Super-Dimensional Love Gun

by Shintaro Kago, Andrew Castle (Translator)

Be warned, this book is not for the faint of heart. Collecting fifteen different short stories from his almost thirty year career, Super-Dimensional Love Gun features stories of neurotic dark humor and unease. Konno just recently started dating a classmate, but his greatest sexual desire maybe something that could be too much for her to stomach. Miss Toomezuka has a hobby that would make others skin crawl, but when a student introduces her to a club of like minded individuals, she has an itch to try more. Known around the world for his "fashionable paranoia" style, Kago stories involve satirical situations along with grotesque subject matters and sexual body modification. His art has been featured in numerous collections, including Fakku’s own Metempsychosis and BookLoud’s ComicLoud Magazine. Love Gun will be Kago’s second English language release behind the UK’s UDWFG printing of Industrial Revolution and World War (2016). Legendary Seattle based indie comics publisher Fantagraphics will be releasing a collection of Kago art in the summer of 2018.
Description
1. Nihonichi no Bishoujo no Machi (Japan's Number One Beauty Town)
2. Konno Shigure no Koufukunaru Hibi (Konno Shigure's Blessed Daily Life)
3. Toomezuka Sensei no Yuuganaru Tanoshimi (Miss Toomezuka's Refined Hobby)
4. Nukekubi Aika (Lament of the Headless)
5. Shiroi Ito (White String)
6. Koukou Kansen Shoukougun (Oral Cavity Contagion Syndrome)
7. Atsume Mono * Sawa (Collecting * Touch)
8. Atsume Mono * Mizu (Collecting * Water)
9. Ekimae Toono (Station Toono)
10. Ekimae Indo (Station India)
11. Inbiji (Invis)
12. Gotouchi Kankouannai (Local Tourist Information)
13. Koi no Choujikuuhou (Super Dimensional Love Gun)
14. Tonde Menihairu Natsu no Mushi (The Summer Bugs That Fly Into Your Eyes)

Genres: Manga, Horror, Comics, Short Stories, Graphic Novels, Japan, Comedy

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

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

[Krystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is BEYOND MESSED UP and I don't know how to feel other than disgusted.

How do I even describe how disturbing this was?

Body horror, sexual depravity, mutilations and murder, twisted entities ... the whole collection was batsh*t insane.

Some of the stories were cleverly disturbing, like the one where a girl is obsessed with scratching herself.

Some were hilarious, like the monster-girl whose head pops off every time she orgasms.

Then some were just straight up nonsensical and bizarre, like the one with some god-slug thing sucking the life from buildings.

That's just a small example - honestly, I tried to burn most of these out of my brain immediately after reading.

There is a plethora of naked bodies in all kinds of messy detail; one story even focuses on the application of penises with foreskin in new and unconventional settings. There is an abundance of rape and mutilation and everything seems to come with its own depraved sexual angle. There's one panel showing a girl being penetrated from behind by a horse which I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

And somehow there's still a dark, purposeful humour to it all.

This is next level Japanese horror. It goes to all kinds of extreme lengths to gross you out and succeeds almost too well. It's bizarre and twisted and will take you in unexpected directions that will more often than not make you want to scream/cry/puke.

I hated reading it, and it made me think longingly of getting into a hot shower fully clothed and sobbing til I had nothing left.

So like, mixed feelings I guess.

[Maggie Siebert · Rating 4 out of 5]

shintaro kago over junji ito for me any day of the week

[Leila Anani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big Junji Ito fan and I have to say I've been largely disappointed with other 'recommended' horror manga - the likes of Kazuo Umezu, Toru Yamazaki, Jun Abe etc.. have never quite managed to capture the grotesque and strange in quite the same way as Ito. I was pleasantly surprised by Super Dimensional Love Gun - the cover and quirky title are deceiving. If this hadn't been highly recommended to me I'd likely have missed it entirely because it doesn't look or sound like a horror manga - And yet from the opening tale its up there with Ito - fusing the grotesque and surreal with black humour and shock value to make you squirm.

Quality of the stories are a mixed bag, but the high quality of the artwork make even the most random stories at least interesting. Highlight for me is 'Lament of the Headless' simply because I'm a massive Penanggalan fan. I also liked 'white string' which fuses acupuncture with body piercing, 'collecting loss' about women who have serial abortions and Invizz about a new craze to make body parts go invisible.

For those of you who like nasty, sting in the tail stories with a heavy dose of weird, surreal and eroticism check this out.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating compilation of stories. Some are horrifying, some are funny, all are disgusting! I recently read DDT and hated it (see my review) and this compilation was the exact opposite. This is how bizzaro horror should be done. Anthologies are always prone to unevenness and that is true here, but it's certainly a great read for the strong of stomach.

[Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

As is common with anthologies, this was a mixed bag. I really liked the first half, but the second half did nothing for me. The first half focuses more on bizarre concepts and body horror, while the second half felt a lot weaker in concepts and lazier in how it uses shock value. Don't get me wrong, this book is almost all shock value—and that's fine—but in most of the stories it is used to develop or explore the concepts, and I think a few of the later chapters missed that mark. Tono Station specifically comes to mind, as I thought it was mostly non-sensical and the shock humor didn't land since it wasn't playing off of any central idea like the other chapters. As a result, I found it to be in poor taste despite the fact that most of the other stories depict the same heinous acts. The difference is the purpose: further a story's absurdist concept versus tick off an "ero" checkbox for the magazine publisher. Your milage may vary, but this is a hard book to recommend to anyone who is not already a fan of or has a passing interest in ero guro.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely at LEAST 16+. Lots of triggering topics in it so, fair warning. Even so, I enjoyed this book for the most part. An 8/10 in all from me. It is a collection of bizarre horror stories. From the selection of stories there were only two that I didn't really understand, but the rest had really good symbolism. Worth at least a read, but I would recommend buying it also :))

[Keith Kavanagh · Rating 3 out of 5]

if someone asked for a look at this book, it'd be for a dare as opposed to a lend

[Stef]

Ngga tau mau ngerating berapa keburu stress setelah baca nya. Art style nya mayan cakep cuman cerita nya ini gilaa bizaree banget, ngga mikir berapa kali kudu misuh-misuh di tiap chapternya. Kepikiran banget ini Kago sensei bikin cerita begini.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow . . . that was weird.

I liked this collection quite a bit, though there were some stories where the violence or sex seemed gratuitous. The second-to-last story featured genital mutilation that felt like it was just added, perhaps to align with a publication’s parameters? Not sure.

The last story is a great example of Kago’s thought process. It takes an abstract idea and runs with it as far as possible. Next thing you know, foreskin is being used to filter waterways and lovers are being caught in the protagonist’s eyes . . . ocular circumcision is also included.

Communicable Mouth Disease was really absurd and fun.

A lot of interesting fetishes are introduced herein. There was a story about a guy who wanted his girlfriend to eat him. Another featured a club that loved to itch themselves, but there was a focus on making their wounds and sores bigger so their itch would cover more surface area on the body.

I could go on, but the truth is, just about everything in this book was weird. I enjoyed that. Each story really runs with an odd idea, but the stories are short so nothing feels padded.

As with Ito, the bizarre nature of the stories is really accentuated by the art work.

I fear manga is becoming a bit of an expensive habit for me though. The local libraries don’t carry manga for adults very often, so I’m left buying a lot of this for kindle on Amazon. Ain’t nobody got money for that!

[Robert Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is really weird and somewhat pornographic. It's very much in the style of Cronenberg Body Horror with the fetish levels turned up to max and viewed through intense neuroses all twisted and melted together in a surrealist bent. The artwork is solid though the story structure is almost non-existent in any given story, they play more like segments in a collage that follow a strange idea or character reacting to a strange idea until distraction sets in and the "story" abruptly ends. If any of that sounds interesting to you then I can recommend this to you, if not then stay far away. I liked it but would have liked at least one traditionally structured story exploring the neurotic fantasies within.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felt itchy and fidgety the entire time reading this and practically gnawed my fingernails down to the bone. This is Japanese horror (mostly body horror) taken to its most extreme limits, making Junji Ito look like an episode of Bluey. And yet, it never felt disgusting or vile just for shock value...there's an element of purposeful satire to the stories that made many of them almost endearing.

It's hard to describe, but it works really well if you can stomach the material. The parts involving pins (there are many of them) are especially tough reads, for me anyways.

This is also a great introduction to Kago as the book is very high quality but just like $8 on Amazon.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Name a taboo or violent act and it's here in these pages. The stories and art are brutal, absurd, and often hilarious. Some stories are strongly satirical, while others exist simply to be as over the top as possible. But it mostly works. My favorite stories are the comedic ones, but beware that the humor is VERY dark. Don't be deceived by the cute cover, and only read this if you have a strong stomach. Even then you may need to take breaks in between.

[Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sicko <3

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories are twisted and disgusting, while others are just strange. Aside from a couple stories which are meandering and random, the rest were highly entertaining to read.

[Kristian Dobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grotesque, disturbing, and darkly humorous. I need to read more manga by this guy. This is my level of fucked up.

[Daphna Ivanka]

HOW DO U RATE THIS THING, WHAT IS THIS

[Granit Hysiqi · Rating 4 out of 5]

From what I've read so far by Kago, I have noticed that these stories work better in a shortened but varied format, meaning that a collection is the best presentation to his previously published standalone ero guru titles.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of bizarro horror manga shorts. Topics include cannibalism as the ultimate expression of love, the diverse uses of foreskin, and abortion as one of the fine arts.

