Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories

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Ohhh yess , I promised myself that I will read a lot of JUNJI Ito books in 2021 , and here's the first part of that promise. I am all set to get disgusted and horrified again. AGAIN.

In Sensor‘s first chapter, Kyoko Byakuya finds herself at the foot of Mount Sengoku, amidst the gentle falling of golden volcanic hair. Fashion Model is the story that gave us one of Ito’s most iconic characters. When you Google Junji Ito, certain images take the centre stage: Tomie’s face, the Uzumaki spirals, and the fashion model: a predatory, monstrous looking woman with sharp teeth, long fingers, piercing eyes, and a hungry stare. But it’s through his creepy, eerie, unsettling approach to horror that this ordinary story becomes funny. In an uneasy and nervous kind of way.

Sure, the woman is a seven-foot tall, shark-toothed monster woman, but it stands that we spend more than half the story not exactly knowing this as fact; instead, our story protagonist has a ghastly premonition that something awful will happen one day—and the something awful turns out to be that he sees an unattractive woman in a magazine, and the very thought of the woman repulses him so much that her memory haunts him for weeks following.

Of course this is all disgusting, but not yet to the campy extreme of horror that Ito usually delivers. That comes as the story progresses. Yui’s brother Goro develops a horrendously bad case of acne from living amidst the grease, and in one of the most disgusting comic panels I’ve ever seen he squeezes his face so that several dozen rivulets of puss all drip down into his sister’s face beneath him. The most common obsessions are with beauty, long hair, and beautiful girls, especially in his Tomie and Flesh-Colored Horror comic collections. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each other; a woman treats her skin with lotion so she can take it off and look at her muscles, but the skin dissolves and she tries to steal her sister's skin, etc.

Hanging Blimp

What would it mean for humans to become the true puppets? Ito doesn’t just ask this question but answers it with unnerving scenes of human beings going about their days ensnared in wires, supposedly controlled by figures who are always out of sight in the dark of the ceiling. What would it mean to move about as a human puppet, and how would one’s physical strength and general health be affected? Ito takes a supernatural premise and ponders its tactile implications, making the story feel all the more unnerving and close to home even as it fully embraces the fantastical. In “Shiver,” the story that gave the collection its name, a boy is fascinated by the reclusive girl who lives next door and has porous holes all over her body. She more resembles a sponge, and she’s not the only person he’s come across who has this issue. This is the story in which the fashion model originated, and she is exactly what you’d expect her to be. The story is told by a nervous and twitchy young man who is working with an amateur film crew. Many of Ito’s tales are inspired by Japanese folklore and tradition ( Weeping Woman Way and The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara are two great examples, both found in The Liminal Zone).

The majority of Junji Ito’s work in the English-speaking world is published by Viz Signature, an imprint of Viz Media. However, there are two books ( Dissolving Classroom and Junji Ito’s Cat Diary) that are published Kodansha Comics. Indeed, this tale of creative dementia strongly recalls the work of one of Itō's stated influences, Hideshi Hino - author of comics like Panorama of Hell (1984) (to say nothing of his supremely disgusting 1988 movie Mermaid in a Manhole) that position the Artist as deranged from devotion, and glimpsing, thus, the true state of things amidst the gore. But Hino, despite a considerable body of commercial work, is an older artist with professional origins in magazines like COM and Garo, and his stories are driven by a fervent, even bathetic sympathy for the mutant rejects of the modern and industrialized Japan, respecting nobody's standard of morality or aesthetic acceptability; Itō, in contrast, emphasizes the plight of the mediocre painter, who knows his success is a trendy lie, and only enjoys satori as a prelude to a bloody undoing. Taken together, these stories posit Art, true Art, as akin to a Lovecraftian god, exacting madness from those who dare understand its unveiled power. Ito has mentioned filmmaker Guillermo del Toro as an influence, but del Toro has also been influenced by Ito’s work. Ito recalls, “20 years ago, director of Shape of Water,Guillermo del Torocame to Japan and said he was a big fan and wanted to see me…I’m very happy that he’s a fan of mine and enjoys my work.” In fact, the two were working together on a game called Silent Hills ( unfortunately, the project was canceled). These cats are now his responsibility and his housemates. His wife insisted that they get two cats, and now Ito must learn to live with them. I’ve read this book multiple times and, as a Frankenstein obsessive, I’m happy to say that it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Danny Boyle’s stage adaptation as the best interpretation of Shelley’s original novel.Shiver is a collection of short stories by legendary horror manga-ka, Junji Ito. He’s a master of pacing, with a visual imagination that is just indescribable. I would cheerfully put him up against legends like Graham Ingels or Bernie Wrightson--even Basil Wolverton, though he's known more for the grotesque than outright horror--any day. Both of these horror legends share an uncanny approach to the impossible, the unknowable, the otherworldly.

Through his eyes, we watch the rest of Sensor unfold, as cults and cosmic horrors rise to the surface. The volcano, the hair, the Christian missionary, the village — all of it twists and merges in unexpected ways. Dazai’s influence on Ito is apparent not only through the very existence of this manga adaptation, but also for the fact that Tomie Yamazaki — a woman with whom Dazai famously ran away from his wife and family, and who later committed suicide by drowning alongside Dazai — shares her name with Ito’s first manga publication.

Adapting Frankenstein faithfully and originally is no small ask, but Ito answered the call with grace and poise, as well as a manic adoration for the source material.