I knew that Lady was trouble I could sense something was weird dont worry her wife will save her

Another exquisite part of what continues to be one of my favorite tales in recent memory. This chapter serves brilliantly to illustrate Naekawa's talents in the field of horror, as intimate to cracks of skin as it is ordinate to churning depths, and never in all its reach too far from the moist machinations of the mind, masticating memory and mining malevolence. Fitting then, that this latest monster shall spring not from sepulchral waves or occultic woods, but indeed from the space between appearance and reality, perception and deception, the knots of the brain that hint at the abject, unavoidable litany of flesh beneath every dream. In a story where dualities waltz across liminality in the light of tidal moons, Ayame's nightmare is the very concentration of paradox, folklore and sin and emotion and residue packed so tight that the corpus has no choice but to crack open a mouth and scream. And the second mouth is no mouth at all, no more than phantoms can be second beings, and yet it gapes and grins and breathes and eats, begging with cranial lips the question- why?

There's also a pretty interesting marshalling of gynaehorror in Ayame's motif-cluster of motherhood, birth, consumption and reminiscence. Eating, as evidenced by the title, is a symbol-act intimately connected to this story's themes and indeed manifests in every monster- Shiori's contractual, tasteful, palate-oriented promises of consumption, Miko's not-quite-charlatan feeding on faith and present auto-cannibalism, and now Ayame's unfolding of herself into both expansion and contraction, of a mouth linked to trauma, sin and injury, whose eating and expression are curses wrought upon the host, imposing upon her a monstrous dependency, chopping what may have once been a composite and intersectional self into that most wretched binary of hidden and revealed, past and present, back and front. The mouth itself is not remotely human, and resembles indeed some creature coiling free of a poisoned, bloated carcass, the tongue a wrinkled, knotted viper whose speech is, in true monstrous fashion, more dread than silence might ever achieve.

Coupled with Ayame's motherly aura, the mentions of a child passed away and the clattering, rusted axe said to have sliced open a body, the composite image is a masterfully disturbing inversion of the birth-script, so to speak. The child that Ayame never bore and delivered now seems to have taken permanent residence in her body, and furthermore not in some womb which would be cumbersome enough to convey a child in, but indeed in the very chamber of her thoughts, seat of her individuality- one hears of mothers struggling not to let maternity define them, but in Ayame that fate becomes a hundredfold worse, for no part of her is now free of that second existence, rendering indeed absurd the very question of a separated 'other', for Ayame's monstrous othering stems indeed from the (un)life couched within the marrow of her mind. Whether this second entity is the stepchild's spirit or some traumatic aspect of Ayame herself (the indeterminacy of the primary individual as mother or child is a very testament to this birth-oriented-horror), the fact remains that it is not an adult, but something engulfing human adulthood, evoking from one side the unsettling primacy of children and stirring on the other a dread of unseen age that hints at innumerable sins and terrors concealed. The mouth is an inversion of the womb, the tongue an inversion of the umbilical cord, the axe wound in its brutal reduction of life and creation of a monster an inversion of the caesarian method that makes careful incisions in the hopes of saving both mother and child, and the monster the inversion of a mother. And yet inversions, too, depend on their antonyms for definition, and so is Ayame in abjection and uncanniness bound inextricably to that nebulous ideal of 'correct' and 'healthy' motherhood that Hinako initially associated her with and is now unsettled to find her violating in every way.

Indeed, Hinako's horror may be compounded by the largely mental and abstract image she has of her own departed mother, which in seeming reflection followed by violent subversion through Ayame may shake Hinako's own conceptions of the past, leading her to question the process of her own delivery, so to speak, from idyllic childhood to tormented adolescence, providing a glimpse up the temporal-canal at the conception of her present day. Moreover, as a seeming human consumed by a demonic underside, Ayame also reflects Hinako's own liminal position on the cusp of the midnight realm, her scars both mental and emotional, the very stretch marks and C-section stitches manifested in monstrous proportions upon her body reflecting also Hinako's hidden burns. These scars may be hidden from first sight, but weigh heavily upon the scarred subject, alienating them steadily for society and producing the possibility of a complete break from the status of human, although, as Miko and Shiori illustrate, monsters depend on humanity as mouths on eating, children on mothers, moons on stars and so forth, even as they sometimes eclipse or are eclipsed by these semio-symbiotic relations. And on the topic of monsters, this also raises questions on Fishwife and Foxtrot's origins- were they, too, originally humans who fell (or rose, depending on your perspectives on cannibal immortality) to monstrosity after some traumatic or unspeakable event? Could they, would they, should they turn back? With every chapter, Naekawa manages with style and poetry to further complicate their carefully constructed notions of 'monsters', 'wanting', 'eating', and 'me', making monsters scars, echoes, shadows, performances and states of heartmind. I cannot wait to see where this strange, fascinating tale goes next.

