Henmaru Machino (町野変丸 ''Machino Henmaru'', sometimes given as 'Hanmaru', born 1969,

Aomori Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan in the Tōhoku region. The prefecture's capital, largest city, and namesake is the city of Aomori. Aomori is the northernmost prefecture on Japan's main island, Honshu, and is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the eas ...

) is a Japanese artist, described as the Magritte of the eromanga world, whose works prominently feature themes of bestiality, dysmorphia,

hermaphrodism In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes. Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have sep ...

, and body transformation, as well as dozens of other sexual paraphilia. Most of his work has emerged within a paradigm of hentai manga and images, but some has appeared in galleries; several of his pieces were part of

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts media (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts as well as co ae ...

's traveling ''

Superflat Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. However, superflat doesn't have an explicit definition because Takashi Murakami does not want to limit the movement, but rather ...

'' exhibition. Machino started his career through submitting illustration work to the hentai magazine ''Manga Hot Milk''. While Machino's work defies any easy categorization, it could be said to fall within the Japanese EroGuro (Erotic Grotesque) school, still somewhat loosely defined, which dates back to

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

-influenced, Showa-era

Decadence The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members ...

. Some assert that it is pornography of the most extreme variety, and nothing more. While porn-or-art debates have been occurring around a wide variety of works for centuries across the globe, the debates surrounding Machino are unique in that his subject matter is at the far fringes of human sexual experience, and even beyond it, in that much of what he draws could never occur in the real world. While many EroGuro artists create works that could have real-world analogues ( S&M,

mutilation Mutilation or maiming (from the Latin: ''mutilus'') refers to Bodily harm, severe damage to the body that has a ruinous effect on an individual's quality of life. It can also refer to alterations that render something inferior, ugly, dysfunction ...

, etc.), Machino's images of, for example, girls with dozens of

phalli A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically—or, more precisel ...

sprouting from each of the dozens of breasts that cover their body, are not something any viewer of his work could ever see in life, and thus the issue of "what is pornography?" strongly preempts the issue of "art or pornography?" in some of his work.

Partial list of works

* - Mediax/MD Comics, 1994. * SM Chokyoshi Hitomi - Unlicensed game for Super Famicom. * - Issui Sha/Izumi Comics, 1994. * - East Press, 1996. * ''Hōtō ni Atta Eroi Hanashi'' - Sanwa Shuppan, 1996. * - Ohta Shuppan/Ohta Comics, 1996. * - Issui Sha/Izumi Comics, 1997 * - Issui Sha/Izumi Comics, 1998. * - Ohta Shuppan/Ohta Comics, 1998. * - Kubo Shoten/World Comics, 1998. * - Sanwa Shuppan, 1998. * ''Nuruemon'' - Issui Sha/Izumi Comics, 1998. * ''Kenzen Hentai Shōjo'' - Kubo Shoten/World Comics Special, 2002. * - Sanwa Shuppan, 1997 * - East Press, 1999 * - Issui Sha/Izumi Comics, 199?

References

External links

Machino works list
(Japanese) {{DEFAULTSORT:Machino, Henmaru Living people Machino Henmaru Machino Henmaru Ero guro