Ultra-Gash Inferno by Suehiro Maruo.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars.
So, I’ve read a couple of Suehiro Maruo titles before. You know, extreme ero-guro (don’t google that, frankly) manga that pushes boundaries and buttons.
I’m not easily shocked, and I knew what to expect, so I figured this one should be more of the same: perhaps not great, but interesting nonetheless.
Unfortunately, Ultra-Gash Inferno is pretty much the worst Maruo I’ve come across. But not because it’s shocking, or full of perhaps transgressive material – Ooh, cow eyes in vaginas! Woah, coprophagy! Ripper, golden showers! – but largely because it’s boring.
Yes, I am aware I’m calling a book containing stories with titles such as “Shit Soup” and “The Great Masturbator” boring, but here we are. Because frankly, it is. This collection, while executed with the same fastidiously odd art – a mix of Expressionist weirdness and Taisho chic – comes across as disjointed. It reaches for profundity, to some degree, but then undoes itself with teenage orgies and a whole lot of shit eating interludes.
(That’s without getting into the dumped child that survives – nay! thrives! – in open-pit sewers who decides that bringing potential shags into his world of waste is somehow a good thing.)
I was frustrated with this collection. It spans the better part of 12 years, and while no story’s longer than about 20 pages, they tend to not go anywhere, instead circling back to either surrealism, the author’s peccadilloes or a trashbag amalgam of both.
“If in doubt, lick some eyeballs” seems to be a pretty well instituted rule in this collection, as does “offer women fuck-all agency and exploit the shit out of them” – this is actual exploitative work, and I suppose I wasn’t as affected by it as the author might’ve intended because it came across as so much but do you see? do you see? posturing. It’s the sort of thing teenage me, devouring slasher flicks might’ve found intriguing, but these days it’s neither big nor clever, no matter how much fine line work goes into its construction.
(I’m pretty sure the version I read had a fair bit of censorship applied. Either that or there’s some fucking woeful blocking decisions been made during production.)
There’s a modicum of interest held by the last (and most recent) story in the collection, “Non-Resistance City” which I found a bit diverting. But for the most part this feels like provocation for the sake of it. It looks great, but tastes shitty.
Maruo probably likes it that way.
Yeah nah. 
enjoying your Suehiro Maruo reviews today! I just ordered a copy of this one in english, which I’m understanding is a rare case for his works (I have a hardcover of Panorama Island as well, which i haven’t yet finished, and I read many of his short story collections like Inferno on mangadex)
this is the one with shitboy, it seems, so I assume it’s also the one where he stands on a moving train and pisses on a rapist? shitboy is no real hero, but in the works of Maruo? I feel compelled to love him. I love his makeup and his look. Yeah, he’s awful and terrible and gets his dick out when he shouldn’t. Something about that narrative that I liked. It could be the fact he’s the most “gutter” a gutterpunk ever could have been. It could be the train scene. It could also be his encounter in the other book “DDT” with trans sex workers, which i will probably always remember as more meaningful and beautiful than it was textually. I was drawn to his works by claims that he drew diverse bodies with such a care that was hard to come by. I found this was true in his standalone art moreso than his stories. the Caterpillar, as an example of a short story of his that DOES revolve around disability, is a narrative that I didn’t as much connect with, as it was focused on the misery of a caretaker. I think there are plenty of stories like that, and there’s plenty of anger in the real world towards disabled people coming from a similar place.
I think you were right that Maruo shines when he writes longer stories – you and I both appreciated his Freak Show story – wait, that doesn’t narrow it down – the one you reviewed i mean, which had much more to it than shock value. He does also have Tomino the Damned, which is a story about a freak show that I found less memorable.
I read an excerpt from a magazine at some point, saying he writes stories where even the disenfranchised cannot trust each other, and I am very much paraphrasing, as the crux of what i picked up there echoed in my head a LOT and is something I come back to with his stories, as a woman, as a transexual, as a disabled person. it’s almost like sometimes he validates the part of me that says I cannot trust others even if they come from similar experiences. Not in a way that leaves me more antisocial than when I started reading, no, in a way that I think can be comforting? The “evil” that we may see and identify in the world is laid bare in his stories and exaggerated. I understand horror often speaks to the marginalized of society, especially when the realities we experience are denied – in horror, the problems are real and often more tangible, undeniable to the audience. If my politics and philosophy tell me to be prosocial, and my experiences pull me away from that, what do stories like his do? I digress though, from analysis of the actual text and from my comment here.
I’ve heard he relied less on shock value to tell a good story as time passed, though I don’t think I’ve paid attention to when each book I’ve read was written.
DDT, from what i barely recall, has interesting prose and imagery in the first chapter at least. Enough for me to recommend checking it out even if i didnt care for many of the stories following it. It does however, include the sewer boy as i mentioned before. maybe I was endeared to him simply because he came back. he is in the last chapter of DDT. everything between the first and last chapter of DDT, I have less to say about. I’m sure there’s stuff to like, like for me it might be Impotent Boyfriends or DDT for a Rotten War. But the first story? in black white and red ink? I dunno, I come back to that one a lot.
Laughing Vampire i also would recommend. I should reread it soon. I just remember finding the narrative as compelling as the art. Maybe it solidified that half-remembered analysis i read from some magazine, and maybe it says something interesting about being marginalized. Before introducing a racist caricature of a character at some point. Of course.