I still remember discovering The Enigma of Amigara Fault back in 2006, when it was first translated and shared on 4chan. Even amongst a plethora of strange and unsettling tales, it stood out. It was not only creepy, but unforgettable, making me a Junji Ito fan overnight.
The Enigma of Amigara Fault quickly became a viral sensation amongst horror manga readers. There’s one simple reason for it: it taps into a primal, almost unspeakable fear.
Plot Overview – The Call of the Holes
After an earthquake in a remote mountainous region, a bizarre geological phenomenon is uncovered: a fault line covered in human-shaped holes carved into the rock.
The news spreads and before long, curious onlookers from all over the country, including our unnamed narrator and a woman named Yoshida, set out to travel to the site.
Yet the holes themselves aren’t the strangest part of the story. The people traveling there did so for one specific reason: a powerful, almost inexplicable urge. Each person is convinced that one of the holes was made for them specifically.
Soon enough, driven by an irresistible compulsion, people begin to enter their holes and disappear into the mountain.
No one knows where the holes came from, or where they lead. Yet people continue to enter, for the urge to fit into what was seemingly made for them alone is too strong to resist.
Unlike many other stories, it doesn’t rely on jump scares, gore or monsters. The horror is entirely psychological, and thus much more effective.
Junji Ito’s artwork in this tale is minimalist, almost clinical. It comprises an open sky, a stark cliff and narrow tunnels, nothing more. Yet even as a reader, you can almost feel the same pressure the characters do. There’s nothing to see, nothing but holes, and one specifically made for you.
The horror in The Enigma of Amigara Fault doesn’t come from external threats, but from internal compulsion. The most terrifying thing isn’t the mountain, not even the hole itself, but the part of you that wants to enter it.
Every page deepens the atmosphere of dread, and almost spells out the inevitable doom we know is coming.
The final scene, revealing the ultimate fate of those entering the hole, is one of the most unforgettable and terrifying images in all of horror manga. It serves as a perfect payoff for a slow-burn horror story centering on compulsion and inevitability.
Deeper Interpretations – The Death Drive and Doomed Curiosity
Similarly to Hanging Balloons, The Enigma of Amigara Fault can be seen as an interpretation of Sigmund Freud’s concept of the death drive (Todestrieb), which represents the idea that humans possess an unconscious urge toward self-destruction.
The characters in the story aren’t forced to enter the holes, but do so willingly. Even when warned, even when terrified, they are still compelled to walk to their own doom.
Another theme at play is that of doomed curiosity. Human beings are curious by nature, have an insatiable itch to understand the world around them, and to uncover its mysteries, even if doing so will destroy them. What we want, what we need, are the answers.
Lastly, the story also taps into our existential fear of losing control. Once a character finds their hole, their autonomy vanishes. Curiosity becomes obsession, obsession turns into compulsion and ultimately doom.
Final Verdict – A Perfect Short Horror Masterpiece
The Enigma of Amigara Fault is, without a doubt, one of Junji Ito’s best stories. It proves that horror doesn’t need a complicated setup or graphic violence. Sometimes, all it takes is to show us we each have a small voice in our minds that might call out to us one day and compel us to do something, even if doom is inevitable.
It’s a minimalist, haunting, and unforgettable as one of the finest works of psychological horror ever created.
If you haven’t read this story yet, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s recommended not only for fans of Junji Ito, but horror manga in general.
I’ve been a fan of Junji Ito’s work for almost two decades, but Uzumaki will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s not just one of his most famous works, but one of the greatest horror manga ever created. Uzumaki is a towering achievement in the realm of horror manga for how deeply unsettling, but also how creative it is.
A Town Spiraling Into Madness
Uzumaki is set in the small, coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which falls victim to the terrifying and omnipotent curse of the spiral.
At first, the spiral’s influence appears random and almost inconspicuous: whirlpools in the river, odd patterns forming naturally, or spirals appearing in people’s hair. Yet even from the outset, we can feel a foreboding sense of unease that should reach its climax at the end of Uzumaki’s very first chapter. From here on out, the spiral’s influence intensifies in disturbing way, and grotesque transformations become commonplace.
Each incident feels isolated at first, but before long, Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saitou, Uzumaki’s protagonists, realize a horrifying pattern. All the madness at play in Kurouzu-cho is related to one another, and the spiral’s not the result, but its cause, a destructive, inescapable force.
What Makes Uzumaki So Good?
The true brilliance of Uzumaki lies in its conceptual horror. There are no monsters here, no feasible antagonists, and no traditional villains to confront. There is only an antagonistic force in the shape of the spiral. It’s an idea made flesh, one that turns into an inescapable force that spells doom for all who encounter it.
Each chapter builds on this concept, showcasing the continued influence of the spiral in more and more ways that are as disturbing as they are inventive. For long stretches, Uzumaki’s almost an anthology of spiral related horror stories, witnessed by Kirie and Shuichi.
Junji Ito’s imagination is in full bloom here. People are being twisted into spiral shaped monstrosities, the wonder of childbirth is made nightmare, and an entire town is warped into a mad, spiral-shaped maze. The creativity on display is unmatched. Every new event feels not only visually distinct and unsettling but also ramps up the dread with each consecutive chapter.
Visual and Existential Horror
Its artwork in Uzumaki is among the best, if not the best, of his entire career. His stark black-and-white contrast helps capture the creeping, claustrophobic dread that lingers over Kurouzu-cho, showing that the town’s been doomed from the story’s outset.
His detailed illustrations bring terror to life not only through grotesque transformations and gore but also through his characters’ expressions. Sometimes people appear dejected and stare blankly at others. Sometimes their eyes widen and their faces distort as they are plunged into madness or lose their grip on reality.
Beyond the visceral horror, Uzumaki strikes at something deeper, however: existential horror. The spiral isn’t feasible. It’s not so much a conscious entity with a plan, but an indifferent, cosmic phenomenon. This Lovecraftian theme of humanity’s powerlessness against vast, incomprehensible forces is the heart of Uzumaki’s horror.
The episodic structure of the first two volumes helps to build an atmosphere of dread and showcases the spiral’s influence around town. However, it feels almost too much like an anthology, and makes it hard to get invested with any of the characters appearing, and lessens the emotional impact of their demise.
Kirie Goshima, our main character, is almost too passive. She appears nothing more than a witness to the events at play. Perhaps she’s nothing but another helpless victim, or has been under the curse of the spiral since the story’s outset. Yet this is a common problem with Ito’s protagonists. They are less traditional characters with an agency of their own, but more vessel or stand-in for the reader to provide them with a point-of-view to witness the madness at play.
The third and last problem is the manga’s ending. While I found it satisfying, it also tries to give readers a loose explanation of what the spiral curse actually is. This can diminish the sense of mystery that so dominated the earlier chapters. Once again, horror often works best when the unknown stays unknown.
Final Verdict – A Hypnotic Horror Masterpiece
Uzumaki stands apart from other titles as one of the greatest horror manga ever made. While it features copious amounts of gore and jump scares, its horror centers on dread, inevitability, and the terrifying beauty of cosmic forces beyond our understanding.
If you’re a fan of horror manga, of Lovecraftian fiction, or the more surreal and bizarre realm of horror, Uzumaki is an absolute must-read.
Prepare yourself for one of the strangest, most nightmarish journeys horror fiction has to offer.
I’ve been reading Junji Ito’s works for years now, and I recently came to appreciate Hanging Balloons much more than ever before. It’s, in my opinion, one of Ito’s absolute best stories. It’s deeply disturbing, bizarre, surreal, and absurd, more so than almost any other horror manga.
Plot Overview – The Beginning of a Comically Absurd Apocalypse
The story is told from Kazuko’s perspective and begins with the tragic death of her best friend Terumi, a popular idol. Her death is nothing short of horrific. She’s found outside her apartment, dangling from a noose made of metal, haphazardly wrapped around electrical wires.
From here on out, Hanging Balloons appears to be a simple ghost story. For Temuri’s boyfriend, Shiorishi, states he can see her ghost drifting around the city. Yet there’s something odd about his story. It’s not her full figure, but only a giant floating replica of her head.
Before long, others notice the weird phenomena as well. At first, it’s blamed on hallucinations or mass hysteria. When photographs show up, however, a horrifying reality sets in. Temuri’s floating head is real.
Soon Kazuko bears witness for what’s yet to come. More and more floating heads appearing the sky, all bearing a person’s face, and flying towards them with a noose hanging below. The result is always the same horrific display: a person hung by their own image.
Yet there’s even more danger at hand. Fighting the balloons off won’t work, because if the balloons destroyed, the person they represent will die as well. Thus, all you can do is hide from its relentless approach, but it soon becomes clear that resistance seems all but futile.
What Makes it So Good?
The premise is absurd on paper, but in execution Junji Ito’s Hanging Balloons turns into pure nightmare fuel.
The story’s pacing is masterful. The story starts slowly, almost grounded, before turning into surreal horror. The gradual escalation of the plot makes it so good, and its final scene so much more chilling.
Another reason it works so well is Ito refusing to explain anything. Similarly to works like The Enigma of Amigara Fault or Army of One, the mystery is left intact. We never learn what the balloons are, where they came from or why they exist. The horror remains entirely unknown.
Deeper Interpretations – Idol Culture and the Death Drive
While Hanging Balloons is an excellent story on its own, it’s possible to look at it through a more psychological lens.
In the late 1999s, Japan faced a surge in suicide rates, especially amongst young adults. Suicides amongst public figures, such as idols, were highly publicized. In Japanese culture, idols represent purity and idealized youth. Their deaths often caused emotional shockwaves, and sometimes even copycat suicides amongst their fans.
Viewed this way, Junji Ito’s Hanging Balloons could be seen as an interpretation of the dark sides of idol culture and the contagious effect of public tragedy. Terumi’s death is public, tragic, and afterwards, death keeps spreading, almost like a social or psychological virus.
Each person is haunted by a balloon bearing their own face, which can be seen as a symbol of their internal despair. Once Terumi dies, others begin seeing death as inevitable, personal, inescapable, or even fascinating.
On a deeper psychological level, this mirrors Sigmund Freud’s concept of the death drive (Todestrieb), our unconscious urge towards self-destruction. The balloons externalize this drive. They aren’t random threats. Instead, they represent the characters’ own death, and their fascination with it, seeking them out.
Of course, Junji Ito itself leaves everything unexplained. But these layers of ambiguity, horror mixed not only with psychological but also culture and existential themes, make Hanging Balloons so much more fascinating.
Final Verdict – A Surreal Masterpiece
Hanging Balloons is one of Ito’s finest stories. It’s a blend of surreal, apocalyptic horror with absurdity and existential despair. It’s not just a scary story, but one that gnaws at you in a variety of ways, but without ever giving a clear explanation.
If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you check out this surreal, absurd, and most of all, nightmarish masterpiece.
Over the years, I’ve read countless horror manga, as you can see on my list of the best horror manga of all time. Yet, there’s something special about the works of Junji Ito. Ever since I first read Tomie a decade and a half ago, I’ve been a fan of ...
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There’s no one as famous in the world of horror manga today as Junji Ito. He has rightfully amassed a cult following around the globe. And yet, Junji Ito is not merely a horror mangaka. In my opinion, he’s one of the greatest horror artists of our time. If you’re ...
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Over the years, I’ve read countless horror manga, as you can see on my list of the best horror manga of all time.
Yet, there’s something special about the works of Junji Ito. Ever since I first read Tomie a decade and a half ago, I’ve been a fan of his.
His works are full of body horror and often feature phobias, fears and obsessions. It’s often the mundane that gets warped, becomes twisted and ultimately deadly. If you’re interested to learn more about the themes and the style of his work, check out my article on why Junji Ito scares us.
These days, many of his works have been translated into English and are available to a wider audience. For this reason, I created a ranking of all the available Junji Ito books.
