grandmother didn’t know was that years later, society would still create Yamauba. We would still be seen as dark, terrible things simply for refusing to fit a particular narrative. Perhaps the truly terrifying thing is to step away from what you’re supposed to do and what you have planned. Perhaps you, the monster that you are, find yourself feeding on what you could not bear yourself.
“Perhaps Yamauba were created because we did not want to name something we brought forth with our own hands,” Yuki says. “Perhaps flesh-eating monsters are simply people who break their molds and their boxes, and find themselves demanding all they have been denied.”