With the popularity that was the Asaekkiga / Chu-ri-ning comics I had posted a while ago, I started thinking about Suehiro Maruo’s work. My old downstairs neighbor George had originally shown me some of Maruo’s work over a couple of years ago. He dug out a few books to show me some of the panels as examples and entertained me for hours with descriptions of different stories he had stumbled upon. Typically mundane details from anyone else would bore me, but George had a way of telling tales. It’s hard to describe, but listening to him explain how hard it was to order a particular English translation of a Suehiro Maruo book had a way of making you feel like it was your struggle too . After days of mixed interrogation into George for more information and forfeited details, I was drawn into his world. His world being of Suehiro Maruo. I embraced the gore and filth that littered the pages in his comics (if you could really call them that) while appreciating his artistic abilities. Maruo would begin his stories with a tale of youth, innocence, or survival. From there, straying from our typical worldview template that from bad situations comes good, Maruo would then take the story and make it more screwed up than most people wish to imagine. An example of Suehiro Maruo’s storytelling style can be found in Midori. Midori is a tale of a young girl who’s mother dies and leaves her orphaned. A circus owner takes advantage of the situation and makes her a slave to the circus. Midori is forced to do the daily chores of the performers and is led into many unfortunate circumstances that are out of her control. The story improves when a small magician enters the circus one day, bringing hope to the young girl and eventually marrying her. What he does to those who punished Midori, and even Midori herself, is just plain crazy…though for Maruo it’s actually fairly tame. Maybe that’s why I like Suehiro Maruo so much over most artists. His stories end where he believes they should be and not where society dictates they need to be. By being outside the template and showing the readers horror and filth, he causes them to take an introspective look into how they see themselves and where they really fit into the world. Well it’s those reasons plus I really like messed up stories in general.