Dissolving Classroom is one of the weirdest Junji Ito books out there.
It’s the story of Yuuma and his sister Chizumi. Yuuma’s a weirdo and prone to apologizing to everyone he comes upon for even the smallest of things. His sister Chizumi, on the other hand, is an incredibly creepy child. As we read on, we soon learn, however, that there’s more to Yuuma’s apologies.
Dissolving Classroom, typical for Junji Ito, features a lot of disturbing and disgusting imagery. In every chapter, we witness people’s brains running out of their orifices or them melting away entirely.
And yet, Dissolving Classroom didn’t work for me. First there was Yuuma’s constant apologizing, which felt just plain weird. Second was Chizumi’s character. She was so creepy and psychotic, her character felt overdrawn, almost comical.
Another problem was the formulaic and repetitive way of the stories. From chapter one onward, we knew what would happen to the character’s and why. This trope was slightly diverted in the last chapter, but it wasn’t enough of a payoff for me.
Overall, I consider Dissolving Classroom as one of the weaker Junji Ito books out there. It’s worth reading for any fans of Junji Ito, of course, but that’s about it.
No Longer Human is an adaption of Osamu Dazai’s novel by the same name. It’s a work that deals heavily with topics such as suicide, alienation and depression.
No Longer Human is one of the most popular Japanese novels of all time. It’s a bleak work, centered on a man not fitting into society and his decent into decadence.
Junji Ito’s adaption of the novel is interesting, but it suffers from a major problem. No Longer Human is a character-driven novel, one of internal horror. Yet, if there’s one thing Junji Ito isn’t good at, it’s character work. Many of Junji Ito’s characters are mundane, boring, and even uninteresting. They are only exist as vessels for his stories, for his horrors and for us to witness their demise.
That’s the main reason No Longer Human isn’t working. Junji Ito isn’t able to convey the intricacies of the character, the story, and the internal horror of it. Instead, he turns it outward, showcasing it in his usual style.
While I appreciate the visuals, and love the creepy and eerie mood they create, it wasn’t enough to adapt a work such as No Longer Human satisfactorily.
Once more, I’d say this is a work worth reading for fans of Junji Ito, but fans of the original novel might be disappointed.
Sensor is one of the more recently released Junji Ito books and in comes with one of his most beautiful art to date.
It’s the story of a mysterious woman, Byakuya Kyouko, but is more ambitious than most of Junji Ito’s other works. It centers on such questions as the meaning of life, the meaning of the universe, and the fight between light and dark.
The manga contains a lot of Junji Ito’s usual elements. There’s lots of unsettling imagery, such as people melting, the disturbingly human innards of squishy bugs and even cosmic horror entities.
The biggest problem with Sensor is that those elements were never the focus of the work. Instead, they are pushed aside to tell a grander story. While I enjoyed this strange, deeper story, it wasn’t enough to be truly satisfying.
Sensor’s art is stunning and beautiful and Junji Ito’s imagery is as disturbing as always. And yet, I consider Sensor one of the weaker Junji Ito books.
Rating this Junji Ito book is hard. It’s entirely different from his other works because it’s not a work of horror, but a work of comedy.
It tells the story of horror manga author J who moves into his new home with his fiancée A-ko. Before long, A-ko brings her family cat Yon with her and also adapts Muu, a Norwegian forest cat. The work is, of course, based on Junji Ito’s real life and how he struggled to adapt to living with two cats.
As I said, Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu is a work of comedy. What makes it interesting, however, is that Junji Ito is presenting it to us in his usual horror style. We witness disturbing facial expression, bulging eyes, and creepy cat faces. It’s this contrast between the art and the mundane, often cute content of the story itself.
And yet, Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu was too different from Junji Ito’s usual work. I think it’s an interesting experiment and cute as an homage to his cats, but that’s all there is to it. It’s a strange light-hearted read, but one that’s also rather forgettable.
Smashed comprises thirteen of Junji Ito’s stories, the most of the available Junji Ito books out there.
I’m always happy to get my hands on new Junji Ito books, yet I was wary of Smashed.
It contains its share of decent stories, for example, Earthbound, The Mystery of the Haunted Mansion and Bloodsucking Darkness. None of them, however, are outstanding. The rest of the book is taken up by tales that are average at best and forgettable at worst.
Junji Ito’s art is always outstanding and, for that reason alone, his stories are worth reading. Their content, however, can be hit or miss and Smashed contained a few too many misses for me.
While Smashed is not a bad Junji Ito book, it’s far from the best released in English.
Twisted Visions differs from the other Junji Ito books on this list. It’s an art book, not containing stories, but featuring Junji Ito’s stunning and outstanding artwork.
I loved this book, and it has a very special place in my heart. It’s a fantastic experience to see Junji Ito’s detailed work in fine print and spread out over entire pages. The book is a testament to Junji Ito’s mystery of the medium.
What was great was that the book even contained a handful of previously unseen artworks, some from works that were never published. It also contains an interview with Junji Ito that I found highly interesting and a register of all his works.
While Twisted Visions is not a manga and doesn’t contain stories, I still consider it a fantastic work. If you’re a fan of Junji Ito, his visual style and horror art, I highly recommend this book.
Hellstar Remina might be the closest Junji Ito has ever come to true Lovecraftian horror.
It’s the story of Professor Oguro and his daughter, Remina. One day, the professor discovers a wormhole and a planet having entered our universe. He names the newly discovered planet after his daughter Remina, propelling her to stardom.
Soon enough, however, the professor notices strange things about Planet Remina. It moves in random directions without a clear orbit, and all the stars in his vicinity seem to vanish.
Before long, it’s revealed that it’s on a closing in on Earth and we soon witness it destroying or devouring all other planets in the solar system.
From here on out, the story serves to only get weirder and more insane, but also sillier. It made it hard to take the later parts of the story serious.
And yet, one has to give Junji Ito credit for creating a truly unique apocalypse scenario featuring a sentient planet.
While the plot itself might have some weaknesses, Junji Ito’s imagery is fantastic throughout the entire manga. Seeing Planet Remina’s eyes and mouth is terrifying enough, but its surface is truly horrifying.
Hellstar Remina might be one of the crazier Junji Ito books out there, but I still believe it’s a must-read for fans. While the plot might get sillier in later parts, the imagery is absolutely stunning.
Deserter is the newest of the many Junji Ito books available. It comprises twelve stories. While some stories might be rather forgettable, it also features some of his best ones.
The Long Hair in the Attic and Den of the Sleep Demon are both surreal, but incredibly effective horror tales. They also feature some fantastic imagery and great body horror.
My personal favorites, however, are Unbearable Maze and The Bully. The Bully is one of the rare Junji Ito stories that’s entirely grounded in reality. Even though it proves to be one of his most twisted stories. Unbearable Maze centers on two girls who find themselves at a strange meditation retreat in the mountains. It’s a slow, eerie story that proves to only get stranger the longer it goes on and features one of his best and creepiest endings.
Deserter proves to be one of the better Junji Ito books out there and a worthy addition to any collection.
Gyo is the Japanese word for fish. Knowing this, you might think you’re prepared for this manga, but believe me, you’re not. Gyo is one of Junji Ito’s most popular and iconic works, but also one of his weirdest and most absurd.
It’s the story of Tadashi and his girlfriend Kaori. The two of them are on a vacation, but one night, Kaori, who’s sensitive to smells, complains about a terrible, rotten stench. It’s soon revealed that the stench’s caused by a strange fish on robotic legs skittering through their holiday home.
This, however, is only the first of many sea creatures to emerge from the depths.
Before long, the two of them return home to Tokyo. It’s here where the story turns into a full-fledged apocalypse, as millions of sea creatures flood the city, spreading the so-called death stench.
Gyo’s probably the most creative of the many Junji Ito books out there and I’ve read nothing like it. As creative as it is, however, it’s suffers from flaws. The most notable is Junji Ito trying to explain the existence of the strange, robotic legs. Gyo’s, of course, an absurd story, but the explanation given makes it downright ridiculous.
Gyo’s strongest points are Junji Ito’s fantastic art and the outlandish, disturbing imagery. Especially the later parts of the manga are pure nightmare territory. For soon enough, it’s not only fish that wander the fog-ridden streets.
While there are some problems with Gyo, I still have to praise it as one of the most creative Junji Ito books out there. The art is fantastic, and the scenario depicted is nothing short of surreal.
Fragments of Horror was one of the first of Junji Ito books released in English.
It comprises only eight stories and is one of the shortest Junji Ito books. It contains some weaker stories like Wooden Spirit and Magami Nankuse, but also some of his best.
Gentle Goodbye is one of my favorite Junji Ito stories of all time. It centers on a family with a very special ritual, but it’s a beautifully sad study in holding on. Dissection-Chan features one of Junji Ito’s strangest characters to date and also one of his greatest instances of body horror.
Fragments of Horror might not be the most outstanding of the many Junji Ito books out there, but it contains its share of fantastic stories. It’s well worth buying.
Junji Ito’s Frankenstein might be the best adaption of Mary Shelley’s novel to date. All throughout the work, he remains true to the source material, but his outstanding visuals lend themselves perfectly to it.
Junji Ito’s Frankenstein is, however, a collection and contains ten more of his stories. Many of those are centered on another of his reoccurring characters, Oshikiri.
While the character might not be widely known, I consider his stories fantastic. They are incredibly strange and feature some of his most outlandish ideas, including alternate dimensions and disgusting medical experiments. Junji Ito’s style also shines in these tales, and they feature some of his greatest body horror work.
Oshikiri might not be a popular character and many people might not have heard about him, but I think all of his tales are fantastic and amongst Junji Ito’s best works.
Frankenstein is one of the best Junji Ito books out there, and with the addition of Oshikiri’s tales, it’s a must-buy for any fans.
Junji Ito’s Tomie is one of his first works, but proved massively popular. Tomie’s stories span multiple volumes and have spawned a series of live-action movies.
Junji Ito’s art style isn’t as refined as in later works, but even in Tomie’s earlier chapter one can recognize his genius and his twisted imagination.
Tomie’s the story of a gorgeous high-school girl who’s not only dating one of her fellow students but also has an affair with her teacher. When she accidentally dies during a school trip, the class binds together to hide the crime. They dismember her and each student hides a part of her body.
The horror starts the next day, however, when Tomie returns to class as if nothing happened. While this is horrible enough, we soon learn the true horror that is Tomie. She’s not a normal person. Instead, she’s an entity with regenerative powers, able to regrow from even the tiniest bit of her.
And yet, there’s more. Tomie is beautiful, but she has an almost supernatural hold over men. The moment they lay eyes upon her, they fall in love with her, grow obsessed with her and are ultimately driven to madness.
What’s interesting to note is that Tomie’s stories are never about her. They are about the people who encounter her and the men who grow obsessed with her. Tomie herself is more a plot device, an enigma who drives the characters in her story to their demise.
The chapters in Tomie can vary in quality. Some are good, others less so. When Junji Ito’s at his best, however, Tomie’s fantastic and contains some of the most twisted things he’s ever drawn.
While Tomie might have its weaker moments, I still consider it one of the best Junji Ito books out there.
Lovesickness is also known as the tale of the Intersection Pretty Boy. Back in the day, this was one of the first Junji Ito books I ever read, and I absolutely loved it.
It’s a fantastic work, full of mystery, horror and copious amounts of gore and blood.
The book, however, contains five more of Junji Ito’s tales. Two stories center on the strange Hikizuri Siblings, who are some of Junji Ito’s most twisted creations and feature similarly disturbing scenarios.
This Junji Ito book also features Rib Woman, a story I came to love more and more in recent years. It’s an outlandish, almost silly tale about plastic surgery, but features another one of his greatest instances of body horror. The story even inspired one of my own tales, Real Art Always Has a Price.
Lovesickness is one of the best Junji Ito books out there. It contains one of Junji Ito’s longer works, but also several fantastic stories.
