Brain Damage By Shintaro Kago Is An Uncomfortable Horror Collection

Written and art by Shintaro Kago. Translated by Zack Davidson. Published by Fantagraphics.

Content warning: discussion of violence, gore, and incest.

Horror is all about getting a reaction out of the audience. That could be making you think about something, a fright, or repulsion. Mangaka Shintaro Kago has made a career out of the third category, pushing his storytelling into extreme and unpleasant directions. While still considered a cult creator, especially when compared to a contemporary like Junji Ito, Kago is slowly becoming more known as more of his stories are translated into English. The latest is Brain Damage, published by Fantagraphics, that’s certain to elicit a reaction from readers, whether the reader wants to feel it or not.

Brain Damage cover by Shintaro Kago.

Brain Damage is a collection of four unconnected stories that highlight the different facets of Kago’s work. The first is Labyrinth Quartet, a fast-paced slasher that shocks readers with its high-impact violence. Curse Room begins as an ordinary haunted house story before pivoting hard into an unexpected gory zombie tale. Family Portrait begins with multiple unusual missing persons cases before delving into the taboo in very uncomfortable ways. And finally, Blood Harvest is a weird mystery about people mysteriously dying in cars, featuring dark humour.

As intended by the artist, these stories are likely to elicit a reaction of repulsion or discomfort from the reader. Kago does this in many ways.

For Labyrinth Quartet, this is through the depiction of violence. He alternates between obscuring the violence and showing it full on. The obscured violence, such as a slashed throat viewed from behind the victim, is still graphic, though. The reader may not see the slashed flesh, but they know it’s bad due to the stream of blood that follows the knife’s path. Other times, the violence is more frontal. One moment that felt impactful was a character being stabbed in the stomach. Here, things are not left to the imagination. The reader sees the knife enter and the victim’s face wince in extreme pain.

Gore is another thing that Kago uses to make your stomach churn. It’s present in both Curse Room and Blood Harvesting, but in different ways. For the former, it’s the kind of gore you may see in other zombie media dialled up, with organs spilling out of bodies. The latter is a bit more stylised. There are crushed bodies, those burned to a crisp, and even a pile of bloody organs. You can tell that Kago has gone to great effort with it. All the gore is drawn with great detail, using thin linework to render the mess of organs and blood. Your mileage may vary on the depiction of the gore in Curse Room, as it’s some form is often expected in zombie stories. It’s more surprising in Blood Harvesting, with it coming out of nowhere.

The final element used to get a reaction is the inclusion of incest in Family Portrait. For obvious reasons, this left a bad taste. While a lot of media makes it suggestive or is more interested in showing the product of it, Kago depicts the taboo. This starts with a grandfather suffering Alzheimer’s disease groping his granddaughter’s bottom, but will blow out to be pornographic at the end. Kago sets up a horror scenario to try and justify his shock, but the logic isn’t as sound, getting caught in the idea of shocking the reader rather than the storytelling behind it. The author’s commentary in the back seems to confirm this, with Kago avoiding the topic and going off on an unrelated tangent instead.

If you’ve gotten this far, then you might be thinking that Brain Damage is a horrible read. It is in some ways. There were certainly moments where I felt disgust and there was a pit in my stomach. But that’s the point of this book. Like films such as Crash or Possession, it’s the kind of horror that’s trying to elicit negative feelings out of the reader. It achieved what it set out to do by showing nasty stuff. You’re not here for a good time.

As a result, Brain Damage isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s for a niche horror fan who has a stomach for the extreme. For someone who wants a negative reaction, whether they’re ready for it or not.

Brain Damage is available in comic book shops, online retailers, eBay, Amazon/Kindle, and the Fantagraphics online store.