Sibling rivalries are intense, especially between sisters. Lisa has always lived in the shadow of her older sister Kazusa. Kazusa is considered the more beautiful, the more perfect, the better one, and Lisa burns with envy, jealous and rage that lasts well into adulthood. When Orochi, a third girl, enters the equation, Kazusa and Lisa's rivalry tips into the realm of murderous nightmare, as the newcomer becomes both catalyst and witness of an orgy of madness and murder.
OROCHI is a headlong dive into Gothic Horror with all the trappings: poisoning, betrayal, madness, comas and death in a story that seems to take place in a dream-like reality where something horrible is waiting to happen just around the corner. There's a real claustrophobia and creepiness in the near-incestuous relationship between the sisters. The crumbling mansion the women live in is like every haunted mansion you've ever encountered in your nightmares, a playground of the unconscious, where repressed impulses and forbidden desires burst forth and find their full expression.
The Japanese have a very close and strange relationship with the Horror genre. They not only take to it like fish to water, but proceed to introduce their own particular brands of poison. Kazuo Umezu is the biggest fish in those waters, and his poison has a sweetness that catches in your throat.
Go on. Have a sip.
Adi Tantimedh is a screenwriter and filmmaker who writes comics when he has the time. He has recently completed JLA: The Age of Wonder for DC Comics, and written and directed Open House, a short film for Studio FP in Italy. His current projects include the forthcoming Blackshirt for Moonstone Books, Anna Passenger, a novel being serialised on Opi8.com, and various film and television projects.