Venus in the Blind Spot is one of the more recently released Junji Ito books, but it’s one of the best to date. The book might contain some weaker works, but those are overshadowed by some of Junji Ito’s all-time best.
The Enigma of the Amigara Fault might be Junji Ito’s most popular story of all time and it’s also one of his best. It’s a tale that centers on our fear of the unknown and our compulsive urge to understand that which we can’t explain. Junji Ito presents this to us in one of his most creative and disturbing scenarios to date. Billions Alone is a similarly creative tale, featuring another unexplained phenomenon. The story centers on isolation and feels like a criticism of our current urban society.
Junji Ito’s adaption of Edogawa Ranpo’s story, The Human Chair, is another tale that’s entirely grounded in reality. And yet, it’s one of his scariest, most outlandish works.
The Licking Woman is another fantastic tale in this collection. The idea of being licked by a random stranger is disgusting enough, but Junji Ito makes the incident more than just disgusting. He makes it outright terrifying. His art in this tale is also fantastic and warps the Licking Woman into something that almost not human anymore.
Venus in the Blind Spot is one of the best Junji Ito books out there and I consider it a must-buy for any fans of his work.
Uzumaki is Junji Ito’s magnum opus and an absolute horror masterpiece.
The manga medium is strange, and the works of Junji Ito are amongst the strangest ones out there. And yet, Uzumaki might be the weirdest manga I’ve ever read.
Uzumaki is a three-volume epic set in the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which is infested by spirals. The story centers on Shouichi Saito and Kirie Goshima who stumble upon one incident of spiral-related horror after another.
What makes Uzumaki so great, even amongst all the Junji Ito books out there, is not the story, but the creativity that went into it.
Junji Ito’s imagination is always incredible and disturbing, but even here, Uzumaki stands out. We witness copious amounts of gore, blood and body horror as the inhabitants of Kurouzu-cho are warped, twisted and changed until they resemble spirals.
Uzumaki stands out amongst other horror manga because of its unique premise. There are no monsters here, no killers, no feasible antagonist at all. Instead, there’s only the spiral, a concept that lingers over the doomed town of Kurouzu-cho as an omnipresent curse.
Most of Uzumaki’s story is told in episodic fashion and more an anthology than a continuous story. It’s only in the third, and ultimately weakest, volume where Junji Ito ties it all together and brings the story to its Lovecraftian conclusion.
Uzumaki is a horror masterpiece and I consider it one of the greatest accomplishments of the horror manga genre. It’s probably the best amongst the many Junji Ito books out there, and I consider it a must-buy, not just for fans of Junji Ito, but horror manga fans in general.
Shiver is my favorite amongst all the Junji Ito books released in English. It contains a variety of stories, many of which are amongst my absolute favorites.
Fashion Model introduces one of Junji Ito’s most iconic creations, the disturbing model Fuji. The Long Dream is probably Junji Ito’s most creative and original works of all time and centers on concepts such as dreams and death.
Greased and Honored Ancestors are two of his most disturbing stories of all time. Honored Ancestors features a scenario that’s as terrifying as it is bizarre, while Greased features his most disgusting imagery to date. They are both fantastic stories, feature some disturbing imagery and are ripe with horror.
The titular tale Shiver is one of greed and the consequences it brings. It also features heavy instances of trypophobia, brought forth by Junji Ito’s fantastic imagery, making this tale nothing short of disturbing.
My favorite story in Shiver, however, is the Hanging Blimps. It’s without a doubt the strangest, most bizarre apocalypse story I’ve ever come upon. The story centers on the concept of balloons which not only take on people’s likeness but also come to hang them. While it’s a strange and bizarre story, it’s one hiding a deeper meaning. It’s first a criticism of Japan’s idol industry, but also a representation of the ‘Death Drive.’ Yet, one doesn’t have to look for deeper themes for this story to work. Even taken at face value, it’s an incredibly creepy and unsettling tale that features one of Junji Ito’s best final panels.
Shiver is a collection of fantastic short stories and it’s probably the best of the many Junji Ito books released in English. If you want to read Junji Ito at his best, Shiver should be your first choice.
Ever since I read my first Junji Ito story a decade and a half ago, I’ve been a fan of his work. There’s just something about his weird stories, his disturbing imagery and the sheer bizarreness of his world.
In my opinion, Junji Ito is the greatest Japanese horror artist and amongst the greatest horror artists of all time.
His works are full of body horror, phobias, fears, but also stranger things, including cosmic horror.
For this article, however, I wanted to have a look at his short story collections available in English. While I’m always happy to see a new Junji Ito collection available and own all of them, I have to say that some are better than others.
For this article, I will, however, exclude his longer, volume or multi-volume works like Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo and Hellstar Remina.
So, I want to present you with my personal ranking of all the available Junji Ito collections.
Dissolving Classroom by Junji Ito might be one of his weirdest work yet, and, in my opinion, not in a good way.
It tells the story of Yuuma and his younger sister Chizumi. Yuuma is a strange character, who always apologizes to everyone while his sister Chizumi is an incredibly creepy child. It soon becomes clear that Yuuma’s constant apologizing has a sinister side to it.
Dissolving Classroom comes with a lot of disturbing and disgusting imagery. Each chapter features people melting away and their brains running out of their orifices. It’s nothing short of horrifying.
And yet, the manga just felt plain weird. Yuuma’s constant apologizing was a strange trope. Chizumi, on the others hand, was constantly acting psychotic to the point of being comical. The stories, too, became repetitive. From the first story onward, we already know what’s going to happen to characters. This is diverted in the last chapter, but it felt too little, too late. It’s a good ending to a mediocre series.
The Dissolving Classroom features to more tales, but both are no longer than a handful of pages and rather forgettable themselves.
Overall, I’m not a big fan of Dissolving Classroom and I think it’s one of the weakest Junji Ito collections out there. It’s still worth reading for fans of Junji Ito’s works, but that’s about it.
Sensor is one of Junji Ito’s newer works. It’s presented in his usual fine art is one of his most beautiful works to date.
It’s an ambitious work, one that begs questions about the universe itself, the meaning of life and the fight between light and dark. All of this is connected to a mysterious woman known as Byakuya Kyouko.
Sensor features a lot of Junji Ito’s usual elements. We bear witness to disturbing body horror, lots of horrific imagery like melting people or the innards of disgusting, squishy bugs and some deeply unsettling cosmic horror. Given that, I should love Sensor.
However, these typical elements are few. They are pushed aside by the grander story that’s being told, one of meditation and becoming one with the universe. While I enjoyed this story, it wasn’t enough to hold this Junji Ito collection together.
While the art is beautiful and features Junji Ito’s typical disturbing imagery, I consider Sensor another one of Junji Ito’s weaker works. That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s not work reading, just that there’s better works by Junji Ito out there.
With thirteen stories, Smashed features the most of any Junji Ito collection.
While I’m always happy to see official translations of Junji Ito’s works, I’m divided on Smashed.
It features some decent stories with Bloodsucking Darkness, The Mystery of the Haunted House and Earthbound, but none of them are outstanding. The rest of the collection, however, is taken up by barely average and forgettable tales.
While Junji Ito’s art is always fantastic and outstanding, his stories themselves can be hit or miss. Smashed, as bit a collection as it is, contains a few too many misses for me.
It’s still a good Junji Ito collection, but far from the best released in English.
Deserter is the newest Junji Ito collection by VIZ and contains twelve of his stories. While it contains its fair share of forgettable tales, it also contains some of his best ones.
Den of the Sleep Demon is a short, surreal, but incredible effective horror story. The Long Hair in the Attic is similarly creepy and brings forth some great body horror.
The two best stories in this collection, however, are Unbearable Maze and The Bully. Unbearable Maze tells the story of two young girls who end up at a strange meditation resort in the mountains. It features one of Junji Ito’s creepiest and greatest endings. The Bully, on the other hand, is one of the few Junji Ito stories that’s entirely grounded in reality. And yet, it proves to be one of his scariest, most twisted stories.
Overall, Deserter is a good collection, featuring some great stories.
Fragments of Horror was the first Junji Ito collection released in English. Before, only his longer, multi-volume works Uzumaki and Gyo had been released.
With only eight stories, it’s the shortest Junji Ito collection out there. While it features some weaker stories, like Magami Nankuse and Wooden Spirit, it also features some of Junji Ito’s best work.
Gentle Goodbye is one of the greatest stories he ever penned. It’s a sad, emotional work, a study of holding on and features a very special family ritual. Dissection-Chan, on the other hand, showcases one of Junji Ito’s most interesting characters with one of the most bizarre mental disorders ever. It also features one of his best body horror work of all times.
While Fragments of Horror is not an outstanding Junji Ito collection, it contains some fantastic stories and is well worth buying.
Junji Ito’s retelling of Frankenstein is nothing short of fantastic and the best adaption of Mary Shelley’s classic I’ve come upon. His style and imagery lend itself perfectly to the story and push it much further into the horror genre than Shelley’s original.
The collection also includes ten more of his stories, most of which are centered on another of his reoccurring characters, Oshikiri.
Oshikiri’s tales are strange, even amongst Junji Ito’s works, and feature some of his most outlandish ideas. It’s tales about hallucination and psychosis, about alternate dimension and disgusting medical experiments. All of those are presented to us with some of Junji Ito’s greatest and most disturbing body horror.
While Oshikiri’s not one of Junji Ito’s popular characters, I think his tales are as fantastic as they are outlandish. I’m more than happy to see them finally published in English.
Frankenstein is a fantastical collection, not only for Junji Ito’s adaption of Shelley’s classic, but also the tales of Oshikiri. This Junji Ito collection is a must-buy for any fans.
Ah, Lovesickness, the tale of the Intersection Pretty Boy. This was one of the first works by Junji Ito I ever read, and I absolutely loved it.
While I’m sure there’s a fair bit of nostalgia influencing me, it’s still a fantastic tale. It features copious amounts of gore and bloody mystery and its fair share of insanity.
Apart from this tale, however, the collection features five more stories. The Strange Hikizuri Siblings might be amongst Junji Ito’s most twisted creations, and both stories feature twisted and disturbing scenarios.
The collection also includes one more of Junji Ito’s tales I came to love. As outlandish and silly as The Rib Woman can be, it features another one of Junji Ito’s most twisted instances of body horror. The Rib Woman even inspired one of my own stories, Real Art Always Has a Price.
Overall, Lovesickness is a fantastic collection, containing one of Junji Ito’s longer works, and a share of fantastically disturbing stories.
Venus in the Blind Spit is another, more recent Junji Ito collection, but it’s a fantastic one. While it features some shorter, weaker stories, those are made up for by some of Junji Ito’s all-time best.
Anyone who’s heard of Junji Ito knows about The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which is one of his all-time classics. It’s a story about the unknown and our compulsive urge to understand the unexplainable. All this is brought forth by one of Junji Ito’s most disturbing scenario. In a similar vein, Billions Alone is another creative story featuring an unexplained phenomenon. It’s a story that criticizes our current urban society and discusses isolation.
The Human Chair is a fantastic adaption of Edogawa Ranpo’s original story. It’s another tale grounded in reality, but describes another scary and outlandish scenario.
I also want to mention The Licking Woman. Being licked by a random stranger is disgusting enough, but Junji Ito’s art brings forth the terror of it. The story also features some amazing body horror which warps the Licking Woman into something truly disturbing.
Venus in the Blind Spot is another fantastic Junji Ito collection. While it features some weaker stories, it also contains some true classics.
Shiver is my all-time favorite Junji Ito collection, containing some of my absolute favorites.
It contains Fashion Model, which is the story of one of Junji Ito’s most iconic and disturbing creations, the model Fuji. The Long Dream is a story revolving around the concept of dreams and death. It’s without a doubt one of his most creative and original works ever.
