David Peach

Tag: Junji Ito

Junji Ito is a horror Mangaka famous for his most popular works: Uzumaki, Gyo and Tomio. As I re-read his stories, and discover new ones, I will be sharing my thoughts about them here.

  • 📂

    Anything but a Ghost

    She died giving birth to me. When I came out, she was already a ghost. But she still cared about me. Even after that, she would come to breastfeed me.

    Misaki tells Shigeru about her twisted past.

    Anything but a Ghost — synopsis

    Whilst driving through a mountain area, Shigeru finds a woman stood at the roadside with her back to the road. On leaving his car and walking up to her, he sees that she seems completely stunned whilst being covered in blood. Without hesitation, he drives her to the nearest hospital to get her checked out. As it turns out, the blood is not hers and she isn’t even injured in the slightest.

    After some time has past, Shigeru and his wife are going about their lives — they even have a child on the way. Then out of nowhere there is a knock at the door. On opening it, Shigeru sees a beautiful young woman standing there, but fails to recognise her straight away. She introduces herself as the woman he helped by the roadside that day, and tells him her name is Misaki.

    But it seems that she is to have a negative impact on his life. Her and Shigeru begin seeing each other in secret and soon reveals a strange, twisted secret about herself — one that he simply doesn’t believe. However, as the closing pages of this manga reveal themselves, not only does her secret show itself to be true, but things also get a whole lot stranger and a lot more darker.

    Shigeru
    Yuina
    Misaki
    Characters from Anything but a Ghost

    A twist on the ghost story

    Anything but a Ghost is a ghost story where the ghosts are not the ones to be feared. Misaki is a young woman who seems to be somewhere between that of a ghost and that of a human. And even though she is drawn as a very innocent and delicate looking woman, she always has an air of creepiness to her. This is helped largely due to how she is introduced to us. We know something is not quite right — we just don’t know what it is at this point.

    When she mentions that she can see Shigeru’s ghosts following him, I immediately thought of them as malevolent things. I was sure these ghosts she talked about would be grotesque monsters that live in the next plain of existence, just waiting to come through. But the truth is far more sinister than that.

    I always enjoy how Junji Ito seems to be able to take our preconceived ideas of what typical sorts of horror stories are, and turns them on their head.

    Misaki shows her true self

    Strange food cravings

    In horror fiction, I think we are used to seeing monsters that prey upon the weak before eating them. Whether that be vampires, werewolves, other-worldly beasts or even cannibals. But this is the first time, as is a lot of the times reading Junji Ito’s work, that I have seen the idea of eating one’s victims in quite this way.

    The very idea of having a person who feeds on ghosts is an incredibly inventive one and, dare I say it, genius in it’s own way. But it doesn’t just end there. I absolutely loved how, when Misaki would bite down into her ethereal feast, somehow blood would spill out and cover her face. It’s almost like she is able to pull the ghosts of those who have passed, into our world, if only for a moment — for one last taste of pain and suffering. As if death wasn’t enough.

    And without giving too much away, the visions that Junji Ito was able to put into my mind, purely by suggestion, were pretty horrific. When she bites into what she eats towards the end, I could see every single blood-curdling inch of it, yet Ito drew none of it. He is truly a master of not only his own imagination, but of toying with his readers’ imaginations too.

    Shigeru finds the blood covered woman beside the road
    Shigeru starts seeing Misaki in secret
    What is Misaki eating?

    In Conclusion

    This is an excellent stand-alone story from Junji Ito that is as unsettling as it is inventive. What was perhaps most noteworthy for me, was how it is completely grotesque — especially with what she eats towards the end — but without you actually seeing the action itself. Kind of like how Quentin Tarantino was able to gross out early 90’s audiences with his famous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs. Despite never even seeing the cut.

    You never actually see her biting into any pound of flesh. But the result is no less effective. If anything it’s perhaps more so.

    I would highly recommend this as a first read from Junji Ito’s catalogue of work. It is readable out in public without attracting people’s concerned stares, with no real displays of gore and flesh. However, it will perhaps leave you feeling like you have seen as much.

    Anything But A Ghost is anything but a standard ghost story.

    You can read Anything but a Ghost here. (Please support Junji Ito by buying his manga in your own language where available)

    🏷️ , , , ,
  • 📂

    The Snail (Uzumaki part 8)

    Get off my back! He’s just a slug now! He’s not human anymore!!