P.S: Also pretty intrigued by Miko's musings on whether Hinako's survival in a joyless life was better than the prospect of dying in happy innocence, because it very clearly also ties into dilemmas she and Shiori must face. Miko's example is more obvious, given her first fall from a natural, powerful beasthood to a difficult pretense of humanity that required obligations to the humans she once preyed on, and her second fall from a beloved, influential divinity to a bedraggled guard dog for a girl she's torn between supporting and sampling (not to mention a possible zeroth fall from humanity to monsterhood if the whole monsters-are-accursed-former-humans theory turns out true). Shiori is characteristically blasé about the issue, but if she has in fact developed an attachment to Hinako more meaningful than a customer at a food court to their meal ticket, then she too must face that same prospect of tumbling from a jubilant life of ocean-lining hedonism to the difficulties of a star-crossed love. Relationships are tough, huh? (Official motto of the Monsterqueer Club).

Temp's musings on cannibalism and feeding provoked my curiosity. Some other man eating yokai with mouth and/or childbirth fetishes:

Ōmukade: giant centipede yokai that can be defeated by weapons coated in human saliva

Jikininki: An impious priest or monk cursed after death to feed on humans or human corpses. A pregnant woman that outsmarts a Jikininki will give birth to a Jijinki, a kind of ghost.

Nure-onna: Sea serpent with a woman's head, capable of shape-shifting. Nure-onna carry a bundle shaped like a swaddled child, which they hand to strangers that offer to relieve her of the burden. But upon trying to return the child, the stranger discovers it has transformed into a heavy stone, trapping them. The Nure-onna will feed upon them, or they will disappear and a Ushi-Oni (the Nure-onna's "offspring") will appear to consume them in her place.

Yeah since this chapter was called the other side of humanity I assumed as well that she’d be a “human” monster. Rapey first then when the axe popped up I thought maybe axe murderer? But I guess not

Well she a case of a human turned into a Yokai/monster, a futakuchi-onna to be speciffic.

The futakuchi-onna belongs to the same class of stories as the rokurokubi, kuchisake-onna and the yama-uba, women afflicted with a curse or supernatural disease that transforms them into yōkai. The supernatural nature of the women in these stories is usually concealed until the last minute, when the true self is revealed.

The origin of a futakuchi-onna's second mouth is often linked to how little a woman eats. In many stories, the soon-to-be futakuchi-onna is a wife of a miser and rarely eats. To counteract this, a second mouth mysteriously appears on the back of the woman's head. The second mouth often mumbles spiteful and threatening things to the woman and demands food. If it is not fed, it can screech obscenely and cause the woman tremendous pain. Eventually the woman's hair begins to move like a pair of serpents, allowing the mouth to help itself to the woman's meals. While no food passes through her normal lips, the mouth in the back of her head consumes twice what the other one would. In another story, the extra mouth is formed when a stingy woman is accidentally hit in the head by her husband's axe while he is chopping wood, and the wound never heals. Other stories have the woman as a mother who lets her stepchild die of starvation while keeping her own offspring well fed; presumably, the spirit of the neglected child lodges itself in the stepmother's or the surviving daughter's body to exact revenge.

This could also be another bait and switch Where Ayame isn't the monster Shori and Miko is sensing. As Futakuchi-onna are actally pretty harmless nor do they actively cause suffering to others.