So yeah, probably not for everyone.

[Ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sin duda este manga no es para todo el mundo, realmente tiene paneles super turbios y para algunos puede ser sumamente incómodo o incluso desagradable.
Personalmente me he hizo experimentar muchas sensaciones desde lo desagradable hasta la cómico.
Amé el surrealismo de Kago y su narrativa bien lograda para desarrollar una historia corta.
Su arte bizarro, erótico y gore brinca a la vista y deja una marca que persistirá en el tiempo (No recomendable para gente sensible).

[May Sun Aung · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

So weird. So funny. Really disgusting. I think I'm starting to like this mangaka.

[Raúl Campos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarro y marrano; a partes les falta fuerza, otras ofenderan a muchas personas.
Recomiendo

[Theo Barnard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this! Great artwork with a nice variety of stories from surreal to grotesque. In particular I enjoyed "Lamet of the Headless", "Communicable Mouth Disease " and the story the book is named after, "Super-Dimentional Love Gun"! Kago is for sure the master of Ero-Guro in my opinion, I loved all the stories and the artwork is unique and stylish. A new favourite, check it out!

[Cory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like if John Waters made anime based on a story by Luis Buñuel. There were parts I really liked, and parts I really didn't care for, but overall, it delivered what I was expecting.

[xenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The joy of neurosis!

And some other silly exploitative shit that goes a bit too far without any good justification or insight.

Offensiveness without emancipatory power is just domination in the mode of laughter.

[Genevieve · Rating 2 out of 5]

An extremely adult surreal and horrific collection of short stories. These stories are from the genre of ero goro in manga; meaning they are the erotic grotesque. They are definitely grotesque in the sense that there is a ton of body horror/ horrific situations in this book some of which are gross, absurd and clever. Now the erotic is certainly subjective; there's nudity and sex (not explicit drawing of sex that one would find for example in a hentai manga) and it's certainly not appealing (again subjective) and there is quite a bit of highly questionable consent as well as sexual assault. I found the book at times darkly humorous and clever in extracting the surreal and awful from the banal moments in life like bugs flying into your eyes, the dead white cells that appear when piercings are squeezed etc. taken to an absurdist place. But I did find that most of the stories didn't have a cohesive thru line within them; they just were kind of thrown at you without a point to them. This is a very niche book that's certainly intriguing but will definitely not be everyone's cup of tea.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repellent, nauseating, perverted and just plain gross. This makes Junji Ito look like Dr. Seuss.

Some of the grosser moments were outrageous enough to make me chuckle, and some of the premises reprehensible enough to keep my attention, but mostly I felt sick and uncomfortable reading this. Obviously there’s going to be a lot of violence towards women in an erotic-grotesque horror manga based on the theme of Pretty Girls but the content warnings alone for these stories are an encyclopedia of abuse.

Back copy says “Mature fans of unconventional manga will appreciate the surreal spiral of body horror, tragicomedy, and dark humor.” Mmm, not quite.

Can’t wait to turn back to the safe icky spooks of Ito.

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up knowing very little about it. The art style and the bizarro horror appealed to me.
Reading this, I was frustrated by the complete lack of pacing. The shock value is dialled up to 11, with each panel introducing some added gorey/taboo element. The endless onslaught of body horror without a break to catch your breath took any chance to actually feel scared away from me. The pages zoomed by, feeling like an edgey teen trying to tell you the grossest things they can think of just to get a response.
If you are looking for a book of graphic body horror and taboo concepts interlaced so tightly that you don't have a second to think, this is perfect for you. If you are looking for horror that sticks in the back of your mind, I can't recommend this.

[V.S. Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deliciously fucked up. This is the first of Kago's books I've read and I doubt it will be the last.

Be warned, you'll want to keep this out of reach of children, family members, work colleagues, casual acquaintances... Everyone, really. My advice is you read this book in secret, people will only you judge you otherwise.

And when you've finished, rate it on Goodreads for all to see.

Enjoy your nightmares!

[merv · Rating 1 out of 5]

ch 1: junji ito's tomie did this better in every way
ch 2: i like cannibalism in horror but being gross for the sake of being gross doesnt do it for me
ch 3: no

my stomach couldnt handle the rest but i dont think body horror counts as horror at all, its just fetish p*rn. if shintaro kago gets arrested some day for a certain crime a lot of manga artists are known for just know i called it

[Zac Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully disgusting, delirious, surreal and frequently laugh out loud funny.
Shinatro might lack the edge a lot of his forerunners in the ero-guro genre sharpened to a fine art, but he makes up for it in the complete absurdity of it all. The closest manga has come to Dadaism I believe.