Feeding Lamb – Manga Review

So you thought Killing Stalking was dark? And you thought Dreaming Goddess was the most disturbing thing you ever read?

If these titles were too much for you, I will give you fair warning right now. You are not ready for this one and this one is pretty bad, but not for the reason you might think like the other two. The opening page to this manga is just a warning of what is to come and you won’t enjoy it. The manga opens on an image of a man bound, gagged and bruised on the floor staring in fright at a pair of sandaled feet standing in front of him. His head is then lifted from the ground roughly as a hand rips off the tape gagging the man’s mouth and the victim spits out a mix of vomit and what we learn a few panels later his own severed fingers. The next panel after this shows the assailant standing in front of his naked victim wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, holding a rope in his hands and sporting an erection. You can probably guess where this is going, but I hope that guess included the victim having his own penis cut off while he is being raped. The final panel of the page is a close-up shot of the victims screaming mouth and you can see that all his teeth had been ripped out leaving hole filled gums. There is a reason that the following tags and warnings are used when you find Feeding Lamb mentioned around the net.

Interestingly enough Feeding Lamb comes from the same author and artist behind another infamous, shorter manga shared around the yaoi and bara community, The Orc Bride holds its own infamy. But is Feeding Lamb just shocking to be shocking or is there something worth reading here behind all the gore? Personally, I think it is a perfect example of a right mess trying too hard to be edgy and disturbing, unlike a certain anime airing this season.

The story of Feeding Lamb revolves around the ‘relationship’ between Andy and Bran. I really do not know how one would describe the relationship between these two men because it is a very strange one. Bran saved Andy when they were kids and because of this, he ended up with a serious head injury which has caused him to end up with epilepsy, though his only real character trait throughout the story is he is a very stupid drunk asshole. Andy is a very cliche horror story villain, you know the one you have seen a thousand times. A meek quiet pushover type that oh no the quiet guy no one suspects is secretly a sadistic cannibalistic serial killer, they even go as far as to show him killing animals as a child. The ‘relationship’ between these two men is a strange one because they don’t seem to act like friends, but Andy sort of looks after Bran and occasionally gives Bran blowjobs even though it seems Bran has no interest in men. They prove this point by showing him watching straight porn during the act. As the story moves forward it does become obvious that Andy is obsessed with keeping Bran all to himself. This culminates in Bran becoming Andy’s victim when he begins to lose control over his ‘friend’. This would be a bad turn of events if not for the fact that Bran is an unlikable asshole. What happens to him at the hands of Andy is both disturbing and disgusting but it is hard at the times to feel sorry for him.

The scenes of violence and torture scattered throughout the story of this manga is what I personally would call edge for the sake of edge, shocking for the sake of being shocking. There is no weight to the actions that happen throughout the story and all that is left is a fucked up mess really if this was the point the author was going for then yes they succeeded. This is somewhat of a shame because there was a chance to explore some interesting themes of psychological horror in this story. One approach I would have taken if writing a story like this would be to play more into Bran’s epilepsy and maybe bring in some more paranoia and perhaps even have him suffering from hallucinations (as this is something that can happen to someone with epilepsy) and perhaps having him stumble upon Andy’s killing room by mistake but Andy then convincing him that it was all just a hallucination. I feel this would have been a more interesting route to take the story.

I had high hopes for this one when I found out it was from the same author behind The Orc Bride as that is a horror manga that I did find myself intrigued by when I read it, I really do not want to say I enjoyed reading The Orc Bride, but I kind of sort of did to a certain extent. Feeding Lamb, however, is just a fucked up mess from start to finish.

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