The Art of Uruonurun - 1. Heroic Endings

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Red 06

It was this bizarre procedure that first attracted me to the work of this artist with a tongue-twisting name. To be strictly accurate it was a preceding image in the series which showed the 'Red Hero' spread out with an interesting bulge in his tights (still pristine at that point). I chose this variant to start the post mainly because you can see the hero's face and reactions. I'm often bemused by the winking syndrome in these pictures but it makes perfect sense to me here, as his organs (released from his tights) are engulfed in green slime. It must be an uncomfortable sensation, not dissimilar to Tony Houston's wet costume humiliations in the recent Home Alone posts. 

I'm not sure if this procedure is about torture, a medical intervention or simply run-of-the-mill milking, but it certainly involves the latter later on, as you might guess from the tube poised above. The green goo seems to melt hero suits and promote arousal but I know no more. Perhaps related to the dreaded Kryptonite that brought Superman low.

I particularly like the cleverly stylised faces of the attendants here, creating an impression of aliens with unknown motivations and unreadable expressions in a highly original way.

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Red 12

In this later image from the same series, the equipment attached to the hero and his slashed suit  suggests that the alien's interest in him is not entirely benign. The title of the piece seems to have ambiguous meanings, either 'Hero with No Ending' (to his torment I suppose) or alternatively 'A Hero's End' which chimes with a Japanese proverb "The last days of a hero are often to be pitied". These add up to a perfect explanation of the imagery, which spans several series from this artist with heroes of various hues in the frame. 

This one, Red, has been placed inside a glass container and immersed in more green fluid which seems to be flecked with evidence of on-going milk escapes. His face mask saves him from drowning in it, but it also gives control of his survival to his captors - plus the ability to experiment with vapours related to their experiments. 

A hero's seed is always likely to be of interest to a scientist as it is with the animals in a zoo. The tackle enclosing his tackle is obviously designed to collect it and encourage production.  At bottom right we see images of him in his different existences, as a masked hero and ordinary human. These suggest that it is the essence of heroism that the experimenters are seeking. Subjecting him to life threatening forces no doubt brings that elusive element to the fore.

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Red 28

This image is included in the same series but not obviously related to the scientific experimentations. It shows the Red Hero in the clutches of a maggot-like creature whose dick-shaped tail suggests it's even more enslaved by it's sexual forces than the average human male is. 

An optimist might read this image as showing the insect to be carnivorous rather than rampantly sexual, but the resistance-deadening injection and draining of the victim's sexual energy are suitable preliminaries to both ends. This might be the Red Hero's initial capture, I suppose, or a bad dream as his torments overwhelm him. A dream in which he sees his captors as they really are.

Uruonurun - Blue Shokushu 01

This image of the Blue Hero is from a different series but follows a similar pattern, the strange elasticated (?) web restraining him features in both series. The title here means something like 'job description'. Doomed to suffer outrageous fortune in other words. In the next frame of this series a purple blob splats down on his crotch and melts his suit away. Other blobs shred the rest of his suit. 

Uruonurun - Blue Shokushu 08

A lurking tentacle with a frighteningly stepped, graduated tip appears

You can probably guess what happens after that. 

Step by step.

Notice how the hero's hair in these pictures matches his suit. Just saying!

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Blue 14

This picture shows the same Blue Hero in the 'No End' series, undergoing a similar examination to Red but in a more spacious cylinder with even less of his suit having survived at this point. The aliens may be intending to discover if the heroes' suits are responsible for their special powers. Removing them obviously has an effect on our own 'special power' as we watch, but I don't imagine the aliens experience the same urges (or do they?)

 The restraint arrangements seem to include inserting the hero's limbs into thick, technological sleeves which seem to have embedded circuitry in their skins. They look like kinky, thigh height boots. Tubes attached to them seem to be circulating fluids of unknown purpose, probably unpleasant.

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Blue 09

The interest in understanding the defensive capabilities of the hero's suits is given credence by this sequence. Blue's suit is ripped open to expose his muscular abs, which are then given a repeated, severe pounding by a (green!) hovering ball (a welcome return of a familiar sci-fi artefact). This crude experiment continues for some time and demonstrates conclusively that the hero feels the full pain of gut punching when his suit has been shredded. 

In an even more sinister development, he coughs up green fluid. It suggests that his captors have been insidiously infiltating and jeopardising his body processes with all their equipment.

This artist's style in much of his work is very similar to others in the gay Manga genre, but in these pictures he escapes from the exaggerated, giant eyes and spiky hair that usually typify it, but don't convey quite the same meaning to western viewers as they do in Japan.

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Yellow 04

Here the Yellow Hero takes his turn and gets the electro-chair treatment. Uruo conjures up a tremendous impression of an overwhelming assault on the hero, though his muscles. It's evident that the shocks are not lethal, unless it's possible to die from over-stimulation. The cables attached to his temples raise the possibility that some sort of brain washing or mental control is also going on. That suspicion deepens in the later images in the series. But first, Yellow is subjected a range of quite brutal Pain and sensory torments (see links below). 

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Yellow 14

Ultimately Yellow suffers the unkindest cut of all for any hero. The clunky, hi-tech manacles round his wrists and ankles hold him down on the floor by some form of electro-magnetic attraction, forcing him to kneel, helpless while faceless purple aliens take advantage of him through the rear of his ripped suit.

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Yellow 19

Yellow suffers a number of bruising and invasive attacks and ultimately, battered, totally drained and exhausted, he submits to the dominance of the goo which envelops his face like a lustful partner. His arms and other dangling bits hang uselessly, unresisting, unexcited. It's a powerful image of submission.

At this point in the series, reality itself appears to be shifting, transporting him to a cavern-like chamber which has an organic appearance like the internal pathways of a living body. An all-seeing eye in the wall of the channel looks down on him, watching intently. It creates the impression of a greater being controlling everything that is happening and observing the hero's behaviour. 

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Black&Yellow 21

Meanwhile, the Black Hero is in dire straights too, trapped in a similar claustrophobic cavern where more of the sinister, watchful eyes look down.. Caught up in the gooey web with his suit ripped open, he's under threat of multi-tentacle attack  Part of him is excited by the struggle but there's fear in his eyes when he glimpses the yellow hero approaching. Or could it be he feels shame at being caught on the verge of surrendering to unheroic, base feelings ?

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Black&Yellow 23

Yellow closes in behind and saves him from the terror of the tentacles by forestalling them, plugging the hole himself (with obvious enthusiasm). The tentacles seem to melt away, but we can now see that Yellow is still enveloped by the blob and it's as if he's still under it's control. Is this to be the ultimate humiliation to be imposed upon the unlucky heroes? The destruction of their virtuous honour by mutually mating under the direction of the eye that watches impassively?

Uruonurun - Eiyuu no matsuro - Black&Yellow 28

Suddenly the whole scene, the whole narrative seems to reverse. The rents in the heroes' suits repair themselves and disappear. The blobbery seems to degenerate into lifeless fluid, melting away. The elastic restraints simply fade into nothingness leaving the two heroes in each others arms, but bound together now by sexual desire, mainly Yellow's, which is reaching new heights even as we watch. 

The eye above has turned red, matching the colour in Yellow's eye. Does this signify that Yellow has succumbed to a sort of demonic possession? The apprehensive look in Black's eye suggests he thinks so.

Or is this simply the eye, enjoying the moment of passion, the moment where his manipulated heroes begin to find each other and discover that there's more to existence than fighting evil. 

~

 Links: Uruonurun on 'X'

Uronururun at My Reading Manga