Mado Fuchiya, 800 JPY
Horror, 2018
Mado Fuchiya does horror in all forms, and Feeding Lamb falls into that category called guro.
To explain what guro is, well, let’s see what happens in the first page of this baby.
Someone is gagged and thrown, naked. on the floor. His captor, in only boxer shorts and sporting a visible erection, rips open the tape over the poor fellow’s mouth. This fellow proceeds to cough up his severed fingertips. The captor than hangs the fellow up in a noose and then cuts off the fellow’s penis.
Yes, that’s one way to describe guro.
That captor is Andy, whose more public façade is that of a well-liked gentle nurse that cares for his friend and occasional housemate Brandon.
Bran developed epilepsy from a brain injury, which was the result of his effort to save Andy from being run over by a train back when they were kids.
Because of this, Andy spends the rest of his life caring and doting for Bran, even going down on his friend when Bran is horny. Bran, you see, is a pretty pathetic fellow, as he is unable to hold on to a job or anything else. Don’t feel too sorry for him, though, as Bran allows his epilepsy as well as his self loathing as an excuse to justify his continuous self-sabotage of his own life. He verbally and even physically abuses Andy to drive that fellow away, only to then reel him back in as he realizes that he needs Andy. Of course, having to need Andy only makes him loathe that fellow more.
So far, Andy manages to keep his homicidal activities cleanly separate from the other aspects of his life. However, a small slip up is all it takes to send everything crumbling.
You see, Andy has a habit of torturing and killing people that torment Bran, and his latest victims are some drug dealers that Bran got involved in. However, Bran ends up becoming the prime suspect of the murders, and the detective on the case is an old friend that knows both Bran and Andy. He seems to making some headway in getting Bran to man up and break away from his codependency on Andy, and you know the neighborhood psycho won’t have any of that.
Seriously, as much of a horrible human being Bran is, it’s easy to feel sorry for him toward the end because Andy is insane. The only reason Andy lets Bran treat him like dirt is because, in his own sick and twisted way of thinking, Bran depending on him is actually his way of possessing and control that man.
In fact, Andy actually takes measures to ensure that Bran can never get out of his downward spiral. For example, he constantly dissuades and even scolds Bran for drinking too much, but his actions tell a different story: he continues to ply that man with alcohol even as he not-so-subtly says things that convince that man that he needs Andy to keep him alive.
Most intriguingly, when Andy seems to be about to get run over by a train again, a mirror of the event in their childhood that changed both their lives drastically, Bran walks towards him. To save him or to murder him, I wonder? Who knows, because despite everything Andy has put him through, he remains the only “friend” and “lover”, if one could ever use those words in this context, that Bran has ever had.
Feeding Lamb is drenched with gore, so this is definitely not for folks that are squeamish about graphic illustrations of disembowelment, emasculation, beheading, and more. However, at the core is a compelling tragic relationship between two fascinating, utterly messed up characters. The dynamics between Bran and Andy constantly shift as the former tries to break off his ties with Andy, only to realize that he is absolutely nothing without Andy’s perverse form of affection.
The moral of the day, I guess, is to never go near railway tracks.
At any rate, this one is a darkly beautiful, super messed up story with the author’s obvious affection for her characters obvious with each panel and page. It both repulses and fascinates me, and there’s what this one is supposed to do. Hence, a well deserved two thumbs up from me!
