Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection

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The best horror bypasses your critical and/or intellectual faculties, pushing psychological buttons, some you may not even know you have. And that's what Junji Ito's work tends to do for me. The Mansion of Phantom Pain is also a decent story about a young man who gets a job at a rich person’s house where he has to relieve the man’s son’s pain that has somehow, invisibly filled the mansion. This one’s a good example of Ito’s unique imagination - it’s something only he could come up with. I was hooked waiting to see where he’d take the story, and it was mostly interesting, though, again the ending is weak. Let me start off by saying the art is beautiful. Even during the gruesome scenes, I was captivated by the illustrations. The Kafkaesque autobiography of a diplomat who compares himself to Grigori Rasputin, and what happens after he gets caught up in a political purge during the early 2000s. Written by Nagasaki Takashi, art by Junji Ito.

Official Manga Trailer | Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story

The French series Tomié, from Tonkam, now Delcourt / Tonkam, is apparently made up of the first two volumes of this series along with Tomie Again. Tonkam also released a Junji Ito Collection following the volumes of this series, only skipping the two Tomie volumes that they already released. Despite the stupidity of it, I was still initially hooked. However, as I kept going on, the story eventually became very repetitive and annoying. Some of the dialogues were also really cringey to read. This is a light novel written by Hirokatsu Kihara (木原浩勝), drawn by Junji Ito. Only the last chapter is in Manga Format, "The Summer Time Graduation Trip". Lately, school children have been following the custom. Sadly, some of those children have also been committing suicide - supposedly after having their fortunes told by an ethereal, dark haired, beautiful boy. The entire atmosphere of the main story is what really held me; it was eerie and unsettling in a very subtle way, with brief bursts of that in-your-face horror some people love. I really enjoyed the main character and his crush as they tried piecing together the clues behind the boy at the crossroads (competent horror leads are the best!!)The Rib Woman is the worst story of the collection. A young woman wants a more shapely figure so opts for rib removal surgery which somehow leads to a rib ghost?! And the book closes out with a short piece of nonfiction where Ito recalls the time he bought fake joke poop as a kid, which was rubbish and a pointless addition.

Lovesickness by Junji Ito | Goodreads Lovesickness by Junji Ito | Goodreads

As with the other times I read Mr. Ito's stories, my sanity seriously, honestly is not doing well and my level of mental health is also dropping. It doesn't take long for Ryusuke's life to be turned upside down once the town residents are convinced he's the mysterious bishounen. School becomes stressful the moment he starts finding love letters in his shoe cubby from obsessed girls. Things take a turn for the worse when girls begin stalking him home in groups, inevitably forcing him to go into hiding for both his own protection and his family's safety. Being mistaken for the bishounen also means he can't go to the police for protection because they're treating him as a serial killer pending arrest.

Soichi coming soon!

Finally, there’s ‘Memories of Real Poop’ (yes, really – also known as ‘A Shit to Remember’, which is a much better title, come on!), and it’s one of those short slice-of-life stories that sometimes make their way into these collections; a (possibly autobiographical?) account of a boy obsessing over buying fake plastic shit.

Junji Ito VIZ | The Official Website for Junji Ito

His longest work, the three-volume Uzumaki, is about a town's obsession with spirals: people become variously fascinated with, terrified of, and consumed by the countless occurrences of the spiral in nature. Apart from the ghastly, convincingly-drawn deaths, the book projects an effective atmosphere of creeping fear as the town's inhabitants become less and less human, and more and more bizarre things begin to happen. The two stories of The Strange Hikizuri Siblings are the best in the book in part because Ito leans into the humour that’s more or less always there in his work, rather than try to make it seem only horrific. The Hikizuri family are a group of weird nutters, almost like a Japanese Addams family, who, in the first story, decide to mess with their sister’s new boyfriend, and, in the second, the younger brother tries to usurp the older brother’s role as head of the family by faking a seance. The stories are fun and unpredictable and the Hikizuri’s are amusingly bonkers. The Mansion of Phantom Pain - A creative story that expands the idea of phantom pain to become an out of body experience. I loved the psychological aspects to this one. Fukuda, Rika (April 12, 2013). "ネムキ後継誌Nemuki＋創刊記念、「百鬼夜行抄」今市子インタビュー". Comic Natalie (in Japanese). Natasha, Inc . Retrieved May 22, 2022.

The novella’s main character is middle-school student Ryusuke, one of Itō’s typically secretive, passive protagonists. Ryusuke is returning to a nameless, mist-ridden Japanese town after eight years away. The townspeople have an old folk superstition: if you go to a crossroads, and ask the first person to appear to tell your fortune, the prediction will come true. The Art of Junji Ito: Twisted Visions - Hardcover – April 21, 2020 - ISBN-10: 1974713008 Venus in the Blind Spot [ ] Two standalone stories, ‘The Mansion of Phantom Pain’ and ‘The Rib Woman’, are the high point of the book. The latter – about a girl who has ribs removed to achieve a perfect waistline, only to find herself haunted by plaintive music – is particularly gripping and creepy. It also does a wonderful job of bringing together seemingly unrelated phenomena in dramatic, terrifying style.