    Tsumura justifies himself poking Katayama with a long stick

    The Snail — Synopsis

    Katayama is a bit of a joke amongst his classroom peers — one of which is Uzumaki main-stay, Kirie Goshima. One morning Kirie and her friend remark on how it is raining for the first time in a while, and that they predict that Katayama will come to school that day. Sure enough he walks in, late as always, and slowly takes his seat.

    As each day passes, with the rain continuing, Katayama keeps arriving later. However, his appearance begins to change with each passing day. Firstly a spiral bulge becomes visible from underneath his wet school shirt. Until, by the end of the week, he has somehow managed to transform into a giant snail. Yep, the title of this chapter is very literal.

    Just how will the other school students deal with this very odd turn of events? Will they attack or will they try to help? And what will happen once another one of those very students begins to display signs that they may be going down a similar path?

    Katayama
    Kirie
    Kirie’s friend
    Tsumura
    Mr Yokota

    The Spiral Rises

    There are two starting points for the spirals in Uzumaki, as I can see. The first is in spirals that already exist in the world. Like with small whirlpools in water, snail shells and in coiled springs. Then there have been the appearances of spirals that have seemingly come from nowhere. Like with Kirie’s hair problems and the girl with the scar.

    In The Snail, we see the latter — a large spiral mark on Katayama’s back seems to point to the origin of his grotesque transformation. Once this mark is discovered, after Tsumura drags a naked and humiliated Katayama into the hallway, the transformation seems to speed up. Presumably, to get the reputation of being slow, it would have to have been a part of his personality for a while before this chapter begins. It’s almost as if the spiral speeds up the transformation process once it is discovered.

    There was one thing I noticed that I found very interesting to note too. Once Katayama turned, and was given sanctuary in the shelter on school grounds, Tsumura starts poking him with a stick. Soon afterwards he himself begins to show signs of slowing down. Then later on, when another character destroys the snail eggs left behind in the woods, they too seem to be targeted.

    I wonder whether the spiral is completely self aware and is actually beginning to target these people out of malice or revenge. If so, it would indeed give some new angles from which to view other chapters in the Uzumaki collection.

    Katayama is bad at sports due to his slowness

    Enter the grotesque

    There haven’t been too many moments in Uzumaki so far, where I have had to squint from disgust. Save perhaps for when Shuichi’s mother stabbed herself in her ears and cut her own finger tips off. But with how Junji Ito manages to capture the depictions of human-sized snails, he almost got me wincing from the page.

    Everything from the bumpy slimy textures of the bodies, to the bulging, elongated eye sockets. Even down to the way he shows Snail-Katayama peeling slowly off the school’s outer wall as he is forced off by students with brooms. These Kafka-esque depictions of spiral-controlled snails display a horror manga artist at the top of his game.

    There was another thing that I found worked at both the grotesque and the dark comedy levels too. The moment when both Katayama and Tsumura, both fully-transformed, are kept together in the pen. They soon begin to mate, as snails do, which brought a whole new layer to the story. Not only are these both young men at heart, or at least they were, they were also the complete opposite of friends. The idea that you have a bully and his victim now mating as human-sized snails, brings a whole new level of horror, and dare I say comedy, that only someone like Junji Ito could conjure up.

    Katayama’s back becomes swollen
    Forcing the snail off the school wall
    Katayama and Tsumura begin mating as snails
    Katayama leaves a slime trail

    In Conclusion

    I feel like The Snail is more of a mid-level entry into the weirdness of Junji Ito’s worlds. You are safe from the violence and body horror found elsewhere, however, instead you are treated to spine-tingling depictions of gross transformations.

    I think it works really well as a standalone story too. The fact that Katayama is slow by reputation, means that the story doesn’t need to rely on the surrounding spiral nightmares of the town of Kurouzu-cho. This could just as easily be a one-shot nightmare of Ito’s.

    If you are feeling particularly brave you could go in with reading The Snail first. It will give you some great examples of Ito’s artwork and indeed his comedy-aware writing style. Or you could start at the beginning of the Uzumaki Collection and let this one sneak up on you slowly. Give it a read if you think you can stomach it.

    🏷️ , , , , , ,
  • 📂

    Junji Ito cameo in Death Stranding?

    Death Stranding is easily one of the most hotly anticipated games of recent years. From the creative genius Hideo Kojima, this epic, world-traversing PS4 game is sure to push boundaries and impress in many ways.

