Review by Frank Plowright
Kazuo Umezz is enormously influential when it comes to creators of Japanese horror comics, yet it’s taken a long time for that respect to manifest in English translations. Orochi predates The Drfiting Classroom, having been started in 1969, and a single volume titled Orochi: Blood was issued in English in 2002, but sunk without trace. Now the entire series about the enigmatic young woman who observes human lives is available in four attractively designed hardcover editions.
A casualty of innovation can be anonymity over time as imitators surpass originators, and that’s the case for Orochi’s début in ‘Sisters’. It opens with a memorable reference to Orochi being a woman consumed by obsession, but becomes a melodrama about sisters in a lonely house anticipating the family curse affecting them when they become eighteen. Umezz supplies the gothic atmosphere, but also histrionics and exaggeration as he winds toward a twist ending. Although underplayed as an observer, Orochi is the most interesting character, able to affect people’s thoughts by touching them, read their minds and if necessary wipe those minds.
‘Bones’, the second and longer story is one hell of a leap forward. Umezz contrives an appalling childhood for Chie, and extends that to the tragedies of her adult life. It’s even more melodramatic than ‘Sisters’, but the level of oppression and misfortune shows a dark and dry sense of humour. Orochi’s part here is greater than observation and curiosity, and we begin to learn her other possibilities, as she attempts to bring a little light to the darkness of Chie’s miserable existence. It requires shifting the attention away from Chie for a gloriously over the top scene. Having set the parameters, Umezz then delivers a classic horror thriller with Orochi playing a memorable part by completely misjudging human reaction at every point while wanting to do the right thing. Yet, he also keeps shifting the ground by moving into other areas.
Umezz slathers on the black ink to deliver tormented people captured in moments of extreme stress for an utterly bonkers tale dragging every possible shocking moment from the situation he sets up. There’s no doubt as to an extremely original mind at work, and after the trial run of ‘Sisters’ it blooms in ‘Bones’, which evaporates any doubts about why Umezz remains so influential. It continues to surprise all the way to an ending entirely in keeping with the path taken. Masterful.
Yet despite the excellence, Orochi is a series constantly progressing, and while one can see how Umezz influenced the likes of Junji Ito with this material, what follows in Orochi 2 has a different tone.