Well it was obvious she is a monster. What im more concerned is what they were talking about Miko and Shiori the accident that Hinako survived with the scars, i just assume that the one who save her that day was Shiori and now she came back to eat her

If Hinako had died with her family, she wouldn't be happy or unhappy. She would be dead...

Well it was obvious she is a monster. What im more concerned is what they were talking about Miko and Shiori the accident that Hinako survived with the scars, i just assume that the one who save her that day was Shiori and now she came back to eat her

Personally I think at least one of them is at fault. Either Miko is lying about this whole "I know just as much as you" (since supposedly she was in Hinako's family for generations in kitsune/whatever form) or Shiori is hiding that she caused it and kinda protects/wants to eat Hinako out of guilt and to finish what she started. Sort of "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE?!"

someone snipe(?) uploaded two new chapters and there's some interesting revelations coming to light in those

Mangadex has "volume 4, chapter 18" and "volume 5, chapter 19" uploaded.

Cousin It crossed with Gene Simmons from Kiss

Ah these are those chapters that were done by someone else on Mangadex. No wonder they seemed familiar. I forgot those weren't uploaded here.

Welp.

Ooh, now there's a twist. And we finally know what made Hinako's taste change.

This series takes some interesting twists that I didn't see coming. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

broooo

I love the monster designs in this series. Always so damn horrifyingly cool.

She's marked...

Wait, if she's marked the. What would Mermaid woman have done if it wasn't for Foxy keeping MC safe all these years

While I was wrong about the dragon part, that is definitely NOT a regular mermaid.
So... a kami of sorts?

Ayo, my favorite cooking manga's baaaack (they are simmering lesbians for centuries in a sauce of existential dread). I'm sorta spoiled since I read the next few chapters on MD on account of having zero restraint when it comes to this series, but it's still fun to revisit them with an alternate translation for additional perspective. As the wise Ayame once (probably) said, "You can never have too much tongue." Scattered thoughts (though not as scattered as Ayame was at the end of this chapter, lmaoooooo) below:

1) I fucking love Ayame's entire character. Truly a MILF (Mother, I'd Like to Find out more about how you ended up becoming what you are today and how you feel about your past, present and place in this warped and haunting pseudo-hierarchy of horrors in which you linger through a mixture of agony, remorse and guilt). Besides everything she represents in relation to Hinako's tortured psyche and perceptions of motherhood and family, she's also just so entertaining in action? The glib, polite, bemused 'oh dear' approach to bloody murder, just a bumbling old mom out to dice a teenager for dinner, the casual acceptance of her relative irrelevance and vestigiality in the grotesque scheme of things even as she's being torn about, and above all, the fact that her reaction to Shiori rending her asunder is to eagerly try and gather some tea, some steaming hot goss about this legendary mermaid lady's relationship to Hinako with all the zest of a middle-aged suburban mom hunting for that spicy celeb drama. Iconic, honestly. I hope she (un)lives forever.

2) For the millionth time (here's to a million more), I adore how Naekawa Sai really looked at the boundary between mortal and monster and took a chainsaw-blender to it, because we are in the soup, the veritable cryptid chowder of hybridity here. I mean, look at The. The fucking inversion of traditional tropes and themes relating to fairytales and mystery and wonder when it comes to Hinako and Shiori. The mermaid blood in Hinako representing this twisted version of a childhood fantasy, of a connection to this supernatural and strange realm forged in childhood persisting into her adolescence and dragging her ever deeper back toward that otherworldly liminality, a resurgence of the absurd that is seemingly a return of the repressed and a bursting forth of the horrific, but also in a bizarre way a reacquaintance with the wonders and potential of childhood, with that fairyland that dogs the dreams of a girl who never quite grew up, and perhaps the key if this series doesn't spiral tits-up into tragedy to restoration of some measure of the person she used to be. It's exquisite. This series feels like it comes from a mind that read the original, gory versions of a ton of fairytales, the macabre, weird, cautionary and terrifying folktales they were originally supposed to serve as for trembling village children who'd otherwise venture into the darkness of the woods, and at the end of them all adored these horrific yarns as ardently as most kids love their Disney princesses. This makes me feel so very spoken to. Hail Naekawa.

