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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
Horror manga have always been a genre close to my heart, as you can see if you check out my list of the best horror manga. The mixture of scary story-telling and the accompanying terrifying visuals makes them so scary. In this article, I want to focus on the truly ...
I’ve always been a huge fan of horror manga, as you can see on my long list of the best horror manga of all time. 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 ...
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 ...
Junji Ito is one of my favorite horror creators and Junji Ito's Uzumaki is among my favorite horror manga of all time. It’s not only disturbing, it’s also entirely unique. Most other horror manga feature killers, monsters, or supernatural entities, not so Uzumaki. It presents us with a premise that’s ...
Being a horror writer, I’ve always loved the horror genre and I’m always searching for new horror content. One medium I hold very dear is manga, namely horror manga. There’s an enormous amount of horror manga out there which feature horrific incidents and combine them with a unique and breathtaking ...
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.
Junji Ito is one of my favorite horror creators and Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is among my favorite horror manga of all time. It’s not only disturbing, it’s also entirely unique. Most other horror manga feature killers, monsters, or supernatural entities, not so Uzumaki. It presents us with a premise that’s almost nonsensical, silly even, but Junji Ito brings it forth in all its twisted and horrific glory.
Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is the story of Kirie Goshima and Shuuichi Saitou and tells the story of what happened in the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which is infested by spirals. There are no monsters or killers here, no psychopaths or ghosts, no, there’s only concept which manifests as an omnipresent curse.
Over the course of this three volume epic, our main characters stumble upon one freakishly scary incident after another.
What makes Junji Ito’s Uzumaki so great, however, isn’t its story or its characters, it’s Junji Ito’s art and creativity. His imagination is incredible and disturbing and he always finds new ways to conjure up the horror of the spiral.
Junji Ito’s Uzumaki comprises three volumes divided into twenty chapters. While I consider Uzumaki as a whole a masterpiece, it has its highs and lows.
That’s why I decided to write this article in which I want to discuss my favorite chapters of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
As always, I’d like to give a spoiler warning. If you haven’t read the manga yet, I suggest you do so because I’m going to discuss each chapter and its plot.
I regard the third volume of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki as its weakest. At the outset of the third volume, multiple storms have transformed the town of Kurouzu-cho into an apocalyptic mess of rubble.
While volume three brings the manga to its Lovecraftian conclusion, it also features elements which I didn’t enjoy. What I enjoyed, however, was the depressing and eerie atmosphere as Kirie and Shuuichi travel the ruined town. There’s a feeling of despair and futility that hangs heavily over Uzumaki’s last chapters.
This is most prevalent in chapter seventeen, Escape. It is here that Kirie and Shuuichi make one last attempt to flee the twisted hell that Kurouzu-cho has become. As we follow them into the mountains, we see that by now everything has fallen to the curse of the spiral. Nature itself has become warped, twisted and has taken on the form of the spiral. Soon enough, however, we see that even those who want to flee the town succumb to madness and are slowly twisted into the form of the spiral.
And it’s here we realize how ironic the chapter’s title truly is. Because we learn that an escape from Kurouzu-cho and the curse of the spiral is impossible.
If there’s one thing to be said about Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is that it wastes no time and presents us with the horrific curse of the spiral right from the get-go.
After a brief introduction to our main characters, we soon learn that Shuuichi’s father has recently become obsessed with spirals. At first, this obsession manifests in him collecting all spiral-shaped objects he can find. After his wife gets rid of said collection, his obsession takes on a more disturbing turn, one that should ultimately lead to his demise. For he learns he can use his own body to create spirals.
It’s a fantastic introduction chapter that truly brings forth the horror of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki in all its glory. The chapter is ripe in body horror as we witness how Shuuichi’s father twists and contorts parts of his body into the form of the spiral. The chapter also features one of the most popular and unsettling panels in all of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
Truly a fantastic and disturbing introduction to Kurouzu-cho and the curse of the spiral.
I believe that Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is at its best in its second volume. It’s here that Ito’s creativity is at its peak, and the curse of the spiral takes on even stranger and more disturbing forms than in its first volume.
The Black Lighthouse is one of these chapters. Lighthouses always give off an eerie atmosphere and seem to be a perfect setting for horror. Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is no different.
The chapter begins with Kurouzu-cho’s abandoned lighthouse working again. Everyone is puzzled about it, but soon enough the light influences people and renders them impossible to walk in a straight line.
This, however, is only the chapter’s beginning. Before long, Kirie’s brother Mitsuo and his friends enter the lighthouse, prompting Kirie to follow them. As she climbs the seemingly endless stairs, she soon notices spiral patterns all over the walls. Those patterns are rendered in beautiful detail and give the entire staircase an almost disorienting feeling.