Honored Ancestors and Greased are amongst his most disturbing stories of all time. While Honored Ancestors features one of Junji Ito’s most grotesque and bizarre scenarios, Greased is probably his most disgusting story to date. Both are, however, outstanding, ripe on horror and feature some of his best imagery to date.
Shiver itself is a tale of greed, and one high on trypophobia. Junji Ito’s art is outstanding in this tale, making it nothing short of disturbing and unsettling.
The last story I want to talk about is Hanging Blimps, my favorite Junji Ito story of all time. It’s the tale of the strangest sort of apocalypse I’ve ever come upon. One day, mysterious balloons appear, take on the face of people and come to hang them. It’s not only one of Junji Ito’s most bizarre ideas, but also a showcasing of the ‘Death Drive’ and a criticism of Japan’s idol industry. Even without these deeper themes, however, and taken at face value, it’s a fantastically creepy and unsettling tale.
Shiver is the best out of all the Junji Ito collections out there, featuring some of his best, most ionic stories of all time.
Horror is one of the most popular genres and so are horror manga, as you can see in my long list of the best horror manga of all time.
It’s the mixture of often terrifying and unsettling visuals and general scary-storytelling that makes them such a delight to read.
Yet, while some horror manga feature more on story-telling, on plot or psychological themes, there are also those which focus on violence, brutal visuals and gore.
For this list, I want to present you with 13 of the most brutal manga of all time.
Kazuo Umezu is a name anyone interested in horror manga is familiar with. He could be called the godfather of the horror manga genre and has influenced it tremendously.
While he’s most popular for his work, The Drifting Classroom, his most brutal manga has to be God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand.
It’s often called an ultra-violent manga and features outlandish, disturbing and bizarre incidents. He always presents them with copious amounts of gore and body horror.
Those incidents are all witnessed by or related to a young boy Sou. He is, however, not responsible for them, instead he’s plagued by visions before they happen and tries to prevent them.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand features a variety of themes. While some stories are more based on reality, and feature serial killers or murders, others are as outlandish as they can be.
Yet, every single part of this brutal manga is full of violence.
Kazuo Umezu’s style can take some time getting used to. Some people might call it simplistic, others old-fashioned, and some downright ugly. God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand is no different. While the art isn’t the best, it never disappoints in showcasing the violent events depicted.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, is one of the most brutal manga I ever read, but also one of the strangest. It’s, however, a great read if you’re looking for strange, violent incidents and lots of gore.
Lychee Light Club by Usamaru Furuya is reminiscent of and inspired by the erotic gore work of Suehiro Maruo. It is, however, a much more brutal manga.
The manga details the activities of the Lychee Light Club. The members of the club created a robot named Lychee who they program to bring them beautiful girls.
As the story progresses, however, the club leader Zera grows paranoid and things get out of control. This sets into motion various, disturbing incidents which end dire for many members of the club.
Lychee Light Club is a brutal manga, featuring copious amounts of gore, scenes of brutal murder and other unsettling ideas.
It’s a great read for anyone who’s looking for a weird, unsettling and especially brutal manga.
Parasyte is a manga, as the title says, about parasites. These strange, worm-like creatures infest humans, take over their bodies and transform them into twisted monsters.
Our protagonist, Shinichi, gets infected by one such parasite, but can keep the creature from digging into his brain. Instead, the creatures can only infect his right hand.
From then on, they are trapped in the same body. As if this situation isn’t weird enough already, things turn much worse when other parasites come after them.
Before long, Shinichi learns that these other parasites prey on and devour humans and decides to fight back.
Parasyte can be an incredibly brutal manga. The author doesn’t shy away from presenting us the results of the parasites’ attacks in all their details. We witness people being shredded to pieces, torn apart, or mauled beyond comprehension.
It’s a fantastic, older manga, one with a unique story and setting, great creature design and lots of gore.
Chainsaw Man by Fujimoto Tatsuki is one of the weirdest manga on this list, but also one of the most brutal manga of recent years.
Denji is a simple man. He lives in a small shack and kills of devils, demons who escaped from hell, with his pet devil Ponchita. When he’s killed by the yakuza, Ponchita fuses with Denji’s body to keep him from dying. This gives him the powers of the chain saw devil and allows him to transform into Chain Saw Man.
He soon catches the eye of the official devil hunters who force him to work for the Public Safety Bureau.
The manga can be stupid, at times even ridiculous, but it’s one of the most unique and creative reads I ever had.
The plot might sound simple at first hand, but becomes more interesting as the manga goes on. What makes it such a brutal manga are the many fights. They present us with blood and violence galore, as one can imagine considering the nature of our protagonist.
Another fantastic part about chainsaw man are the many devils. They are as outlandish as they are scary, all have their own unique design, and the results of their powers often result in massive casualties.
Chainsaw Man is a unique piece of work, one that can be best described as beautiful madness. The unique art, the beautiful, yet gritty detail all help to bring forth the unique atmosphere of this brutal manga. If you haven’t read Chainsaw Man, I highly recommend it. It’s a fantastic manga.
MPD Psycho by Eiji Otsuka and Shouu Tajima is another strange and brutal manga. I first started reading it when it was relatively new, but it stayed on my mind for a long time because of its graphic imagery.
It’s a complex and confusing psychological story that features copious amounts of shocking violence.
MPD Psycho is the story of a man named Kazuhiko Amamiya. He suffers from multiple personality disorder.
The first chapters of the manga are more episodic and feature Amamiya or one of his other personalities solves various sick murder cases.
In time, however, an overarching, complex plot is introduced. And as it progresses, we realize that it’s related to Amamiya’s past and a mysterious woman named Lucy Monostone.
As mentioned before, the manga is ripe with shocking imagery. Many of the cases Amamiya is working on are sick and disturbing murders, and they are rendered in stunning detail. Looking at them can make you quite uncomfortable.
While MPD Psycho is a brutal manga, it’s no pure slaughter fest full of mindless gore. Instead, it’s a highly psychological series featuring a deep, albeit confusing plot. If you’re interested in complex mysterious and don’t mind the gracious violence, you’ll love this manga.
Battle Royal is one of my favorite movies of all time. The manga adaption of Koushun Takami’s novel by the same name is one of the most disturbing and brutal manga of all time.
The manga is a retelling of the novel, but often takes liberties to make certain events more dramatic. It also explores the backstory of each individual student, providing us with many additional details about them.
The story of Battle Royal is simple. Each year a single class is selected to take part in the titular program. The students are then brought to a remote area and are forced to kill each other until a sole survivor is left.
Shuuya Nanahara, our protagonist, decides against killing his classmates and instead makes it his goal to get off the island.
Battle Royal’s setting is one of the most disturbing I ever encountered and the manga doesn’t sugarcoat things. Instead, it showcases the insane situation in all its glory and with copious amounts of gore, at times almost a bit too much of it. We witness students mutilating and stabbing each other, heads exploding, disembowelments and a lot more disturbing imagery.
As mentioned before, the manga has some flaws. The first is the depiction of the various characters. While they are all in the same class and of the same age, some look like adults in their thirties while others look no older than ten. Another problem is the rather formulaic story-telling. The concept is simple. We are introduced to a new student. We witness their backstory and ultimately, their demise.
And yet, I can’t help but recommend Battle Royal. It’s a great story, a psychological one, but also an incredibly brutal manga. If you’re a fan of the movie or of manga featuring death games, I highly recommend it.
Jagaaaaaan tells the story of a young police officer, Shintarou Jagasaki. One day, he’s forced to escort home a drunk on the train. As he does, he witnesses an office worker growing mad before he turns into a monster and begins tearing the other passengers apart. Jagasaki eventually defeats the creature by shooting a beam from his hand. Before long, he learns that the office worker was a fractured human, like he himself is. From this point onwards, Jagasaki hunts down other fractured humans.
The story of Jagaaaaaan is crazy, featuring a lot of outlandish characters, scenarios and monsters.
One of the high points of this seriously brutal manga is the art. Kensuke Nishida is a fantastic artist and his art helps to bring forth this manga and the strange story it tells.
It’s especially prevalent in the design of the fractured humans. Many of them are extremely creative and outlandish, turning into twisted monstrosities. They go on rampage the moment they transform, resulting in copious amounts of gore and carnage, making Jagaaaaaan an incredibly brutal manga.
Many of the characters in Jagaaaaaan are as weird as the story itself. Some are more normal, like Jagasaki’s love interest, while others, especially the fractured humans, are crazy and deranged.
Overall, Jagaaaaaan is a great and brutal manga featuring its fair share of explicit content. There’s violence and gore, but also nudity and other, more depraved scenarios.
If you’re interested in weird and brutal manga, read Jagaaaaaan.
Q Hayashida’s Dorohedoro is an extremely weird manga. It’s a brutal manga set in a dark and grim world, but it’s full of humor.
The story begins in the derelict city of Hole which is connected to a world populated by magic users, the Sorcerer’s World. These magic users often visit Hole and use it as a testing ground for their powers. Because of them, mutilations, transformations and various other atrocities have become a daily reality.
Kaiman is one such inhabitant of Hole. He’s an amnesiac with the head of a reptilian and immune to magic. He believes himself another victim of magic users and hunts them down relentlessly to learn who he is.
While the premise of Dorohedoro sounds weird enough, the manga gets only weirder and as the story goes on.
Dorohedoro is a brutal manga, it’s full of death and carnage. This violence, however, is depicted with an air of lightheartedness and a certain humor. It makes reading Dorohedoro an almost surreal experience.
Near the end, however, when the story reaches its climax, the events depicted become much more outlandish, gruesome and horrific. It’s especially for the latter parts I consider Dorohedoro one of the most brutal manga ever created.
The greatest part about Dorohedoro is the art. It’s as outlandish as it’s beautiful. Be it the outlandish Sorcerer’s World or the run-down derelict city of Hole, both places are stunning to look at and ripe with detail. The same is true for the many strange characters populating the world of Dorohedoro.
Overall, Dorohedoro might be a brutal manga, but anyone should check out. It’s one of the most original and unique experiences I ever had. It’s a horrific, weird and surreal masterpiece.
Shigurui is probably the most brutal manga in the samurai genre I’ve ever read.
The manga’s based on the first chapter of Norio Nanjo’s novel of the same name. The plot centers on a proclamation of the twisted daimyo Tadanaga Tokugawa to hold a martial arts competition featuring fights to the death.
Two of the contests are Gennosuke Fujiki, a one-armed man who fights against the blind and lame Seigen Irako. The manga doesn’t show us the result of their fight right away. Instead, most of the manga details the backstory of these two contestants.
Shigurui is an absolutely beautiful manga and features some of the best art I’ve seen. Many of the panels and page spreads in Shigurui are stunning to look at.
What makes Shigurui such a brutal manga is, of course, first the violence. The manga’s ripe in gore and brutality. We witness people being mutilated, disemboweled, or torn to pieces.
Yet, there’s more, it’s the depiction of samurai culture. While it’s often depicted as honorable and even romanticized, Shigurui doesn’t shy away from showing us how brutal and unforgiving it was.
Shigurui is a grim, dark story, one filled with an almost feasible air of depression. You won’t find happiness here, and neither a happy ending. It’s a story that shows what a life by the sword drives people to do and the lives that are lost because of it.
Yet, Shigurui is a fantastic and brutal manga. It’s a piece of art, one that shows us a much more realistic and unforgiving view of samurai culture.
Ichi the Killer is one of the most depraved, sick and brutal manga I ever came upon. Yet, it’s also one of my absolute favorites.
It tells the story of two characters. The first is Ichi, the titular killer, the second is the twisted and insane yakuza Kakihara. When Kakihara’s boss vanishes, he begins a brutal search for the man that brings him not only in conflict with other yakuza groups but also leads to a confrontation with Ichi.
While Ichi the Killer features copious amounts of violence, including mutilation, torture, rape and murder, it’s no mere gore fest. It’s a deeply psychological story about the interplay of sadism and masochism, manipulation, identity disorder and childhood abuse. It mixes all these themes together into one of the most compelling and brutal manga of all time.
