Chack’s Gloomy Bear manga starred a cute-looking bear that bloodily mauled its human owner, while Okayu’s Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan balanced its slice-of-life storyline and charming characters with brutal executions of the male lead. Meanwhile, later artists like Masaki Okayu and Mori Chack blended this gory art with more familiar cutesy manga.
Guro manga was a natural evolution of the Ero-Guro (“erotic grotesque”) art movement founded in 1930s Japan, blending sexual elements with gross-out imagery and scenes of intense violence. These younger artists added in body horror, supernatural themes and even the rare bit of black comedy, creating a disturbing genre of manga dubbed guro manga. In the late ’80s, Ito and other artists like Suehiro Maruo began publishing dark, gory comics that built on horror tropes established by forerunners like Kazuo Umezu. Guro (“grotesque”) manga artists like Junji Ito, described by Guillermo Del Toro as “The David Cronenberg of manga,” played a role in the formation of Guro Lolita. These girls appreciated visual-kei music, a theatrical reinterpretation of nu-metal and hard rock, and enjoyed Takashi Miike’s films as much as they did Sailor Moon.
The movement represented a growing sect of Japanese youths that sought anathema to Japanese pop culture’s predilection towards the overtly feminine, the sugary sweetness put forth by slice-of-life anime, J-Pop groups and Hello Kitty merch. Guro Lolitas styled their black dresses with splashes of fake blood and accessories like bandages or fake eyeballs - a stark contrast to the saccharine sweetness preferred by traditional Lolitas. Punk Lolita & Goth Lolita emerged as a natural counter, which led to smaller splinter movements like Guro Lolita. By the turn of the century, many sought an alternative to the pristine, ultrafeminine coordinates worn by most Lolita. The younger Lolita added layers of colorful petticoats, ornately-detailed bags and time-consuming makeup. Influenced more by Alice in Wonderland than Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita, the early days of Lolita saw girls modernizing Rococo and Victorian clothing into an understated, everyday style of dress, later generations began to femininize the style.
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