Definition
Ero guro, a Japanese art movement focusing on eroticism and the grotesque. Guro, the Filipino word for "teacher", a teacher of Filipino martial arts; derived from the Sanskrit word guru. Guro-dong, a dong (neighborhood) in Guru-gu, Seoul. Guro-gu, a gu (district) in Seoul, South Korea.
Guro is a Japanese artistic genre that focuses on the unsettling, eerie and bizarre. It discomforts the readers and viewers due to the abnormal art style, which involves curved patterns, distorted human anatomy, dismembered human parts, and disgusting images. Guro also explores social taboos like violence and sexuality.
The Garo Anime Series (aka Garo - The Animation) are a collective of animated spin-offs of the original live-action series. With the success of the live-action Garo series, an animated series has been created to increase its popularity for the franchise.
Some examples of guro manga for the past decades are The Strange Tale of Panorama Island, Abstractions, Devilman, Shin Urotsukidouji, Tokyo Red Hood, Shoujo Tsubaki, and GANTZ. Guro (グロ) is a shortened wasei eigo from the Western word grotesque (グロテスク), which means something strange and creepy.
Ero guro art experienced a boom when ero guro nansensu, a subculture characterized as a "prewar, bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to explorations of the deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous", manifested in the popular culture of Taishō Tokyo during the 1920s.
Ero guro is also an element of many Japanese horror films and pinku eiga, particularly of the 1960s and 1970s. Examples include Teruo Ishii 's Shogun's Joys of Torture ( 1968) and Horrors of Malformed Men ( 1969) and Yasuzo Masumura 's Blind Beast ( 1969 ), the latter two based on the works of Edogawa Rampo.
Some visual kei bands have a concept or theme relating to ero guro, most notably Cali Gari. Western visual kei fans assumed their theme was a subgenre of visual kei and linked it with other similar bands.
The Garo Anime Series (aka Garo - The Animation) are a collective of animated spin-offs of the original live-action series.
With the success of the live-action Garo series, an animated series has been created to increase its popularity for the franchise. Originally, many theorized the anime is related to the Original Series, The Carved Seal of Flames, featuring a Garo in medieval times.