Ichi the Killer is so fascinating and works so well, because of all the raw violence it showcases. Its characters aren’tnormal people. No, they are the most twisted and depraved inhabitants of society’s underbelly. It presents those people to us, shows us their depravity, how far they will go and filters nothing. It’s as sick as it is satisfying.
A word of warning though, Ichi the Killer is not for the faint of heart. It’s a fucked up and brutal manga, downright sick and disgusting. At the same time, however, it’s one of the greatest psychological manga of all time.
Gantz is one of the most insane and brutal manga of all time, but that’s why I love it so much.
Our protagonist Kei Korono and his childhood friend Masaru Katou are killed in a tragic train accident. Soon after, however, the two of them wake up in a Tokyo apartment. There, they find not only a group of other people but also a large black sphere. It’s called Gantz and tells them to hunt down aliens living amongst humans. Before they can do anything, they are teleported outside and the first mission begins.
Gantz is a gritty, brutal manga about people hunting down aliens full of glorified gore and fluid action. Over the course of the manga, the stakes are constantly rising. While the first mission features only two aliens, later parts feature massive amounts of outlandish and dangerous creatures.
The greatest part about Gantz are the action and the amazing art. The action is always fluid, rendered in beautiful detail and stunning to look at. This is also true for the aliens. Gantz features some of the greatest creature design in all of manga.
Many of the missions in Gantz are brutal. Often, many of the people sent to hunt down aliens are nothing but cannon fodder. We watch them being torn apart, shredded to piece or being devoured.
One reason I love Gantz is the protagonist Kurono. While he starts out as an unlikeable and egoistic teenager, he develops tremendously as a character. It’s fantastic to watch him mature and grow and eventually become the leader of the Gantz team.
As you might expect, the world of Gantz is dark. This is not only true for the missions, however. Over the course of the manga, we witness severe bullying, rape and even a mass shooting.
Even though Gantz is an amazing, action-packed and brutal manga like no other. It’s a weird, insane, gory mess. It might be nonsensical at times, but it features some of the greatest action I’ve ever seen in a manga.
Many of Junji Ito’s works are disturbing and brutal, as you can see in my list of the best Junji Ito stories.
While you could add many of his works to this list of the most brutal manga, I think Tomie stands out amongst them.
While Uzumaki and Gyo are outlandish, twisted and unsettling, Tomie,
Many of his stories feature outlandish, twisted and unsettling scenarios and are full of blood and gore. Tomie, however, might be the worst of those.
Tomie tells the story of a high school student. She’s gorgeous and is not only dating one of her classmates, but also has an affair with her teacher. When she dies during a school trip, her class bands together to hide the fact. They dismember her body and get rid of it.
This, however, is only where the story of Tomie begins. The very next day, she shows up to class as if nothing had happened.
Soon, the true horror of Tomie is revealed to us. What we assumed to be a normal student is instead an entity with regenerative powers, able to regrow herself from even the smallest parts.
This, however, isn’t all. Tomie is not only gorgeous, but has an almost supernatural hold upon man. Every man she meets falls for her, grows obsessed with her and is eventually driven mad. This madness always leads to them reenacting Tomie’s first death, mutilating and killing her and disemboweling her body.
That’s what makes Tomie such a brutal manga. It’s these scenes of carnage, of unbridled violence and their results that Junji Ito presents to us in all their gory and disgusting detail.
While some chapters in Tomie are better, others are worse. Some chapters are fantastic and contain some of Junji Ito’s most horrific imagery. Yet others are almost forgettable.
Overall, though, Junji Ito doesn’t disappoint. Tomie is an unsettling and brutal manga that’s definitely worth reading.
Rest in peace Kentaro Miura, thanks for sharing your gift with the world.
Berserk is the one of the greatest manga of all time, but also one of the most brutal.
It’s a dark fantasy manga that tells the story of Guts, the Black Swordsman. He’s a man carrying a sword as tall as himself and is out on a quest for revenge. Over the course of the manga, he fights his way through demonic beings known as apostles and humans alike.
At first, Berserk might appear a simple story, but one couldn’t be more wrong. During Berserk’s second arc, The Golden Age, the manga truly shines. It is here we learn more about Guts, but also get to know the man known’s as Griffith.
Kentaro Miura was an amazing artist. Berserk almost transcends the manga medium and many of its pages, especially in later parts, are nothing short of art. Almost no other manga artist could compare to Kentaro Miura when he was at the top of his game.
He was never shy to present to us the horrors of his world in all its glory. Berserk’s world is a dark and horrible place. It’s full of war and brutal battles, but also many other atrocities. We bear witness to the darkest depth of humanity. We witness rape and torture, ritualistic sacrifices and religious fanaticism, but also senseless slaughter.
The same is true for the many battles. It doesn’t matter if it’s the many battles during the Golden Age or Guts battling apostles. They are always brutal, feature glorious violence and copious amounts of gore.
Yet, the most disturbing and brutal of all those events is without a doubt The Eclipse, the event that concludes the Golden Age arc. It’s without a doubt one of the most brutal, unforgiving and disturbing events ever depicted in manga.
There are also the apostles. They are equally gorgeous and grotesque to look at and whenever they appear, brutal violence will follow. Their victims get shredded to pieces, torn apart and even devoured.
And yet, Berserk might be one of the most brutal manga of all time. It’s also a masterpiece. It’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest, manga ever created.
There’s no other man who had as big an impact on horror manga other than Kazuo Umezu. He’s one of the most influential horror manga artists and his works have influenced the genre markedly.
God’s Right Hand, Devil’s Left Hand, is a scary manga like no other. It’s outlandish and disturbing, at others bizarre and gory, but always scary.
It tells of the various scary incidents a young boy named Sou becomes involved with. He’s often plagued by visions of these events before they happen and thus tries to prevent them.
Some scenarios depicted in this manga are highly bizarre and outlandish, yet others are more realistic, especially those featuring serial killers.
The works of Kazuo Umezu have a unique, old-fashioned style. Some might call it simplistic, or downright ugly, yet it always succeeds in presenting us with the violent events depicted.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, might be an older manga, but it’s still an extremely scary manga and called a classic for a reason.
There are only a few scary manga as uncomfortable as Manhole. Especially in our current times, manga about biological horror are terrifying.
One day, a naked, blood-covered man emerges from a manhole who’s host to a deadly biological agent.
The events of the manga follow two detectives who are trying to uncover the cause and origin of the infection. In the meantime, however, it continues to spread.
Manhole is more a thriller or detective story, but what makes it such a scary manga is the deadly, biological infection.
This scary manga is a fantastic, but unsettling read. There are no monsters here, no supernatural events, but a terrifying, realistic tale.
Zombie apocalypses are always scary, and I Am a Hero by Kengo Hanazawa is no different.
The story of this scary manga follows Hideo Suzuki, a young manga assistant. Hideo is a strange man, one who suffers from a share of mental problems. It’s interesting to follow someone like him around and to witness how he handles the situation he finds himself in.
One of the scariest things about I Am a Hero are the zombies. They differ from what we’re used to. Instead of walking corpses, we’re greeted by twisted and contorted beings. As the manga continues, they seem to take on more horrible versions, until they even merge and become giant, fleshy abominations.
I Am a Hero is a scary manga that develops slowly and takes quite some time to get going. While one’s easily fooled by the first chapters, it’s a very interesting and scary manga.
Zashiki Onna is a scary manga that lacks any supernatural elements. It’s for this reason that I consider it such a scary manga.
Hiroshi, a young university student, notices that a mysterious, tall woman seems to be interested in his next-door neighbor, appearing at his door constantly. After a chance encounter, however, Hiroshi becomes her new target of attention.
The story escalates as the mysterious woman continues to invade Hiroshi’s life.
Reading Zashiki Onna is a haunting experience. It presents us with the theme of stalking in an extremely chilling and unsettling way. What starts out as an invasion of privacy soon turns dangerous.
While it’s a short manga, comprising only eleven chapters, it’s still an extremely scary manga.
There’s a plethora of horror manga out there, but a lot of them feature monsters or supernatural creatures. Zashiki Onna stands out amongst them. It’s a simple tale, one about stalking, but that also makes it so much scarier.
Manga artist Suehiro Maruo is most known for his erotic gore work and many of his manga are strange and disturbing. While the Laughing Vampire is no different, and features its fair share of sexually charged scenes, it’s also quite a scary manga.
It’s a disturbing work, featuring a cast of terrible, downright insane people. What makes it such a scary manga, however, is the many themes featured in it.
It’s a work featuring vampires lurking in the dark, preying on unsuspecting people. Not only that, however, it features a unique spin on the vampire legend, one that’s as unique as it is terrifying.
The Laughing Vampire is a work that’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a disturbing and scary manga.
Parasyte is a manga that centers on worm-like creatures that infest human beings and take over their bodies.
Shinichi, our protagonist, falls victim to one such parasite. When the creature tries to dig into his head, however, he wakes up and thus only his right hand gets infected.
Both of them keep their respective personalities but are trapped in the same body. It’s a situation that’s weird enough, but it turns downright scary when other parasites attack them.
It isn’t long before Shinichi learns that those other parasites prey on human beings and devour them. From this point onward, he fights back and hunts them down.
What makes Parasyte such a scary manga is its focus on the theme of paranoia. Since parasites can imitate humans and look exactly like them, you never know who’s infested and who isn’t. You don’t know if your spouse turns out a human-eating monstrosity, and if you do, it’s most likely already too late.
While Parasyte features the occasional bit of humor, it also features copious amounts of gore. We witness as people are shredded to pieces, torn apart or mauled in various gruesome ways.
Parasyte is a fantastic, albeit older, scary manga, one that’s a delight to read for any horror fan.
Mieruko-Chan has become one of my favorite scary manga in recent times. I love it so much because it’s one of the most unique manga I ever read.
It’s the story of a girl called Miko who’s able to see ghosts.
Yet, Mieruko-Chan goes a different direction than what one’s used to from such a premise. Instead of fighting or interacting with the ghosts, Miko tries her hardest to ignore them. There’s a simple reason for this. Since other humans can’t see ghosts, Miko’s afraid that if she reacts to them, they might attack her.
The manga can be best described as a combination of horror-comedy and slice-of-life.
The manga doesn’t feature battles, and neither is anything happening to Miko. Instead, we’re merely watching as she observes the ghosts around her and tries her best not to react to them.
While the manga’s story picks up after introducing additional characters, the original premise stays the same.
What makes Mieruko-Chan a scary manga, however, are the ghosts. They are a stark contrast to the otherwise cute style of the manga and are nothing short of outlandish and disturbing.
Mieruko-Chan is a weird, yet scary manga, but might not be what people usually look for in horror. I still think it’s a fantastic read, especially for how unique it is and of course for the terrifying design of the various ghosts.
I’m a huge fan of H. P. Lovecraft, and The Shadow Out of Time is my favorite amongst his many works, as you can see on my list of the best Lovecraft stories.
Gou Tanabe’s adaption of it is absolutely fantastic. He’s an outstanding artist and his art rivals the best of the genre.
The story of The Shadow Out of Time starts simple. During a lecture, a professor suffers from a sudden attack and collapses.
When he comes to himself years later, he learns he wasn’t in a come, but acted like a completely different person.
Over the course of the story, the man unravels what happened by putting together the bits and pieces of his memory.
The Shadow Out of Time is a cosmic horror masterpiece and, combined with Gou Tanabe’s art, it becomes an incredibly scary manga. Yet, it isn’t scary so much because of the creatures depicted or the story told, it’s the implications it makes about humanity. As so often in cosmic horror, the true scares lie somewhere different.
There’s no need to say anything more about this work. If you’re a fan of Lovecraft and of cosmic horror, this work is a must. I also highly recommend his other scary manga based on Lovecrafts work.
