apprezzato dato che era impreziosito da una piccola stampa firmata dall'autore Usamaru Furuya.
Garden raccoglie alcuni racconti che hanno a che fare con il grottesco e con una sorta di mondo fantastico, o forse dovrei dire fantascientifico molto interessante.
Personalmente ho apprezzato il primo racconto, intitolato "L'origine della nudità", unico rappresentato a colori, che mi ha immerso in uno scenario immaginario che univa animali reali e fantastici, ambientazioni naturalistiche ed eteree.
Breve ma divertente anche il racconto intitolato "La fellatio angelica".
"Il libro della luna" è stata la storia che mi è piaciuta di più in assoluto, approfondita, atmosferica, fantascientifica e sentimentale, l'ho letta volentieri.
Per il resto devo dire alti e bassi. Furuya è un autore importantissimo e non lo metto in dubbio ma alcune sue cose forse vanno sapute prendere con la giusta educazione, e forse mi manca abbastanza esperienza a riguardo.

[Marcellina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read this entire book, only the last chapter or story, as I heard about it from a YouTube video discussing books that were unsettling. Obviously, I had to read it. I'm not even sure when this was written, but the timing of it feels very appropriate to the world today and my own personal life and journey. It does feel as if society is getting worse as far as being selfish and hurtful (IMO) and this last story touches upon that and how to "cleanse" society of these negative traits, so to speak. This last chapter is VERY violent, graphic, deals with sexual assault/trauma and murder so yeah... do with that what you will. But the ideas and questions this story brings up is worth the read. I found this online since you can't buy the English version online as far as I know? Just google "where can I read Garden by Usamaru Furuya" and you should find some helpful links. I gave this rating 4 stars just because I haven't read any of the other stories in the book, but the entire book is available online to read for free.

[Alex Gabrielli · Rating 5 out of 5]

- L’impulso stesso mi ha portato alla parola chiave “violenza”, e il motivo per cui ho proseguito con la violenza contro le bambine è stato perché volevo rappresentare il dolore in modo che mi trafiggesse ancora di più. La violenza contro i membri più vulnerabili della società provoca in me […] un dolore respingente. Era in sintonia con i miei sentimenti di allora di voler fare a pezzi tutto ciò che mi riguardava, ed era espressione del mio desiderio di cogliere qualcosa al di là della dolorosa distruzione. -

Furuya mentore.

[Felicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is not for sensitive people. The drawings are beautiful and realistic, but they seem to me to be the representation of dreams under the influence of substances or the innermost fantasies. The dominant theme is man's equation with supreme evil and the glorification of nature.

[mina · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the fuck do I even say about this. Up until the last chapter I was mildly intrigued, and by the end I almost started to skim through the pages just to get it over with. It's definitely one that'll stick with me for a while.

[ale is reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

avrei messo 5 se non fosse per il racconto “il libro della luna”

[Francesco Sermarini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, definetly it's something

[Signor Carunchio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una pugnalata drittissima, con uno stile fenomenale. Recupererò sicuramente altre opere dell'autore,
il racconto Emi è un qualcosa di semplicemente folle.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

dot dot dot

[darklunette · Rating 4 out of 5]

una raccolta di storie strambe, perverse e riflessive sulla condizione umana in un giardino dell'eden inquietante e realistico.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

裸体の起源 is pretty much the best thing ever. This is what I'm here for.
月の書 is also good.
Usamaru is not my favorite eroguro and this is far from his best work, but still pretty damned awesome.