#theres also this almost divide between guro/ero-guro and horror

[hometownrockstar]

horror is weirdly tagged in manga/anime compared to western works i noticed. maybe "weird" isnt the right word, just differently defined. horror almost feels more nebulous, like a modifyer to an action/seinen genre, so it like doesnt feel right to call it horror, but also not right to NOT call it horror.... main examples r like devilman, chainsaw man, berserk, tokyo ghoul, dorohedoro, u know? really popular stuff that has horror elements or the horror is derived from circumstance/setting rather than the overall acts being committed but it doesnt look like a "horror" story like one in america would be called. horror in western spaces is its own thing, if it has violence n isnt horror its usually called a thriller.

Also Japanese horror tends to have its own feel about it, i notice it with movies shows anime, all of it. Aside from the Japanese horror books ive read, which use more grounded realistic scenarios, but they still had more surrealist or non-conventional themes and writing techniques in them, and also like ur supposed to be finding the horror behind the curtain of acts youre reading about, which i found very interesting (ones ive read/looked in to are Confessions by Kanae Minato, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami). Like theres feelings of existential dread and fate and stuff that isnt like western slasher and murderer horror, which feels more grounded and realistic compared to it. which is why stuff like devilman does kinda feel right to call horror, and also why Junji Ito's No Longer Human feels so out-of-place in his work and is also uniquely terrifying.

Also one thing that stands out is that the only really big Main-Genre Horror mangaka there is is Junji Ito, its not a real mainstream genre on itself... other names i know are Hideshi Hino (known moreso in western spheres for his guinea pig movies i presume), Suehiro Maruo (who is arguably more of an ero-guro and surrealist author than a full-on Horror one), Shintaro Kago (havent read much of his works yet but they feel much more surrealist than full-on horror also), & Masaya Hokazono (actually a fan of his, ppl dont like his works cause theyre more exaggerated and extreme horror/comedy so they feel dumb but well i like it for that). they arent really known in the mainstream tho, mostly just in horror manga spaces or just for one notable work of theirs. which is interesting to me, how horror feels like a modifyer genre to so many huge mangas, but horror on its own isnt the same popularity level.