If you want to see which Lovecraft work Gou Tanabe has adapted you check it out here:
Masaaki Nakayma’s Fuan no Tane is one of the scariest manga ever created.
It’s a manga that’s different from most other horror manga. It doesn’t have a plot, no characters, but focuses solely on being scary and creepy.
Fuan no Tane is a collection of short, creepy incidents. Many of them involve ghosts or other supernatural entities. Each chapter centers on a central theme and depicts several creepy incidents related to it. Some are set in a location such as a school or a hospital, while others center on a concept such as uninvited guests.
These incidents are often no longer than a handful of pages. There’s no character development and no plot. Instead, we witness nothing but the incident itself.
That’s what makes Fuan no Tane such a great and scary manga. It doesn’t waste time to develop a plot or introduce characters, and it doesn’t need to. Instead, all we witness is a scary incident.
While a few of the depicted incidents are more humorous, others are scary and disturbing.
I highly recommend Fuan no Tane to anyone who’s looking for a truly scary manga.
Kouishou Radio is another scary manga created by Masaaki Nakayma.
At first glance, this manga seems reminiscent of Fuan no Tane. Nothing but another collection of short, unconnected incidents. As we read on, however, we soon realize that these stories have something in common, hair.
Hair is the central point of Kouishou Rajio. People encounter ghosts obsessed with hair or even made of it. Others are haunted by images of losing their hair altogether.
Before long, an overarching narrative is revealed, one that centers on an entity only known as the God of Hair. This narrative, however, is one of the most unusual I’ve come upon. Nothing is made clear, only hinted at and we same to go back and forth in time, as the blanks are slowly filled in.
Kouishou Rajio is a fantastically scary manga. The bit-sized incidents are scary and unsettling. The art is as amazing as it was in Fuan no Tane and the many ghosts and entities are unique and creative.
Yet, what makes it even better than Fuan no Tane is the slow revelation of these incidents being connected.
Kouishou Rajio is one of the best scary manga out there. I highly recommend it to fans of Fuan no Tane, but also to anyone who’s interested in scary manga.
Junji Ito’s works have always been amongst my favorite scary manga. If you’re interested in learning more about his work, check out my list of the best Junji Ito stories.
There are many bizarre, disturbing and scary manga out there, but Junji Ito’s masterpiece Uzumaki deserves a special place among them.
The manga details the events taking place in Kurouzu-cho, a small coastal town that becomes infected by spirals.
Our protagonists are Kirie Goshima and Shuuichi Saitou, two teenagers living in the small town and who become involved with one disturbing spiral-related incident after another.
Uzumaki loses no time and is disturbing right from the get go. The very first chapter details Shuuichi’s father’s descent into madness. At first he only collects spiral-shaped items, but this obsession soon turns weirder and culminates in one of Uzumaki’s most famous and disturbing pages.
What makes Uzumaki stand out so much and what makes it such a scary manga is its unique premise. Other scary manga feature creatures, ghosts or serial killers, yet Uzumaki has no feasible antagonist. All there is, is a concept, the spiral which has taken over the town of Kurouzu-cho.
Yet, Uzumaki truly shines in its presentation. Junji Ito is, fore and foremost, a visual artist, and in Uzumaki he’s at his very best. His art is stunning, and he presents his disturbing imagination in all its glorious detail. We bear witness as people are twisted, warped and changed into spiral-like horrors. It’s a manga ripe with blood and copious amounts of gore. Yet, there’s a creativity to it I’ve seldom seen in other works.
Uzumaki is without a doubt one of the most disturbing and a scary manga. I regard it as one of the greatest achievements in horror manga history and highly recommend it to any horror fan out there.
While I’m more torn towards horror novels and short stories, there’s something special about horror manga. It’s the mixture of scary story-telling accompanied with disturbing visuals that makes them so interesting.
In this article, I want to present you with some of the most disturbing manga I ever read. While most of them are horror manga, some are more akin to deep psychological tales. All of them, however, are deeply disturbing manga.
Keep on Vibrating by Jiro Matsumoto is the only adult themed manga on this list of disturbing manga.
It’s a collection of one-shots depicting sex, violence and many disturbing and surreal incidents.
The first chapter of Keep on Vibrating is one of the most surreal and disturbing pieces of work I ever witnessed. It’s full of explicit sex, violence and an abstruse plot that makes almost no sense. It’s the perfect introduction to this work.
This combination of surreal imagery and the general insanity that makes Keep on Vibrating such an enticing read.
The art is unique, shoddy and gritty and helps to bring forth the strange atmosphere in this work. Backdrops, especially those in later chapters, can be highly disturbing while dialogues are often as mundane as they can be. It only adds to the overall surreal nature of the work.
The plot of each individual chapter is weird, but here and there one can notice rare glimpses of genius.
Keep on Vibrating is one of the weirdest, most disturbing manga I read, but also vastly different from any others. It’s a work that needs to be experienced, but one full of explicit and surreal imagery.
Kazuo Umezu is a the man who defined the horror manga genre. His style is unique and his works, including The Drifting Classroom and Orochi:Blood, have influenced the genre markedly.
For this list, however, I want to feature his most disturbing manga God’s Right Hand, Devil’s Left Hand. It’s an outlandish and disturbing manga that features copious mounts of gore.
The manga features a young boy, Sou, who often has visions of terrible events. He always tries to prevent them from happening, but its rarely an easy feet and things almost never go his way.
While some scenarios depicted in this manga are more normal, others are highly bizarre and feature heavy instances of body horror.
Kazuo Umezu’s style, however, needs some time getting used to. It’s quite old-fashioned and to some people it might appear as ugly. While this style might not be for everyone and is rather simplistic, it never fails to showcase the violent events depicted.
Even if God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, is an older manga, I still regard it as a classic and one of the most disturbing manga I ever read. If you’re interested in brutal, more disturbing manga, I highly recommend checking it out.
Hideout is not only stunning to look at but also one of the most disturbing manga I ever read.
The story follows a troubled writer, Kirishima Seiichi. During a vacation with his wife, he plans to murder her. The reasons for this are only revealed throughout the story.
His attempt fails, and he’s forced to follow her into a cave. Soon enough, however, it’s revealed that the two of them aren’t the only ones in this cave.
Hideout is a story told in flashbacks and as the manga continues, we get various glimpses into Seiichi’s life prior to the vacation.
It’s a fantastically disturbing manga and a gloomy, depressing tale that throws us into a downward spiral that keeps getting progressively worse.
The manga is short and only comprises nine chapters. Still, Hideout features some of the finest art I’ve seen in horror manga and the story is masterfully told.
Ibitsu is another one of the most disturbing manga I ever came upon. It’s not only terrifying, but it also features a lot of unsettling imagery.
When Kazuki, our protagonist, takes out the trash, he encounters a strange Lolita Girl. She asks him if he’s got a little sister. Not thinking about it, he answers that, yes, he’s got a sister. From this point onward, the strange girl becomes obsessed with him.
Ibitsu starts out as a story focused on stalking. It isn’t long, however, before it becomes more deranged and twisted. In later chapters, the manga doesn’t shy away from graphical depictions of gruesome violence and torture.
It’s yet another, shorter, but disturbing manga, comprising only thirteen chapters. Still, it’s worth a read.
Suehiro Maruo is a horror manga artist who’s most famous for his erotic gore work. Because of this, his work is strange and disturbing. The Laughing Vampire is no different and features quite a few sexually charged scenes.
What makes it stand out, however, is that it’s a truly disturbing manga. Even worse, many, if not all the characters in this manga are terrible people or downright insane.
Yet, The Laughing Vampire is interesting for another reason. It presents us with a unique spin on the vampire legend, one I’ve never seen prior.
It’s a work that’s not for the faint of heart and one of the most twisted and disturbing manga of all time.
Midori, a twelve-year-old girl, gets lost during a school trip and is taken in by a freak show. From then on, her life becomes a nightmare. The young girl is constantly abused by the other members of the show.
Mr. Arashi’s Freak Show is full of disturbing imagery, depictions of graphical violence and abuse.
It’s a terrible, downright tragic tale, one that will stay with you long after you’ve read it. As with The Laughing Vampire, it’s another twisted and highly disturbing manga.
Lychee Light Club might be one of the strangest manga on this list. The art, the atmosphere and feel of this manga make it very reminiscent of the works of Suehiro Maruo. This is no accident, as writer Usamaru Furuya stated he was influenced by the works of Suehiro Maruo.
The manga centers on the members of the Lychee Light Club and a robot called Lychee they created. This robot is programed to bring them beautiful girls.
Over the course of the story, things between the club members get out of control, and their methods become increasingly more brutal and outlandish. This, eventually, leads to internal struggle and brutal murder.
Lychee Light Club is another highly disturbing manga, featuring copious amounts of gore and other unsettling and twisted ideas.
Franken Fran is anything but a normal manga. No, it’s one of the weirdest and most disturbing manga I ever read. It follows the character of Fran, a girl created by a brilliant surgeon, who’s taken over his work after he vanished.
The manga is more a collection of one-shots and told in episodic fashion. It can be best compared to such works as Tales From the Crypt and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. In each chapter, we follow Fran as she gets involved in another unique scenario.
Since Fran is a surgeon, many chapters detail medical and surgical procedures. This is already disturbing enough, but the horrible results of these procedures are even more so.
Yet, Franken Fran is not entirely dark and gloomy. Quite a few chapters depict scenarios that are more humorous or satirical. They all, however, feature disturbing imagery.
Franken Fran is a mixed bag. Not all of its chapters are outstanding. It’s especially those that lean more towards humor that are weaker. When Franken Fran is at its best, however, it’s a horrible delight and can be a highly disturbing manga.
Ichi the Killer is not a horror manga, but it’s definitely horrible.
It’s one of the most graphical and disturbing manga I ever read, but also one of the greatest. The manga was penned by Yamamoto Hide who’s outdone himself in creating a cast of batshit insane characters.
Ichi the Killer is the story of two characters. One is Ichi, the titular killer, the other the yakuza Kakihara. These two characters are not only the driving forth behind the manga’s story, but they are also polar opposites.
After his boss vanishes, Kakihara begins a desperate search for the man, which should eventually lead him to a confrontation with Ichi.
Ichi the Killer is extremely graphic and features graphical violence, torture, sexual abuse, rape and even murder.
Yet, the manga is no mere gore feast. It’s a deeply psychological tale that explores a variety of themes. The interplay between sadism and masochism is the most dominant one. Other themes featured are those of manipulation, identity disorder and childhood abuse. These themes come together and create one of the most compelling, but also most disturbing, manga of all time.
It’s the depiction of those themes and all the raw violence showcased that makes Ichi the Killer work so well. It doesn’t filter and instead shows us the darkest underbelly of society and the depths of human depravity.
If you plan on reading Ichi the Killer, I’d like to warn you. It’s a fucked up story that can be downright disgusting. If that’s what you’re looking for, however, then you’re in for one of the greatest psychological and most disturbing manga of all time. It’s a fantastic, if sick work.
Homunculus is another manga penned by Hideo Yamamoto, the author of Ichi the Killer. It’s a less brutal and disturbing manga than Ichi the Killer, but it’s also much, much weirder.
Susumu Nakoshi is a young man who lives in his car. One day, he encounters Manabu Ito, a medical student who’s looking for test subjects on which to perform trepanation. Nakoshi eventually agrees to undergo the procedure. As a result, he can now see distorted versions of humans when looking at them with his left eye, the titular homunculi.
Homunculus is one of the most unique, but also one of the most disturbing manga I ever read. It starts out interesting and almost straightforward, but it becomes progressively weirder.
It’s a psychological masterpiece that features a variety of themes, including vanity, trauma and identity disorder. Homunculus also features its fair share of disturbing scenes, both violent and sexual. What makes it such an unsettling and disturbing manga isn’t the violence, however, but the deep psychological implications so prevalent in this work.
