Parasitic City #2 — Shintaro Kago
Parasitic City #2 continues Shintaro Kago's annual dystopian series for Hollow Press, set in a world where transgression is monitored through implanted parasites and future lives are purchased with accumulated Haramitsu points. The second issue extends the arc with the same formal precision that defines the series: strict panel control, abrupt tonal shifts, and a structural logic that treats bodies and ethics as interchangeable mechanisms.
As a large A4 volume, the book reads like a controlled archive. Kago's ero-guro register is present throughout, but the emphasis falls on system and rule—violence and desire rendered with clinical detachment rather than spectacle. The density of reference, moving across comics history and Western philosophy, is characteristic of his long-form work.
This is the second printing of the English edition, limited to 1,000 copies. The volume runs to 160 pages with stitched binding, printed in black-and-white offset. Editorial work is credited to Michele Nitri; design to Marco Cirillo Pedri and Christian Dolz Bayarri; English translation by Iain Halliday.
Parasitic City #2 sits within a sequence running from 2022 to 2026. It functions as a discrete chapter—complete enough to read in isolation, but shaped by its position in the larger arc.
The Parasitic City Series
All available volumes in the series, in order:
