A review by clovetra
Brain Damage by Kago

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

thank you fantagraphic books & netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC copy of this manga in return for an honest review <3

overall i think this manga was not consistent in quality. like there was one story i fucking hated, whereas one i adored and actually found to be scary. i do think globally the body horror art was superb, but the non-gore art was… i don’t want to say mediocre because i couldn’t draw anything in this book but. it wasn’t great. it wasn’t even really fine. it was slightly subpar.
 im gonna break my thoughts down chapter by chapter because they do vary a lot, but my overall rating of the book is like. an averaged-rating of what i think of all the stories.
labyrinth quartet: i found the dialogue to be very stilted, generic and uninteresting. the premise was the worst in this anthology but still interesting, yet almost nothing was done with it. also because these stories are so short, the plot moved so fast in this story, what was happening was barely explained. i gained no attachment to the characters, but i did find the ending regarding the killer to be interesting. overall, the execution could’ve been better, but this wasn’t terrible unlike a certain story in this anthology (i’ll get there….). ⭐️⭐️/5
curse room: to begin with, i did not like this premise, but the reveal that happens at the mid-point of this story reeled me in. i overall did enjoy the premise, but i found what actually happened, yet again, to miss the mark. the returner concept was also very interesting to me, and i found the second returner to be a lot more fun. this was globally a fun story and defo an improvement in this collection. ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
family portrait: in the wise words of tiktok user @shaiie_foeva, “the pear of anguish for you and your uber driver”. what the fuck was this. this disgusted me, and not in a fun way that i look for in horror. who approved this. the horror is boring. the plot is boring. why is there explicit fucking incest. why is a line written in this godforsaken story: “you may have forgotten you grandchild’s name but you won’t forget this ass” (yes i copied the grammar exactly from the page). horror is supposed to touch on tabboo subjects yes, but this story almost seems to be glorifying pedophilia AND incest. what the fuck. why did i have to lay my eyes on this. if i was someone who gave stories zero stars i would give it to this. if this was a whole book or a manga extended to 200 pages i would’ve dnf’d. ⭐️/5
blood harvest: this is the most insane whiplash i’ve ever experienced in an anthology because this was easily the best story in this collection. i think the gore is easily at its best in this story, and the mystery is the best at its core. the execution was also phenomenal, and the ending was so good i actually gasped out loud. i do think the concept is zany enough to fit in for what i think this author’s style is, yet is delivered well enough to satisfy my pragmatic self. i literally have no complaints with this story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
i think if every story was at the level of the last one this would be a 4/5-star manga for me. on the other hand, if every story was like mr incest grandpa, i would’ve thrown my phone at a wall and deleted it off my netgalley account as fast as possible. i’ve never experienced such a gap in quality in a single anthology. as much as i liked 3/4 of the stories, gross grandpa easily tanks this down. 
based on averaging my scores, my average rating for this short story collection is 2.75, but i hate using anything other than whole ratings, so 🤷 
will i read this author’s other collections? maybe. i might first check other reviews and content warnings though, because im so serious i do not want to read AND VISUALLY SEE pedophilia and incest. no thank you.
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