The plot of Homunculus feels unpredictable. Before long, it becomes more of a character study, one depicting a slow descent into madness.
The art in Homunculus is as fantastic as it is weird. At times it can be abstract, at others disturbing, but it always brilliantly showcases what’s going on. The most interesting part of this manga is without a doubt the various homunculi who are nothing but surreal.
Homunculus is a unique, surreal and disturbing manga. It features some of the most complex characters in any manga and presents us with a deep psychological study. While the narrative might be unrestrained at times, and derails at others, I still consider the manga a masterpiece.
If you’re looking for a surreal, creative and disturbing manga, Homunculus is among the best.
Freesia is another manga by Jiro Matsumoto, the creator of Keep on Vibrating.
The manga’s set in a dystopian Japan in which retaliatory killings are legal. If a loved one is murdered, you’re allowed to kill their murderer or hire someone to do it for you.
Kano is a man who works for an agency specializing in these types of retaliatory killings.
The Japan depicted in Freesia is a dark, gloomy and cruel place, and a heavy, almost feasible depression hangs over the entire manga. As you can tell, Freesia isn’t a pleasant story. It’s a tale of horrible, broken and damaged people. Almost the entire cast of this disturbing manga is in mentally ill.
Kano, our protagonist, is no different. He has schizophrenia, hallucinations, and memory failure. This is well showcased as we see the disturbing, surreal world Kano lives in. What makes him different and much more interesting, however, is that he understands it’s him and not the world who’s crazy and even tries to get better.
Many other members of the cast suffer from similar ailments, the most dominant that of delusions and hallucinations.
While one might assume Freesia is a manga about bloody, retaliator killings, the manga focuses more on personal stories. It tells us the often tragic backstories of the retaliatory targets, makes us sympathize with them and their death a tragedy in its own right.
Freesia isn’t a manga that’s back and white, however, but a mush of gray. It showcases a harsh and dystopian world, the toll it takes on its inhabitants and the mental problems it leads to.
Freesia is a gloomy, depressing and disturbing manga, both for its violence but also for the depicted state of its main characters. And yet, it’s a fantastic and surreal experience, and one of the best manga at what it does.
I’m a big fan of stories centered on death games. Kamisama no Iutoori and its sequel are among the best in the genre and some of the most disturbing manga I ever read.
Takahata Shun is a high school student and utterly bored with his life. All this changes one morning. His teacher’s head explodes, a Daruma doll appears and the very first of many death games begins.
The series introduces a variety of death games, most of which are extremely weird and surreal. These games are often simple at first glance, but their execution makes them much more interesting.
While most manga in this sub-genre feature realistic games, Kamisama no Iutoori’s are nothing but surreal and downright absurd.
What I came to enjoy the most about this series were its protagonists, especially the more deranged members of the cast. A favorite of mine was Ushimitsu who also developed vastly over the course of the series.
Kamisama no Iutoori is so enjoyable and such a disturbing manga because it doesn’t shy away from killing characters. No one’s safe in this manga, no one, and that’s fantastic.
I enjoyed both parts of the manga, but it truly shines during its second part. The art, especially in later chapters, is absolutely gorgeous.
Overall, I absolutely loved reading this manga. It’s an enjoyable, if, at times, disturbing manga. If you’re a fan of death games, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this series.
While there are many bizarre and disturbing manga out there, few are as unique as his masterpiece, Uzumaki.
The manga centers on Kirie Goshima and Shuuichi Saitou, who live in the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho. It tells of the events taking place when the town becomes infected by spirals.
Over the course of this three volume epic, we witness one disturbingly scary incident after another, all related to spirals.
The madness so prevalent in this disturbing manga is apparent right from the first chapter. It shows us what happens to Shuuichi’s father, who’s obsessed with spirals. Before long, this obsession comes to a terrifying conclusion, featuring one of Uzumaki’s most famous and disturbing pages.
The first two volumes of Uzumaki are told in episodic fashion. Each chapter features another disturbing, spiral-related incident, all witnessed by our protagonists. Only in the third volume is the narrative tied together and the story brought to a Lovecraftian conclusion.
There are many reasons that make Uzumaki stand out from other disturbing manga.
The first is Junji Ito’s fantastic, detailed art and his creativity. His imagination is as incredible as it is disturbing. People are twisted, warped and changed into spirals, always ending in dire results. Yet, some chapters go even further, depicting incidents that are unsettling in a much deeper way. I present some of these in my list of the best Uzumaki chapters.
The second is the unique and weird premise. As opposed to other disturbing manga, we don’t encounter killers or creatures, no feasible antagonist. Instead, there’s only the spiral, a concept, which has taken control of Kurouzu-cho as an omnipresent curse.
Uzumaki is a manga I highly recommend to any horror fan out there. It’s one of the most disturbing manga of all time, but also one of the greatest accomplishments in horror manga history.
Rest in peace Kentaro Miura, thanks for sharing your gift with the world.
Berserk is probably the single greatest manga of all time, but also one of the most disturbing. It’s a dark fantasy story full of brutal action, lots of gore and incredible monster design.
The manga tells the story of Guts, who’s known as the Black Swordsman. He’s on a quest for revenge against demonic beings, the apostles, and a man known as Griffith.
Berserk appears to be simple at first. It seems to be a story of a man with a sword as tall as himself who fights his way through demons and humans alike.
That’s true for the first arc of the manga, but during the Golden Age arc, one of the greatest flashbacks of all time, we learn a lot more about Guts.The Golden Age arc also introduced to Griffith.
During the Golden Age arc, the manga explores their relationship, tests it and ultimately severs it.
Why is Berserk such a disturbing manga? It’s because the world of Berserk is a dark place, a horrible place, full of war and atrocities.
Kentaro Miura is never shy about it and presents this world in all its glory and detail. We witness not only wars and brutal battles but also rape, torture, and senseless slaughter. We witness medieval torture methods, religious fanaticism, sacrifices and much more. The most disturbing event in Berserk, however, has to be The Eclipse, the event that brings to a conclusion the Golden Age arc.
The violence in Berserk, however, is always at its most intense when Guts is around. Using his sword, he cuts his way through soldiers, knights in full armor, and demonic beings.
The greatest part about Berserk is the art. The manga almost transcends the medium and especially in later parts, it is more art than manga. When Kentaro Miura was at the top of his game, scarcely few manga artists could compare. It’s this outstanding art, those details that make Berserk truly special, but also make it such a disturbing manga. Kentaro Miura was never shy about using his art and his attention to detail to present us with the worst of the worst in his world.
Another disturbing aspect of Berserk is the many apostles. They are gorgeous to look at. Their design is unique, but they are also extremely grotesque beings.
Overall, Berserk is nothing short of art. While it’s a disturbing manga, it’s also a masterfully told story.
At first glance, especially during the Black Swordsman arc, it might not appear the masterpiece it is, but if you read on, I’m sure it ’ll blow you away.
I can’t recommend Berserk enough. It’s for a reason I consider it the best manga ever written. It’s a beautiful, brutal and disturbing manga. If you’re interested in dark fantasy, horror or manga in general, you need to read Berserk.
There’s no one as famous in the world of horror manga today as Junji Ito. He has rightfully amassed a cult following around the globe.
And yet, Junji Ito is not merely a horror mangaka. In my opinion, he’s one of the greatest horror artists of our time. If you’re a fan of horror and especially horror manga, you will certainly stumble upon his works.
Junji Ito’s body of work is as strange as it is unique. Reading his manga feels like going down a tiny, very special rabbit hole unlike any other.
I first learned about Junji Ito a decade and a half ago. At the time, I was searching online for new horror manga to read. At the time, I was still new to the genre, but the prospect of a manga that was supposed to ‘give me nightmares’ sounded interesting enough.
That manga was Tomie. When I finally read it, it was everything I desired in a work of horror and much, much more. It was full of outlandish ideas and terrifying imagery.
The next manga by Junji Ito I read was Gyo, which was as nightmarish as Tomie, but much more surreal, weird and absurd. Junji Ito’s style, however, was as fantastically disturbing and nightmarish as in Tomie.
What finally sold me and made me a lifelong fan of his works was Junji Ito’s masterpiece, Uzumaki. It’s the story of the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which is haunted by spirals. The story was outlandish, the imagery disturbing, and it was completely unique and different from any other horror manga I’d read until then. If you want to learn more about Uzumaki, I put together a short article about my favorite Uzumaki chapters.
Over the years, I’ve read countless horror manga, both by well-known and lesser known writers, as you can see in the list of my favorite horror manga. Still, Junji Ito’s works hold a special place in my heart and are, in my opinion, among the best horror manga of all time. His works are so strange, so unique and outlandish, I find myself going back to them time and again.
What makes Junji Ito’s works so fantastic is his blend of outlandish and, at times, supernatural horror with the mundane things in life.
Junji Ito’s work truly shines because it’s a very special kind of horror. His works seldom feature killers or monsters. Instead, Junji Ito’s horror is often unexplained, comes from powers outside of our influence or it comes from our very own faults, fears, obsessions and phobias.
Sometimes his premises are strange, even ridiculous, but Junji Ito makes it all work. The idea of a town haunted by spirals becomes one of the most disturbing and unique horror works of all time. Balloons taking on the faces of people and hunting them down becomes a nightmarish apocalypse. Even a story about human-shaped holes revealed after an earthquake become a setting of outlandish existential horror and deadly curiosity.
Junji Ito’s works stand out for their blend of masterful imagery and the narrative themes featured in them. It’s especially interesting to note that Junji Ito’s nightmarish imagery and disturbing ideas often hide deeper themes or things to ponder about.
Once can’t talk about Junji Ito without first discussing cosmic horror.
The genre was created by American Horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. It centers on the idea that the most horrible thing is the realization that humanity is ultimately meaningless in the greater scope of the universe. Even worse, there are powers and beings out there that are far older and far more powerful that we could ever imagine. They are entities that were around long before man first emerged and will be so long after we’re gone again. Our lives, our dreams, our problems, they are all meaningless in the greater sense of the cosmos.
While Junji Ito’s influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, he still created his very own blend of cosmic horror. It’s one that’s often weirder and stranger than what was seen in Lovecraft’s work. Humans are powerless in Junji Ito’s world, but while some of his works, like Uzumaki, feature unknown powers or entities, most of his work focuses on more intimate and mundane things.
Another similarity is that cosmic horror and Junji Ito’s works seldom feature central villains or antagonists. We don’t encounter evil in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s our own realizations or inexplicable powers that are at the core of cosmic horror.
Visual Style and Narrative Themes
In the main part of this article, I want to discuss both Junji Ito’s visual style and his narrative themes. They both make Junji Ito’s work unique and make it stand out amongst a plethora of other graphical horror works.
Junji Ito’s works are well known for his own personal style. He brings forth his horrors by a combination of masterful ink work and line work.
Junji Ito uses his detailed line work and a reliance on bold, almost unsettling inks to present his grotesque and shocking imagery. While he uses shading, his work mostly relies on lines to show textures. Even his gore and many of his unsettling details, like blood and wet, squishy details, are rendered with nothing but lines. This serves to give them not only a unique look, but adds much more detail and gives them a more visceral and disgusting quality.
Another concept Junji Ito heavily uses is contrast, both in environments and in characters.
His visual style, however, is most prevalent and recognizable in his characters. Junji Ito’s characters never blush and seldom show signs of normal happiness. Instead, they are often devoid of normal emotions and all he shows us are over-exaggerations.
Junji Ito’s characters often look empty and lifeless even before the horror happens. This is most often the case in his stories that focus on personal horror or mental illnesses. You can truly see how bad his characters feel and how close they already are to the abyss that’s eventually going to swallow them up. Their faces are characterized by fallen in cheeks and their bodies are often sickly thin, almost skeletal-like. Dark circles around the eyes and abnormal irises often help to showcase dark emotions, such as depression and gloominess.
