Super-Dimensional Love Gun

A collection of bizarre stories about pretty girls from Shintaro Kago.

We’ve discussed this on a recent episode.

This is my first Shintaro Kago book and the experience feels extremely similar to when I read Ultra Gash Inferno. Kago’s work has also been called erotic grotesque like Suehiro Maruo but Kago himself says that is actually limiting compared to the wide variety of stuff he creates. If you search for his art pieces you’ll find a wide variety of works that tend to be on the surreal side, which makes sense since Kago was heavily inspired by Salvador Dali.

The problem with Super-Dimensional Love Gun is that some stories focus on really disturbing content. This book contains stories about feeding body parts to others, cutting away skin, and scratching yourself until you skill turns raw. Compared to visuals of extreme violence like decapitations and dismemberment, Kago’s beautifully drawn images invoke relatable injuries that make your skin crawl. Strangely, many of these stories are dark comedies that end with punchlines.

I also want to issue a content warning for this manga because it includes a lot of female exploitation. Rape is abundant in these stories but I don’t think female exploitation is a necessarily a central theme for all of Shintaro Kago‘s works. Super-Dimensional Love Gun just happens to be a collection of these types of stories. I didn’t really like this but it did make me interested in checking out Kago’s other stuff.

Available in English from Denpa Books.

~dakazu