    What I discovered today, is that there could very well be a cameo by none other that Junji Ito himself. Ito had previously been working with Kojima on the now-cancelled Silent Hills project. (I still shed a tear at the mere thought of what that could have become). But it seems that they have remained in touch.

    Here are the images I have found after somebody shared them on Facebook. I have yet to confirm these as being true, but I pray to the gods of horror that they are.

    Check out Death Stranding on the PlayStation Store!

    🏷️ , , , , ,
  • 📂

    The Bully

    Synopsis: What is “The Bully” about?

    In The Bully we follow Kuriko and the boys around her who end up suffering in one way or another. From the manga’s opening pages we are led to believe that she is a sweet woman who only wants to be honest with her husband-to-be.

    We join Kuriko and her soon-to-be-Husband Yutaro at a local park, where they once played as children. She tells him how she wishes to confess details to him of her “dark past”, as she puts it. Kuriko tells him, and us through a flashback, of how she was once entrusted to look after a young boy, called Nao, when she was just a young girl herself.

    But the trust put in her for that little boy’s welfare was misplaced, it seems. Kuriko goes on to reveal how, when Nao would start becoming too clingy with her, she would start bullying him. She started lightly with just screaming in his ear, but the story soon escalates her abuse into some pretty harsh scenes.

    As the story of The Bully moves into it’s second half, it shows us how those earlier events have affected those people in the present day. We learn where those people are now in life and ultimately how Kuriko’s volatile nature affects each and every one of them.

    Main Characters

    Kuriko
    Young Kuriko
    Nao
    Young Nao
    Yutaro
    Young Yutaro
    Hiroshi

    A tough read at times

    When we talk about horror with regards to Junji Ito, we often talk about the body horror aspects more often than not. We discuss slug-people, Spirals, and a certain girl who can not die. But in The Bully, Ito has crafted what I believe to be one of his most successfully-unnerving horror stories to date.

    Although Kuriko is the main character here, I couldn’t help but empathise with Nao in those flashbacks. Where he was made to drink dirty water; where he was made to confront the scary dog “Devil”; and where he is beaten with a stick.

    How Ito manages to bring to the page the horrors of being bullied is impressive. The innocent character of Nao was a perfect vessel in which we can put all of our hope and caring natures in to. Kuriko, on the other hand, was the perfect vessel for evil.

    Although…

    Kuriko is a bully to Nao

    Kuriko is an interesting character

    The fact that our introduction to Kuriko is at a point in life where she seems settled, and is opening up about her past, gave me a positive feeling about her. And just as negative first impressions can colour our image of people, I think positive ones can too.

    Because of this, I found myself never really hating her, save for the dog scene and the beating. I found myself not liking her actions, but thinking about how we aren’t the same people as we were when we were younger. This doesn’t excuse those actions, but she is confessing through an apparent weight of guilt.

    Of course in the story’s closing panels we do get to see her character transform into what she was perhaps destined to be. That closing panel of The Bully is one of the most frightening I have come across. Ito has always had a good eye for a great closing image that can haunt you, but this takes the prize.

    Kuriko and Nao meet again

    History repeats itself?

    When stories take on the heavy subject of abuse, there are often times when the one who was abused later becomes the abuser to another. The cycle of violence. But something that I found very intriguing in The Bully, was that Junji Ito seemed to turn those ideas on their heads.

    Kuriko seemed to have a nice family upbringing from what I could see in the flashbacks and yet something in her snapped at a young age. Then after being bullied relentlessly by her, Nao seemed to actually grow up to become a well-adjusted adult. He had a solid job and actually reminisced about his younger days with a kind of fondness. Love is blind, it seems.

    But the story’s big reveal doesn’t show this violent nature being passed on to her child, but instead — and ultimately more terrifying — it shows Kuriko relapsing and unleashing a scarier version of her buried self.

    Not only do we know what she was capable of as a child, but we know she is now a fully grown woman with the added strength that brings. And we know she is mentally unstable — mistaking her young son for the once-young Nao. But what we don’t know, is what ends up happened to her new victim. With it ending with a walk to the park, perhaps the real horror will live on in our minds trying to imagine what will happen next.

    Kuriko and Yutaro
    Kuriko beats Nao
    Kuriko – The Bully

    In Summary

    The Bully has been getting recommended to me for a while now, and I never got round to reading it until recently. Now I see what all the fuss is about. This story is one of Junji Ito’s crowning achievements in my opinion. The way that he has developed each of the characters and gone against what you would perhaps have guessed would happen with them, is a stroke of genius.