This effect is used by minimal shading and heavy contrast between certain elements of the person’s face. Ito often focuses on the eyes, the mouth, and uses them to show nothing but unnatural emotional reactions.
His characters often wear creepy facial expressions. Be it smiles, be it sad looks, they are all disgustingly accentuated, giving them an entirely surreal feeling.
Once the true horror of a story happens, however, Junji Ito goes all out when showcasing a person’s emotional response. Terrified facial expressions are often so overdrawn they make us uncomfortable. Mouths are wide agape, faces are distorted and elongated as they scream and eyes are wide open.
Another element that makes Junji Ito’s works so unique is his reliance on body horror and the distortion of the human body. He doesn’t rely on monsters to scare us, instead his horror is often related to our own bodies. People are being twisted, become warped and turn into forms barely resembling human beings. We see people turning into spirals or becoming rotten abominations and elongated versions of themselves.
It’s this reliance on body horror that makes Junji Ito’s work so terrifying. Often, the horror of his stories doesn’t come from outside, but from within our very own bodies. It’s both strangely fascinating, but also highly disturbing.
Junji Ito’s Narrative Themes
As a writer, I’m often fascinated by Junji Ito’s works. It’s not only for their visual representation, but also for the narrative themes he employs. While his works are graphic, he uses a variety of narrative themes and elements to bring forth his own blend of horror.
Junji Ito’s works are bizarre, even absurd, but incredibly creative. His characters, as well as his settings, however, are often as mundane as can be, at times even boring.
His themes often center on fears, obsessions and phobias and showcase what happens when people give into them. And yet, many of his works hide deeper themes, a deeper meaning that might not be visible at first glance.
I want to discuss all of those elements in detail below.
Junji Ito’s work doesn’t follow normal or traditional story-telling conventions.
Most of his characters aren’t characterized and there’s no character development throughout his work. Instead, characters are often blank slates, or merely exist to showcase a certain fear, phobia or obsession.
The same is true for the plot. Junji Ito’s works seldom rely on an engaging or interesting plot. Instead, he merely gives us a glimpse into someone’s life and lets us witness the horrible things that happen to them. More than anything, Junji Ito’s works are about atmosphere, about horror and the gruesome demise of his characters.
While Junji Ito writes horror stories, there’s seldom a feasible antagonist. People are haunted by faceless entities, curses, higher powers, or by their very own psychological problems.
One of the biggest problems in horror writing or horror stories is the need to explain what should be inexplicable or adding too many details. Junji Ito seldom does this. Instead, he leaves us with the mystery, leaves us guessing and fearing the unknown. One of the best examples is his story Hanging Balloons. We never get an explanation what those balloons are, where they came from or why. Instead, he only shows us what happens after they appear. He lets us watch it through the eyes of his characters and ends it when their time on the screen is over. The mystery remains intact and, with it, the horror.
Gyo is an example of a story where Junji Ito breaks this convention. Near the end, he tries to give a scientific explanation for the apocalyptic horror that unfolded and, at least to me, it didn’t work. Instead, it seemed silly, almost comically absurd, and almost ruined the manga for me.
Junji Ito’s stories often begin in normalcy. We don’t start with a dramatic backstory or by introducing an antagonist. Instead, his stories begin in the most mundane places. We watch characters going to school, falling in love or having to go to the hospital. It’s here in these normal, mundane settings that Junji Ito slowly introduces his horror elements.
The same is true for the horror themselves. In many stories, Junji Ito’s horror comes from the most mundane places or is caused by mundane objects: musical records, laughter, hair and even concepts such as spirals.
Many of his stories feature normal or ordinary fears such as the unknown depths of the ocean, claustrophobia, being watched, a sweaty, dirty mattress or holes in a wall. Yet, Ito drives them up a notch. He twists them into something irrational and surreal, blows them up and turns them into crazy phobias. At the essence, though, those are often fears or thoughts that plague many of us.
And yet, Junji Ito twists these mundane settings and tortures his normal characters until his stories turn into a world of horror. What started out as a normal, everyday scenario becomes uncomfortable to watch, has been warped and now the surreal and disturbing reigns supreme.
It’s this that makes Junji Ito’s work so special and unique. This contrast between the mundane and the horrors he conjures. We see it most in his characters. Their mundane, almost expressionless faces get twisted and turned into masks of terror with over-exaggerated details that are barely resembling them. It’s almost as if not only the story but also his characters get warped into something entirely different, something horrible.
There are also some stories by Junji Ito that are grounded in reality. A great example is The Bully, which serves to be one of his most realistic, but also most terrifying, works.
It’s not only Junji Ito’s stories that are normal and mundane but also his characters. They are nobodies, often blank slates who become involved with Junji Ito’s horrors.
They are often students or normal day people who lead a normal life. His characters are never the heroes of their stories, they are never smart or resourceful protagonists. Instead, they often serve as nothing but a vessel. Through them Junji Ito gives us a glimpse into his world of horrors.
Even worse, though, sometimes his characters are dumb and driven on by their curiosity or desires. And yet, if his characters show strong emotions, it’s almost always a singular one. Their fear, phobia or desire becomes their defining character trait, often the only one they showcase, and that ultimately leads to their demise.
Junji Ito’s a fantastic writer and artist, but he’s not a character writer. No, his characters are merely there and seem to be nothing but lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
We all know irrational or childish fears. When we were young, we were all afraid of the monsters under our bed, of the doctor, strange neighbors, or even shadows.
As adults, we understand that those are nothing but irrational fears. There’s no boogeyman, and there are no monsters out to get us.
Junji Ito’s work, however, often features exactly these fears. This often gives them an uncanny feeling because we recognize those scenarios. We too were afraid to visit the doctor, and we too were afraid of the monsters under the bed and even know we have our own eccentricities and phobias. And Junji Ito explores and exploits them. He takes the most irrational and silly fears, gives them life and as a result his stories so much more terrifying.
Junji Ito’s a master of body horror. He isn’t just satisfied by people dying. Instead, he often distorts, warps, and twists them. This is not merely visible in their ultimate demise, but also in the way people change over the course of his stories. People who start out by looking normal, even beautiful, become haunting, sick versions of themselves or turn insane as their sanity shatters.
Two of Junji Ito’s greatest examples of body horror are Dissection Girl and Uzumaki. The first features a disturbed woman who wishes to be dissected. Her wish is ultimately granted at the end of the story and showcases one of Junji Ito’s most fantastically disturbing panels. For it is revealed that it’s not only her mind that was heavily distorted but also her body. Uzumaki, on the other hand, is a three volume masterpiece about a small town haunted by spiral. Over the course of the story, many of its inhabitants become obsessed with spirals and are warped and twisted until their bodies represent the spiral in various horrible ways.
Junji Ito’s brand of body horror is always a disturbing delight to look at and one that often renders his characters almost unrecognizable.
One of Junji Ito’s most common tropes is that of mental illness. Depression, fears, phobias and obsessions are often the center point of his stories.
Yet, Junji Ito isn’t satisfied by exploring them. Instead, he uses them as a basis for the madness in his stories. Many times, an irrational fear or phobia is merely the starting point and. Over the course of the story, he amplifies and distorts them until they end in utter madness and insanity.
His characters’ mind gets distorted and changes similarly to their bodies. While their eyes become large and bulging and their mouths hang agape in terrible screams, their minds, too, are inevitably broken.
Powerful emotions and general erratic and irrational behavior are widely featured in his works and are almost commonplace amongst his characters. They are eccentric weirdos, people whose entire being or character revolves around a single trait, often their very own blend of mental illness, fear or phobia.
Obsession is the leitmotif in Junji Ito’s Tomie which features a woman so beautiful any man who sees her becomes obsessed with her. Many other stories, too, feature obsession. It can be caused by love, by animosity, jealousy or even the obsession of owning a certain object. And each of these stories ends with people giving into their obsession, being changed by it and ultimately leading to dire results.
Love, too, is something Junji Ito often exploits and distorts. What might start as a harmless crush will soon turn into a dangerous obsession that drives people mad. Great examples are again the aforementioned Tomie, but also other works such as The Lovesick Dead or the chapter Jack-in-the-box in Uzumaki.
As mentioned before, Junji Ito often drives his characters’ fears and phobias to the max and turns them into despair and insanity.
The reason for this, however, is often because his characters are inevitably doomed. Similar to the characters in the works of Franz Kafka or H. P. Lovecraft, Junji Ito’s characters have no power over their world.
We can see it best in Uzumaki. In it an entire town becomes an inescapable hell and characters realize that there’s no hope, no way out anymore. In a similar way, The Enigma of Amigara Faults toys with our curiosity, but also with inevitable fate. People flock to the strange holes that resemble them and, driven by an almost supernatural, primal urge, they are overcome with a curiosity they can’t seem to fight.
Existential dread is something at the core of our very being. As humans, we are the only beings on this planet who know that they will die one day and there’s nothing we can do about.
Junji Ito’s stories are full of this existential dread and horror, but his world is one that’s far more unforgiving than our own. It’s a place far more dangerous and far weirder and messes with its characters. The horror often comes in the most mundane forms and it shows that nothing is safe in the world of Junji Ito. There are no safe spaces and even the most mundane thing can lead to a terrible, horrible incident.
While Junji Ito’s work relies on supernatural forces and mental instability, many of his works feature deeper themes.
Town Without Streets is a prime example. In it, Junji Ito discusses privacy and twists it to its extremes. What would you do if there was no more privacy? Would you reject the notion of such a world and do anything against it, or would you accept and discard the idea of privacy all together? It’s a topic that’s even more relevant today.
Another fantastic example is The Long Dream. It poses the question if endless dreaming could be a way to defeat death itself. Is it a better choice to be trapped in a dream forever than to die? Is even a never-ending nightmare better than to cease existing?
Isolation is another dominant theme in Junji Ito’s work. As mentioned before, many of his characters suffer from problems and not a few isolate themselves from society.
Junji Ito features a different idea of isolation in his story, Army of One. Safety in numbers is usually common rule in horror. In Army of One, however, he twists this idea, and it’s those who stay alone, who isolate themselves that are safe. It’s a strange story, but one that’s ripe with deeper meaning. It seems almost to point at our urbanized society and the forced social interactions so common in it and especially in Japan. Is it ultimately a better choice to stay on your own than to mingle and take part in this often forced social life
Lingering Farwell is a study of holding on and not accepting the death of loved ones and also one of Junji Ito’s best stories of all time.
Black Paradox is one of Ito’s weirdest stories, but in its later parts brings forth an interesting question. In the story’s context, it’s using our own souls as a new source of energy. It’s clear, however, that the story centers on the idea of humanity bringing its own demise. Would we, too, bring our own end because of our greed and hunger for power?
Hanging Balloons is a story that might at first glance seem utterly nonsensical, but once more there’s more here than meets the eye. The very first person to die is Terumi, an idol. If one’s familiar with Japanese pop culture and the idol business, one knows suicides are an unfortunate reality. But the story isn’t merely a criticism of the idol business.
Similar to The Enigma at Amigara Faults, the story is a discussion of Sigmund Freud’s ‘Death Drive,’ our own fascination with suicide and the compulsive need to follow our desire towards destruction. Most of us ignore those thoughts, but there are still some who don’t.
While The Enigma at Amigara Faults showcases the characters’ strange, almost supernatural obsession with finding out more about their holes, Hanging Balloons takes a different route. The balloons Junji Ito features are almost a personification of the ‘Death Drive’ and the story itself is an allegory of it catching up and preying upon people.
Many similar examples show that while Junji Ito’s predominantly an artist who creates visual nightmares, his works often hold deeper meaning.
It’s always interesting for me to think about how works as bloody, surreal and twisted as those of Junji Ito can also convey deeper themes. It gives them an entirely different layer and something to ponder about when one’s not satisfied by just gore and blood alone.
