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ok. let's talk about asada nemui's "my little inferno": https://read.futekiya.com/comic/5fc9a0a061218
warnings first: this series has rape, violence, vomiting (in one instance during a sexual assault), and general unsavory behavior. one day futekiya will have tags for triggers! today is not that day.
warnings first: this series has rape, violence, vomiting (in one instance during a sexual assault), and general unsavory behavior. one day futekiya will have tags for triggers! today is not that day.
i've written about asada before, namely "the talking flower," the second story in "dear, my god": https://tinyletter.com/blrecs/letters/the-talking-flower-by-nemui-asada
there are a lot of mangaka that come to mind when i think of twisted stories. there's harada, of course, but also nakamura asumiko--
there are a lot of mangaka that come to mind when i think of twisted stories. there's harada, of course, but also nakamura asumiko--
which may be shocking for people who only know her through "classmates". but there is to both harada and nakamura's work an element of the shock and awe factor. you know what you're getting into with "j no subete" or "yatamomo," and weirdly enough, those stories offer catharsis.
nakamura and harada understand the intersections of violence and love and sex, and exploit that for better or worse. asada's works, on the other hand, operate on dread. there is always something threatening to go horribly wrong and spin catastrophically out of control.
horrible things happen to asada's characters (drugs! cults! kidnapping! blackmail! brainwashing! prostitution! rape!) in many of her stories, but surprisingly, these are presented as matter-of-fact, a suffering that we all have to bear instead of any great pain.
her theme, then, tends to be resilience in unbelievable circumstances, the ability of her characters (usually the average, ordinary-looking ones) to eke out an existence somehow. accordingly, love -- even the violent, cathartic love of harada or nakamura -- is a luxury for them.
i associate asada most strongly with what i've taken to calling "body disgust," as opposed to "body horror" -- a nonchalant highlighting of all the ways a human body can be revolting, through excretions (vomit, urine, etc.) or the act of contortion, even/especially sex.
and so, "my little inferno." hitoshi makes the mistake of crossing paths with "maa", who turns out to be a very proficient hacker running away from his former business partner. what follows is 2 volumes of terror for hitoshi, whom maa uses, abuses, but learns to treasure.
hitoshi is hardly likeable, though he doesn't need to be. he doesn't deserve the stuff that happens to him, and has a kid's naivete about how much society/the police can help him, even though his interactions with maa eventually land him firmly outside those strictures.
in one of the first scenes between maa and hitoshi, maa scares hitoshi so much that hitoshi pees his pants. then maa proceeds to rape him, possibly even through hitoshi vomiting. hitoshi.... calls the police. and really does not much else, bc there's not much else he CAN do.
in making hitoshi so pathetic and pitiable, asada dances constantly on the line of making maa likeable, but i think the story succeeds bc asada ultimately resists the impulse. something about maa's expressions or way of laughing at hitoshi is always a little wrong, a little off.
even in the bonus tracks, maa's behavior is stalkerish and monopolizing but in a way that unfortunately is a perfect fit for hitoshi, who needs all the help he can get. maa is hitoshi's demonic guardian angel, driving hitoshi into corners he ends up having to rescue hitoshi from.
the saving grace of all the characters in "my little inferno" is the pursuit of the ordinary life. "average, harmless, and cute," maa tells hitoshi. "those are your good qualities." hitoshi tries to cross over into maa's world, and fails miserably, but in doing so offers maa--
a path out of his own dark world of yakuza fights and corporate espionage. it isn't that maa is redeemed. instead, he's reined in by hitoshi's naivete, which is so powerful that it makes the ordinary (and not the globe-trotting life maa's ex offers) seem like the escape.
if you feel like i'm more ambivalent about this story than normal, you're not wrong. so much about its characters are repellant, but i can't look away. i wanted bad things to stop happening to hitoshi, but i didn't want good things either. i just wanted hitoshi and maa to /stop./
there's a moment in "my little inferno" where maa forces hitoshi to admit he loves him. lit by fire (yes, literal fire) hitoshi and maa's faces are transformed into beastial snarls as they confess. utterly unromantic, and yet
utterly compelling. that's the power of asada nemui.
utterly compelling. that's the power of asada nemui.