    Ito never takes the easy way out; he always pushes up to the boundaries and often past them. Despite him being one of the most accessible horror manga artists of our time, he remains one of the most terrifying and creative too.

    If you want to jump into the deep end of horror manga but without all of the blood and guts, then Junji Ito’s The Bully is literally the perfect example of a story to read. It is also a self-contained one shot, standing at just 30 pages. So you could read this in one short go.

    🏷️ , , ,
  • 📂

    Snow White adaptation by Junji Ito

    Most people probably know the story of Snow White — the seven dwarfs; the poison apple; the prince. But I bet not many know of this version by acclaimed horror Mangaka Junji Ito.

    • The Queen is the fairest in the land
    • Snow White is fairer
    • The beautiful Snow White

    A short version but not one to be missed.

    Read on Manga Owl.

    🏷️ , , , ,
  • 📂

    Honoured Ancestors

    What is Honoured Ancestors about?

    We join a young couple as the boy, Makita, is walking his girlfriend Risa back to her house. Risa has recently lost her memory and nobody can work out how. She then begins to get increasing anxiety, along with nightmares of a giant caterpillar invading her bedroom at night.

    Perhaps something in her lost memories can give a clue as to the origin of these disturbing visions?

    Makita seems almost happy that Risa has lost her memory because, as he puts it, they can experience all of the “first times” they had together once again. One such “first time” that they relive is them both going round to Makita’s home, where he lives with his sick father. However, upon meeting the father, thoughts and feelings begin to stir within her.

    It is in this house where the mystery of her lost memories will be unravelled. And there will be one such “first time” that she will wish would never happen again.

    Head to head with the past

    In the author’s notes for this story, Ito explains how he saw the big reveal of this story in his mind before any of characters or plot came to him. This is a very interesting way of working, starting with the imagery and working back from there, and I wonder how many other stories of his began this way.

    Honoured Ancestors is one of those stories that has so much more going on underneath its surface than what we see. We are shown the current generation of the family, Makita, along with the end of his father’s life. But what about the many ancestors that came before? How did they all trick their partners into marriage and carrying on this family line in such a twisted way?

    I really enjoy how many of Ito’s stories like this one trigger these thoughts in me. I love wondering about events that happened so completely out of the scope of the current story, yet would still have had an effect on the story’s world.

    In Summary

    I enjoy this story a lot. While not being a favourite of mine, it still holds a high place for me. I find myself imagining the lives of those ancestors and just how they came to begin the connection to their past in this way.

    You should definitely pick up Junji Ito’s Shiver Collection and read this story – see what thoughts it sparks in your own imagination.

    🏷️ ,
  • 📂

    Frankenstein

    You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did… it is only natural for a man to pursue knowledge. Until a few years ago, I burned with the same ambition as you.

    Victor Frankenstein begins to tell his story — Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is perhaps one of the most well-known horror novels ever written, if only by name. In his horror manga of the same name, Junji Ito tackles the mammoth task of bringing this novel into his disturbingly visual world.

    Frankenstein is such a huge part of popular culture, however, I have to be honest and say that I have never read Frankenstein the novel; Ito’s version is my first time experiencing the story itself. I knew the rough story – the Doctor creating the monster, but I needed to check the major plot points on the novel’s Wikipedia page after reading this manga, just to see how close it was. 

    I am happy to report that Junji Ito’s version of Frankenstein stays very true to Mary Shelley’s novel. Even the narrative structure of telling the story from the perspective of the ship’s captain is maintained. But I can’t give a full comparison as I am not familiar with the source material.

    What is Frankenstein about?

    During an expedition to the North Pole, in the pursuit of fame, the captain and his crew see the towering figure of a stranger in the distance. This is followed by them finding a man out in the freezing cold all alone and in need of shelter — a man by the name of Victor Frankenstein. Victor is in pursuit also, only his pursuit is of something far more tangiable than fame. His pursuit is of a creature he decsribes — the figure that the crew saw previously.

    Suffering from exhaustion and cold, Victor tells the captain his story and how he came to be out here in the wilds of the North Pole. We learn of Victor’s childhood and family, and his growth into the scientist he became. He also recounts the terrible deeds he performed in the pursuit of greatness in his unique field of study.

