Week Three : Asian Horror

I’ll be honest. I had a hard time understanding Asian Horror. I don’t watch J-Horror at all.
I’ve learned that religion plays an important factor within asian horror, and those religious influences derive from Japanese mythology and urban legends. Often times, there is no clear separation between cultural and religious ghost stories.These classic narratives remain prominent within asian films and novels to this day. Asian horror themes are portrayed as vengeful spirits with the intent to finish something. There is a strong subject of life vs. death. It is established within literature that there be a formation, a strong relationship between the spirit and a location, object, person, ect. This allows the soul to attach and stay present even in death.
I chose to do an alternate reading of the Battle Royale manga, written by Koshun Takami, rather than the selected reading, Kwaidan written by Lafcadio Hearn. Upon reading Battle Royale, I began to notice a strong presence of good vs evil. I've always been aware of this ‘grand battle’ between good and evil within the western horror genre but it is considerably more prevalent within J-Horror and K-Horror.
The story is set up as a game of life and death, much like Hunger Games, Future Diary, Danganronpa and Rabbit Doubt. The nature of good and evil is prominent due to the themes of survival. This framework of a game-based environment differs from western horror, for example like Hunger Games, due to its gore. Really, REALLY messed up gore. Takami was probably like, ‘14 year olds killing each other. HECK YEA! Sounds like a great idea for a manga.’. And I guess he was right. J-Horror isn't afraid to push the limits on gore. That's why I believe the artwork in Battle Royale is, by far, the most superior aspect of the manga. The detail he puts in his panels (especially the drama-fueled murderous ones) are phenomenal.
Our in-class film, Kwaidan (1964) directed by Masaki Kobayashi, was a very interesting yet a super confusing watch, personally.
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Here are some other fantasy-inspired readings/shows/movies that I like: Nocturne (Ch. Keratin, The Stone Reserve) on Webtoon, Death Note (Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata).

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