#Asada Nemui

[ritornello]

It's time!!

I am so thrilled to share that Bottom of the Sea Scans has translated Yuujin no Sougi/Funeral For a Friend - one of the earliest serialized manga by Asada Nemui! It's an existential short story about the relationship between a trio of lifelong friends...with that Asada je ne sais quoi!

This oneshot was serialized in the seinen magazine Monthly Big Gangan, and has not been reprinted since. I came across a copy of the magazine issue on Mercari, which was generously tl'd and edited by Ikari, Tasogare, Yun and the rest of the BotSS crew!

Check it out!

[patinhascinderelo]

I love em so bad

[fmet]

Sometimes the Asada Nemui yaoi about an everyday teacher being forcefully turned into a mold-infected zombie who needs to eat human carcasses to survive that confronts and dissects topics such as the ethics of research, the entitlement one has to life, the human need for intimacy vs distance, and the ways in which society and individuals warp these constructs to maintain a sense of superiority over the rest of life is something that can be so personal to someone (me🧚)

[possiblyweedfart]

“they eat each other.” is like my sleeper agent activation phrase

[kojakus]

[yaoi-reading]

Ai, Sei

[torvelo]

wake up babe its time for your daily intake of human slushie

[coersum]

Sleeping Dead | Asada Nemui

[visceralv]

Sleeping Dead | Asada Nemui

[gatoraid]

Happy 801 day to those who celebrate! I’m honoring this day by talking about one of the most amazing, memorable BL manga I’ve read this year.

Sleeping Dead by Asada Nemui is a deeply unsettling, melancholy, sometimes almost cozy and sometimes quite brutal horror BL story about science, zombies, trauma and obsession. It is thoroughly laced with black humor, and also manages to pose some tough questions about ethics and how far we’re willing to go in order to live, to survive. A French manga book club described the story as ”what if Mary Shelley had been a fujoshi” and that is not too far off either.

Content warnings for the story include gore, torture, cannibalism(?), rape, dismemberment, suicide.

Full text under the cut, includes spoilers.

Sada is a well-liked high school teacher who gets brutally killed when he’s out at night, making sure his students are not loitering out too late. His body is picked up by the ”mad scientist” Mamiya, who has devoted his life to researching resurrecting the dead. To him, Sada seems like the perfect test subject in more ways than one.

When Sada wakes up, he finds himself tied to a laboratory bed in an unknown location, his life altered forever. He is now a zombie-like living dead, whose body is resistant to injury but can only survive on a strict diet of human meat. What’s even worse, Mamiya subjects him to torturous scientific experiments day after day. When he tries to escape, it only makes it clearer how trapped he really is in this situation. For a long time, the only friend and companion Sada has is a living dead laboratory monkey whom he hangs out with and names Monkichi.

Little by little, Sada is able to win back some autonomy and gain more equal footing with Mamiya, shifting the power balance in their relationship. As they live together in their own secluded world, cook for each other or hunt for the next victim for Sada’s human meat smoothies, they slowly start to build a mutual understanding, even affection. And as we learn more about their pasts and motivations, it becomes even easier to understand why the characters act the way they do.

Asada Nemui is known for their unique, often quite dark BL stories. Sleeping Dead is definitely no exception, giving its own twist to the genre we know and love. It is definitely a BL story through and through, but the way it approaches romance, sex and relationships is pretty exceptional and thoughtful. Mamiya, who was raped by his bullies in high school, is deeply traumatized and his understanding of sex and relationship is very skewed.

This means that Sada and Mamiya start navigating sex and intimacy in a situation where one of them doesn’t even want to be touched. Even later on, Mamiya can only ever have sex while fully clothed. Mamiya’s trauma is treated as something deep and real that can’t be easily healed or dismissed, and I appreciate that. In romantic fiction of almost any kind, penetrative sex is often seen as the end goal or the only ”real” sex, but that type of attitude is not present in this story at all.

Sada is able to accommodate and understand Mamiya’s needs in a way that feels very touching. Even though Sada has a lot more experience in sex with men, he also confesses that he prefers after-sex cuddling to actual sex. He also prefers friendships to romance and doesn’t actively need to have a romantic partner, even if he understands that the society around him gives more value to romantic and familial bonds rather than friendships.

It feels like Sada and Mamiya are both outcasts in their own way: Mamiya visibly strange and ostracized by his peers, willingly withdrawing from the world around him, while Sada looks at the rules and conventions of society from an outsider pov while trying to live in it, enjoys being alone while understanding the benefits of human connection but also feeling like he’s different from others. With each other, Sada and Mamiya are able to carve out their own rules when it comes to sex and romance, just like they do with their whole existence on the outskirts of society.

Even with all the affectionate and domestic parts, Sleeping Dead is also very much a horror story. Since we are dealing with zombies, murder and eating humans, there are some gory bits, but the art does not dwell on the gore that much. There are many other levels and layers to the horror elements throughout the story instead.

At first, there is the quiet, existential horror of Sada’s new, undead life. He is forcibly brought back to a life he did not ask, made to eat fellow human beings, and can never go back to his old life or meet the people he once knew. There is a profound loneliness that you can see in his every expression and movement, the way he seems to be detached from everything around him, trying to understand why this is happening to him. This existential horror of being doomed to loneliness comes a full circle at the end, for a very chilling effect.

Then there is the horror of pain and torture, of Sada being treated as a test subject, stripped off of his humanity and agency. Just like Monkichi, the monkey that Mamiya has brought back from the dead, Sada is also locked in a lab and treated as an object, rather than a living being with feelings and needs. Through Monkichi and Mamiya’s various comments, the story explicitly links Sada’s horrific, inhumane treatment to the horrors of what non-human animals go through in the name of science and food production every day all around the world.

I personally really appreciated how hard Sleeping Dead goes when it comes to morality and ethical questions. When Sada expresses that he doesn’t want to eat human meat, Mamiya says that it’s not so different from killing cows or pigs for food, unless Sada was a vegan while he was alive. Sada has to admit that he wasn’t. They also ponder about whether it would be better to kill someone who’s an easy target, like someone living on the streets or an elderly person, or if it’s better to go after violent criminals who cause harm to society. These discussions between Mamiya and Sada give the story an almost philosophical air and make it a very memorable experience.

Even with all the serious topics and horror elements, the manga does not feel too heavy to read, thanks to all the black, deadpan humor that points out how absurd many of the situations the characters find themselves in are.

All in all, Sleeping Dead is a very exeptional story and it stayed with me for a very long time. The ending is especially haunting, especially when you think about how it relates to the title of the story, but talking about it would probably require its own post…. Let’s just say that I could barely get any sleep after finishing the story.

Unfortunately the manga has not been licensed in English yet, but it’s available in French at least.

Japanese version is available wherever jp books are sold, I read it on Ebookjapan.

[anigst]

[ritornello]

[patinhascinderelo]

My beautiful friend ( @dr0wnedkiwi ) made some gifs for Sleeping Dead cuz we are addicted and this fandom is lacking content pls where is everyone

Also im working on playlists for Sleeping Dead and CALL cuz yeah thats my contribution

[fujoushi]

source: ai, sei

[cacaitos]

[kojakus]