    He goes on to tell the Captain of his creation, the Frankenstein’s Monster, and how it came to escape and ultimately wreak havoc on his family. We bear witness to the awful deeds that the monster does, and Victor’s seemingly never-ending pursuit of it. Victor’s story ultimately brings us back to the current time on board the trapped ship and to the final moments of realisation of both the monster and the creator alike.

    My thoughts

    As I said before, this was the first time experiencing the full story of Frankenstein. I mean, I’ve always known about the characters and the creation of the monster through parodies and tv series tie-ins like Penny Dreadful and Carry On Screaming, but never the original story.

    I am glad, in a way, that reading Junji Ito’s interpretation of it was my first taste. It meant that I got to experience all of the story’s twists, turns and moments of horror, only via the expert artistry of the horror mangaka himself. That’s not to discount Mary Shelley’s talents; I’m just saying that this was a very different way to be subjected to it for the first time.

    I thought that the intricacies of the monster himself were put across very well too. It’s moments of horrific brutality; it’s moments of love towards the family whose home he hides in; and the moments of vulnerability where he pleads for his creator to build him a mate – a mate who won’t cower and scream at the mere sight of his face. Someone he can love — and receive love in return.

    I can’t say that this is my favourite Junji Ito story, but nonetheless I thought he did a great job working within another writer’s world and the limitations that it can bring. His artwork is on point as always, with the depiction of both innocence and horror so expertly portayed, sometimes through the same character.

    I’ve heard said before that if you are going to remake or cover someone else’s creation, whether a film, song or whatever, you should either strive to improve on the original or at least make it different. Whilst I can’t say whether or not he improved it, I do think he brought something completely different. Perhaps even bringing this classic horror story to the eyes of people who may never have ended up reading it — like me.

    In Summary

    Whilst I can’t recommend reading this version of Frankenstein before the original, nor should I, I do feel that it is definitely a Manga worth reading at some point. I’m not sure about any different experiences I may have had, had I have read the novel first. The big difference that does spring to mind is that all of the visuals would have been created in my imagination – making it even more scary perhaps?

    But as a standalone horror manga, regardless of the source material, Junji Ito’s Frankenstein is a great read in my opinion and worthy of your time.

    🏷️ , ,
  • 📂

    One of the most exciting pictures I’ve seen in a long while

    This picture is one of the most exciting pictures I’ve seen in a while. On the surface it is just three people looking at something on a computer monitor. However, for those who know and enjoy two of these people’s work, it is something to shout home about.

    Junji Ito

    The guy on the left is Junji Ito – horror manga legend and instrumental in bringing the genre to modern mainstream attention. I enjoy horror manga very much and Junji Ito is one of those authors whose work I actively search for. His art style is instantly recognisable and has created some of the most memorable and terror-inducing images and stories.

    His most well known stories are probably Uzumaki, Tomie, and Gyo. Each masterpieces in their own right and serve to solidify Ito’s position at the very top of his game. His stories, especially those mentioned, work within the horror sub-genre of ‘Body Horror’.

    Hideo Kojima

    The guy on the right is Hideo Kojima. Kojima is a name well-known and highly respected within the gaming community, and indeed the wider community of action and story telling. He is the man responsible for the Metal Gear Solid series whose reputations really do precede them.

    Each of the games of Kojima’s that I have played I have fallen in love with. The first two Metal Gear Solid games, the first on the Playstation and the second on the Playstation 2, were such important games to me growing up, with me being about fifteen years old and eighteen years old respectively when they were released.

    These games were some of the most memorable gaming experiences that I have ever had and have definitely stayed with me to the present day.

    Why this picture is exciting

    To have both of these people present in the same photo, apparently reviewing something together in an office, s exciting. The had previously been working together on what was going to be a new Silent Hill game. The very thought of that even being a possibility is cause enough to lose your shit over. Junji Ito’s twisted and macabre creations within a world created and directed by Kojima…

    …But it was never to be. Silent Hills, as it was called, was cancelled and they both went their separate ways. And that was that…

    …Or was it?

    Death Stranding is the game that Kojima and his team are currently working on, which is exciting in itself. However, when you take the recent image above and consider the very real possibility that the two masters themselves could in fact still be working together, whole new levels of awesome enter into the mix.

    Original source of image here.

    🏷️ , ,
  • 📂

    My collection of horror Manga may spiral out of control…

    🏷️ , ,
  • 📂

    I stumbled upon this beauty in Waterstones today!

    🏷️ , ,

Search for it

Categories

Archive