Before long, Kirie stumbles upon horribly burned bodies and discovers that the lighthouse’s lens has melted out of shape, taking on the form of a spiral. As Kirie stares at it, she realizes it must be the light that melted the lens, but also burned the bodies she saw before.
And of course, Junji Ito isn’t satisfied by merely teasing at the idea of burning hot light. No, as Kirie, her brother and his friends flee down the stairs, we bear witness to one of the boys being consumed almost instantly.
The Black Lighthouse is a fantastic chapter. It show’s Junji Ito’s artistry by showing us the many spiral patterns, the melted lens, but also the horribly burned bodies. Truly a fantastic chapter.
While The Snail is lower on gore than many other chapters, it serves to be one of, if not the most unsettling and unnerving chapter in Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
The Snail is the first chapter in which we bear witness to people transforming into snails. Junji Ito, of course, isn’t satisfied by showing us a disturbing and gross transformation, no he goes even further. After Katayama, a bullied boy, transforms into a snail, his bully, Tsumura, soon turns into a snail itself. Not knowing what to do with the snails, the school keeps them in an enclosure. And here we come to the most disturbing and unsettling part of the chapter. Snails are hermaphrodites and we soon witness Katayama and Tsumura mating.
People turning into snails is disturbing enough and Junji Ito brings forth this transformation in all its glorious detail. The bully and his former victim mating, however, are beyond unsettling.
A fantastic chapter that might be lower on gore, but which brings forth concepts that are unsettling and unnerving in an entirely different way.
Junji Ito’s Uzumaki features many strange and disturbing ideas. Still, The Umbilical Cord might be the manga’s most disturbing chapter. It’s the second chapter set at Kurouzu-cho’s hospital.
After the events of The Black Lighthouse, Kirie was hospitalized. In the chapter Mosquito’s, she bore witness to pregnant women, including her cousin Keiko, sucking the blood from other patients. While Mosquito is a great chapter it only serves as the prelude to The Umbilical Cord.
The chapter beings with the birth of the babies of said blood-sucking woman. Kirie soon notices that something seems to be wrong about the babies. After the birth, strange mushrooms also become a regular ingredient in the hospital’s meals. While Kirie never eats them, other patients become obsessed with them.
Wondering what’s going on, Kirie wanders the hospital and hears a conversation between the babies who wish to be returned to the womb they came from.
When Kirie hears her cousin’s screams, she enters the operation room. There stumbles upon a plethora of the same mushrooms served as part of the hospital’s meals.
And here we learn what those mushrooms really are. They are nothing other than placenta, regrown from the babies’ umbilical cords. As if this wasn’t disturbing enough, we also learn what became of Keiko.
The Umbilical Cord is a chapter that’s ripe with disturbing and unsettling ideas. There are first the placenta-mushrooms who drive people mad, the creepy babies and the imagery of a woman whose baby is returned into her.
There’s just so much here, in this single chapter, that makes it an absolute masterpiece of the disturbing and of body horror.
The Umbilical Cord is the best chapter in Junji Ito’s Uzumaki’s. Not only for its imagery but also for the multiple, disturbing ideas it includes. It’s a fantastic chapter and the best in a fantastic horror manga. It also served as inspiration for my story Special Diet.
If you’re looking to read Uzumaki yourself, I highly recommend to get the 3-in-1 Deluxe Edition.
Being a horror writer, I’ve always loved the horror genre and I’m always searching for new horror content. One medium I hold very dear is manga, namely horror manga.
There’s an enormous amount of horror manga out there which feature horrific incidents and combine them with a unique and breathtaking art style.
Horror manga can often be very effective and creative.
While I enjoy horror movies, novels and creepypasta, there’s something special about horror manga.
Looking back, I can’t help but wonder why this genre stands out so much to me. It might be the detailed art that presents the horror that’s happening in all its horrific glory. Maybe it’s also the cultural difference. Japan is a country with a unique culture and one that’s always had firm beliefs about ghosts and other supernatural beings.
Whatever it is, horror manga are something that will delight many and offers a wide variety of unique and disturbing works.
In this list, I want to present to you many of my favorite horror manga that I uncovered throughout the years. While some are vastly popular, I’m sure there are some hidden gems that some of you might not have heard about.
A word of warning. This is a list of horror manga and will be accompanied by images of the respective works.
I’d also like to give a general spoiler warning. I’ll try not to go into too much detail about the plot points, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
So here’s my list of 33 horror manga that anyone should read.