3) The monster designs. Good heavens (into which none of these girls are ever getting), the monster designs. I feel like a ton of media that features 'feminine' monsters tends to go one of two ways- you either have an incredibly basic, almost 'cute', borderline humanoid, almost moe portrayal of the monster that's not really foreign or intimidating or striking at all, a 'monster girl' and nothing more; or alternately, just a general, animalistic or inorganic monster design that might normally take or emerge from a femme body, but has no especially femme traits whilst in monster-mode. Of the two, I largely prefer the latter, given that monsters could probably not give less of a shit about silly human conceptions of gender or attractiveness, but at the same time, I do also love to see approaches that integrate the two, that take traits, motifs and signifiers generally considered feminine and work them into a truly terrifying and awe-inspiring monster design, especially if the object is not some misogynistic exaggeration of feminine traits to promote a wack-ass message like 'hey, look what happens when le women lose control of their Emotions and try to be independent" (a theme unfortunately all too common in horror films), but in a nuanced, complex queer sense that very much aims to convey a sense of longing, adulation and wonder at this entity that makes gender profoundly, daringly, transcendently its own (lesbian and trans monsterfucker romance is actually an established and thriving subgenre in queer lit). Shiori's design nails this better than Shiori nails your average abomination (which happens so often I honestly think the local beasties are into it and rush to be dissected by the dommy mermaid lady every time she surfaces). The limpid muscles spotted by coral constellations, the fins cleaving air and water as effortlessly as they slice past all that is holy and just, the kelp forests of hair drinking mercilessly of moonlight, the horns that crown a queen-beast apex predator and are also bizarrely reminiscent of the princesses Hinako distinguishes her from, the maelstrom of teeth crunching life back down to the unicellular, cradle-grave of existence- she's poetry in motion, an eldritch melody.

3.5- You Can (Not) Shut Up about Monster Designs: Speaking very broadly of the major monster designs we've seen so far, I'd say Miko's vibe kinda reminds me of Resident Evil- a terrifyingly souped-up version of an already intimidating, but still recognizable human or animal template, in this case the fox (they really went and infected my girl with the Organized Religion Virus); Ayame's vibe brings to mind Silent Hill (a uniquely psychosexual type of WTF that uses deeply personal and symbolic aspects to imbue a uniquely unsettling edge to even generally humanoid and relatively physically unimposing monsters); and Shiori's a fucking Soulsborne boss (striking mixture of transcendent beauty and abject decay that reflects a long and esoteric history, suggesting at once an age of myths and glory and mystery while presenting you with undeniable proof of the brutality, madness and corruption that lead the brightest ages to their fall). I wish with all my heart that this series goes on to give us some more monsters with equally unique designs, or at least that Naekawa occasionally puts out some monster art regardless of what their future projects might be, because they've got a legitimate gift here.

last edited at Dec 17, 2022 4:43PM

that violence tag seems appropriate

Ayo, my favorite cooking manga's baaaack
this man made an entire essay, and I am reading ALL of it

Shiori definitely has my favourite design here. She’s so cool, I was looking forward to seeing her and she was not a let down. Love the coral eye horn things and her scale lol. The weird bit as that slit going down her stomach though, I thought it was hair or scales but it actually looks like just a hole? Weird, but cool? Agree with temp about ayame tbh.

last edited at Jan 3, 2023 7:18AM

Ah, what a fantastic chapter for this series to pop back up.
Loved every bit of it, now I want more. Thanks in advance, Knight Heron :D
The art has always been spectacular here, but Shiori's "full (?) mermaid form" really knocks it out of the park. Looks like something From Software would put in one of their games. Oh how would a Japanese gaming company ever come to use Japanese mythical beings for inspiration :D

Also wasn't there something about mermaid's blood making people immortal or is that just consuming a mermaid, as in eat their flesh?
I have not yet read ahead, but that tidbit might lessen one potential future twist's impact for some.

Shiori really is a truly horrifying beauty. o_o

Her body barnacles trigger my tropophobia so bad that it borderlines Junjo Ito's works. Makes my skin crawl and I fucking LOVE IT!!.