Among Junji Ito’s many unsettling tales, Dissection Girl stands out as a master class in body horror. It’s a story that begins with a surreal premise, but turns into an exploration of obsession, guilt and the human psyche.
Plot Overview – A Request to Be Dissected
The story follows Tatsuro Kamata, a medical student. During one of his dissection classes, he encounters something unbelievable: one of the corpses blinks. The woman eventually awakens and demands to be dissected.
Tatsuro learns that this woman has a long history of sneaking into medical schools and offering herself up as a subject. Even stranger, she bears a striking resemblance to a girl he knew during his childhood, Ruriko Tamiya.
Back then, she was known as ‘Dissection Girl,’ and Tatsuro was her reluctant accomplice, stealing scalpels and helping her cut up small animals. This twisted relationship culminated in her wanting to dissect Tatsuro himself.
Now Ruriko’s back, but not to harm him. Instead, she requests to be dissected by him. Eventually, she vanishes again.
She only resurfaces once more, many years later, when Tatsuro’s a professor. This time she seems to be dead for good, and when her body’s finally cut open, something horrible is revealed.
What Makes Dissection Girl So Good?
On the surface, Dissection Girl is an exercise in absurd, almost comically grotesque body horror. The imagery is bizarre, creative and repulsive. The final panels, showcasing the inside of Ruriko’s body, are some of Junji Ito’s most stunning works.
What makes the story linger, however, is more than just gore and body horror. It’s the atmosphere, the absurdity of the premise, and how it’s played entirely serious. One has to wonder why anyone would want to be dissected.
During childhood, Ruriko was obsessed with dissecting small animals, which is often seen as an early indicator for a serial killer in the making. Yet Junji Ito turns the trope inside out. Instead of outward destruction, Ruriko’s obsession turns inward, toward her own body. It’s a brilliant reversal of a well-known trope, serving to make the story unforgettable.
Deeper Themes – Obsession, Mental Illness, and Medical Detachment
Beyond its grotesque visuals, Dissection Girl touches on darker and more emotional themes. Ruriko’s obsession can be seen as tragic.
She’s clearly mentally ill, but given her background and the deeds she committed during childhood, it could be interpreted as trauma brought forth by guilt, and a wish for self-punishment. If one goes even further, one could even see it as the desperate plea of an unstable person to be understood, and to be ‘opened up.’ Ruriko wants to share her all with the world, and reveal her disturbing inner workings.
Dissection Girl could also be seen as a commentary on the desensitization of the medical profession. The body becomes nothing but a thing, an object, rather than a person, and all its humanity is stripped in the pursuit of understanding its inner workings. Through this lens, Ruriko’s obsession could be seen as a deranged form of medical curiosity. As a child, she wanted to see the inner workings of small animals, and now, as an adult, she wants to see her own.
Most of all, however, it’s a story about childhood trauma, how deeply it can affect us, how it grows and festers, and, eventually, consumes us.
Final Verdict – Tragic and Grotesque Body Horror
Dissection Girl is a quintessential Junji Ito story. It’s a horrifying, but also tragic tale of a mentally unstable person driven by an absurd obsession.
If you’re drawn towards grotesque imagery, absurd ideas, and stories that combine mental illness and body horror, then Dissection Girl is a must-read.
Looking for more Junji Ito? Check out my review of Greased, my review of Army of One, or my long list of the best 40 Junji Ito stories.
Dissection Girl is part of Junji Ito’s collection, Fragments of Horror, available on Amazon.