Kazuo Umezu is one of the most popular early horror manga artists and one of those who defined the genre.
His most popular works include The Drifting Classroom, Fourteen, and Orochi:Blood.
Umezu’s style is quite recognizable, and his influence on the horror genre can’t be overlooked.
While I’ve read most of his works, the only one I can highly recommend is God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand.
Many of Umezu’s horror manga are strange and feature outlandish, bizarre, or downright silly scenarios.
This one’s not too different, but it’s a more traditional horror manga than, for example, Fourteen.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand features a young boy named Sou, who’s often haunted by visions of terrible things happening and tries to stop them from becoming reality.
Some scenarios in this manga are more normal, including serial killers or ghosts, but others are more bizarre, featuring heavy instances of body horror.
One definitely needs to get used to Umezu’s art style. It’s old-fashioned, and some people might call it downright ugly.
If one’s willing to overlook that, one’s treated with quite a good horror manga. God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand can get quite gruesome and feature some terrifying imagery.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand is one of the oldest manga on this list and one of the more outlandish ones. If one’s interested in experiencing the earlier days of horror manga, one could do worse than read this one.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service centers on a group of graduate students from a Buddhist college.
Each member of the group has a special skill related to the supernatural. One member, Kuro Karatsu, can commune with the dead.
The events of this horror manga center on the group’s titular business of fulfilling the last wishes of the dead.
Many times, however, they figure out that people didn’t die of natural causes and encounter criminals or run into other troubles.
This horror manga, like many others on this list, has a more episodic structure. Many of its chapters are self-contained stories.
This manga is also not a pure horror manga, but could often be classified as a mystery one. Many stories feature mysterious deaths that the main characters have to unravel using their various abilities.
It’s an interesting and unique manga. While it’s not as horrible or graphic as others on the list, it makes up for it by its unique and creative story.
Manhole is a horror manga that will make anyone uncomfortable because it’s a realistic story that features biological horror.
It starts with a naked, bloody man, who emerges from a manhole one day. Unbeknownst to anyone, the man is host to a deadly biological agent.
As the story progresses, two detectives try to uncover the cause while the infection spreads.
This manga could be best described as a detective story, but what truly makes it a horror manga is the deadly infection and the things it causes to happen.
Manhole is a great, but unsettling read. There’s nothing supernatural happening. Instead, it’s a very realistic tale.
Especially in times of the global Corona pandemic, this one’s truly scary and might hit a bit too close to home for some.
The story centers on Count D, the caretaker of the titular Pet Shop.
Pet Shop of Horrors is another episodic horror manga. Each story revolves around a specific rare pet and the person adopting it. Each pet comes with a contract, comprising three rules the new owner has to follow. Should he fail to do so, there will be dire consequences.
The manga features some overarching plotlines and reoccurring characters, but most of its chapters fall into the ‘monster of the weak’ category.
As this is an older horror manga, the art might take some time to get used to. It’s well worth the effort, though, and some chapters are quite creative and unique.
Domu is a single volume-spanning horror manga by Otomo Katsuhiro, the creator of Akira.
The story of Domu is set in an apartment building that’s plagued by a series of mysterious suicides and other similar incidents.
A group of investigators try to uncover what’s going on, but realize that there’s a lot that doesn’t add up.
It’s soon revealed that the perpetrator is a senile old man with psychic powers. He uses them to hold sway over the apartment complex and its inhabitants.
Eventually, a young girl with psychic powers of her own moves into the apartment complex with her family. It doesn’t take long for a conflict between her and the old man to begin.
In Domu, one can already see Otomo’s interest in psychic powers which was carried over to his masterpiece Akira.
Domu’s definitely worth the read, especially for Otomo’s detailed and amazing art.
Ajin is one of the more popular horror manga on this list, and for a good reason.
It tells the story of Kei, a student who learns one day that he’s immortal. After being fatally hit by a truck, Kai miraculously survives. Even stranger, his body will regenerate any injury, regardless of how bad it is.
The story revolves around Kei and how he handles his new powers.
Kei soon gets to know another Ajin named Sato, who escaped from the government and pledges to help fellow Ajin. However, we soon learn that Sato’s got much bigger plans and that he’s much more dangerous.
Ajin features quite an interesting and unique idea and interesting characters.
The manga also features a concept called Black Ghosts, which are entities that some Ajin can call forth to fight.
It takes a bit to get used to this horror manga. Once we get to know the character of Sato, however, the story takes up more steam.
Hideout looks absolutely stunning. It’s not the art alone, however, that sells this horror manga.
The story focuses on Kirishima Seiichi, a troubled writer who plans to murder his wife during a vacation. The reason for that is revealed throughout the story.
When his attempt fails, a chase emerges and soon Seiichi follows his wife into a cave. However, Seiichi and his wife aren’t the only ones in that cave.
Most of the story in Hideout is told via flashbacks and gives us glimpses into Seiichi’s life before the vacation.
Hideout is a great horror manga, but it’s also a gloomy, depressing tale. It’s a story that’s nothing but a downward spiral that keeps getting worse and worse.
Hideout is only nine chapters long. It’s a quick and disturbing read that comes with some of the finest art I’ve seen in horror manga.
Heads is a horror manga by Higashino Keigo and Motorō Mase. The story centers on a young man, Naruse Jun’ichi, who gets shot in the head but survives miraculously because of a brain transplant.
He recovers quickly but slowly starts to change. It begins with little things, such as disgust about his girlfriend’s freckles. Soon enough, though, other areas in Jun’ichi’s life change as well.
It’s slowly revealed that it might be the donor’s brain that’s taking control over his life.
Heads is a bit of a different type of horror manga. It’s a slow burn and most of the horror stems from the idea that you’re losing yourself and slowly become a different person. Would you even know you’ve changed yourself? Would you be able to see it? It’s those questions that make Heads quite scary.
I Am a Hero is a zombie apocalypse manga by Hanazawa Kengo.
The story follows a young manga assistant, Hideo Suzuki. He’s a strange character, and we learn in the very first chapter that he suffers from mental problems.
What makes I Am a Hero such an interesting read is to follow someone like Hideo around, a character who doesn’t seem to be able to handle an event such as a zombie apocalypse.
The zombies in I Am a Hero are also different from the ones we’re used to. They are not just walking corpses, but they are often contorted and twisted in various ways. As the story continues, they slowly take on more and more horrific forms. They merge and melt into one another, creating giant, fleshy abominations.
I Am a Hero is a horror manga that starts slowly and takes a while to get going. Don’t be fooled by the first chapter though, it’s an interesting read and only gets more interesting the longer it lasts.
Zashiki Onna is another, older horror manga, published in the early 90s. What makes this story stand out is the lack of supernatural elements.
What makes Zashiki Onna so terrifying is how realistic and plausible it is.
It’s the story of a university student, Hiroshi, who’s being stalked by a tall, mysterious woman. At first, she seems only interested in his next-door neighbor, but after a chance encounter, she turns her attention to Hiroshi instead.
From here on out, things slowly escalate and get more and more dangerous as the mysterious woman continues to invade his life.
Zashiki Onna is a haunting experience and presents us with the topic of stalking most chillingly. It’s not only an invasion of privacy, not only creepy, but turns out to be truly dangerous.
Zashiki Onna is a short manga, at only eleven chapters, but it’s nonetheless a terrifying and creepy tale.
There are many terrifying manga on this list, but only a few don’t feature supernatural elements. That’s what makes Zashiki Onna stand out. It’s a simple tale about a stalker, but that’s also what makes it so much scarier.
The Promised Neverland is another one of the more popular horror manga on this list. I discovered it a couple of years ago when it was relatively new and I couldn’t stop reading it.
The story features a young girl, Emma, who lives at an orphanage with all her other foster siblings.
Life is happy, the caretaker is kind, but there’s one rule, the kids aren’t allowed to leave their home, ever.
It’s revealed in the very first chapter, that their orphanage is a farm, created to raise human children as livestock for demons.
The story starts slowly with the kids trying to flee the orphanage and outwit their caretaker. As the story continues, we learn much more about the lore of the world and the demons who control it.
The art in this manga is great and Posuka Demizu renders the many demons in gorgeous details.
The Promised Neverland is a Shonen manga, so it might not be as mature as many other works on this list. Still, it’s a great read, and I enjoyed it very much.
Shiga Hime is a vampire manga and a great horror manga.
One thing one should know is that Shiga Hime is quite sexually charged. There’s quite a bit of glorified nudity that might not be to everyone’s liking.
The story starts with two boys, Souichi and our main character, Osamu. Souichi convinces Osamu to follow him to the home of a mysterious woman, Miss Miwako.
It’s revealed that Miss Miwako is an immortal vampire who lures people to her home to feed on them. As the story progresses, Osamu becomes her slave, or better her familiar. Cursed with a monstrous appearance, he’s forced to do Miwakow’s biding.
Shiga Hime doesn’t start too well because of its heavy reliance on sexual themes.
Before long, though, things pick up when Osamu’s forced to kill and when we learn that there are other vampires with their very own familiars around.
The longer the manga goes on, the more the art seems to evolve and we’re treated to some amazing creature design and some amazing battle scenes.
The story of this manga is multi-layered. On one hand, we have the master-slave relationship between Osamu and Miss Miwako. We also encounter other theme’s though, themes such as jealousy, vanity, obsession, and the corruption of those who were once pure.
If one can overlook the sexually charged art, Shiga Hime is a great read and a tragic story.
When I first found Shiga Hime, I enjoyed the manga so much, I finished it throughout a single afternoon.
Now we’re going down the deep end of the horror manga genre.
Suehiro Maruo is most famous for his erotic gore work. Many of his works are strange and very disturbing.
The Laughing Vampire is no different and features quite a few sexually charged scenes.
It stands out, however, because of its horror and by how disturbing the story gets. Another thing is the characters. They are throughout the board terrible people or downright insane.
What makes The Laughing Vampire such a great horror manga is the unique spin it takes on the vampire genre in later parts. It inspired my story The First Few Times Always Hurt.
I’d like to point out that this horror manga is not for the faint of heart and probably one of the most twisted and disturbing works on this list.
Lychee Light Club is one of the strangest additions to this list of horror manga. The art of this manga is very reminiscent of the works of Suehiro Maruo, and Furuya has mentioned that Maruo strongly influenced him.
The manga centers on the titular Lychee Light Club, whose members create an AI or better a robot called Lychee, who they program and task to bring them beautiful women.
As the club continues, its methods become more brutal and outlandish, which eventually results in an internal struggle.
Lychee Light Club is another very disturbing horror manga that features a fair amount of gore and disturbing ideas.
Parasyte is one of the older entries on this list. It was created in the late 80s and early 90s.
This horror manga centers on the titular parasites, worm-like creatures that infest human beings and take over their bodies.
Our main character Shinichi is victim to one such parasite, but wakes up before the creature can dig into his head. Instead, the creature can only infest his right hand.
The two of them keep their separate personalities, but now share the same body. It’s a strange situation that gets worse when other parasites find out about them and attack them.
Before long, Shinichi picks up the fight, especially since other parasites prey on humans and devour them.
Parasyte is a horror manga that deals predominantly with themes of disgust and paranoia. Disgust about strange parasites who can infest anyone and the paranoia of not knowing who’s already infested.
While Parasyte can be humorous occasionally, it can also be quite gory. People are torn apart, shredded to pieces, and mauled in gruesome ways.
Parasyte is a delight for anyone interested in horror manga.
Attack on Titan is another widely popular horror manga.
The story is set in a dark, fantastical world. All that remains of mankind is living in a single, giant city surrounded by massive walls.
This city is the last bastion of humanity and its walls protect it from the titular titans. All other human beings have been killed off.
The titans are giant, humanoid monsters that feed on humans.
The story centers on Eren. During an attack on one of the outer districts, Eren’s home, his mother gets devoured by the titans. He vows revenge and joins the military.
The manga starts with a simple, but interesting premise. As the story progresses, however, we uncover how much more there is to the titans, the city and how the two are connected.
Attack on Titan is another Shonen manga and might be less mature than others on this list. It’s also much more action-oriented and relies more on battle scenes than simple scares.
What makes it so special to me is the scenario. I’m a big fan of apocalyptic stories and those set in confined spaces. I like the idea that all of mankind is restricted to a single city, while the rest of the world is filled with terrible dangers.
Another thing I love is the appearance of the titans. They don’t look like ghastly, twisted monsters, but more like giant, dim-witted humans. It’s their lack of emotions and their empty faces that make them truly outlandish and not just a bit creepy.
Attack on Titan is another, longer manga, but well worth the read. It’s an engaging, interesting storyline that features some memorable characters.
Franken Fran is one of the weirder entries on this list. The horror manga follows the titular character of Fran, a girl created by a brilliant surgeon.
Franken Fran is mostly an episodic horror manga. It can be compared to anthologies such as Tales From the Crypt or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Each chapter features a unique scenario involving Fran.
The world of Franken Fran is not all dark and gloomy. There are quite a few chapters that take on a more humorous or satirical tone. However, all chapters of this manga are disturbing in their own unique ways.
I love this horror manga, mostly because it’s so unique.
Mieruko-chan follows a girl named Miko who’s got the ability to see ghosts.
What makes this manga so special is that Miko doesn’t fight or even interact with the ghosts, but tries her hardest to ignore them. The reason is simple, normal humans aren’t able to see ghosts. Should a human see them or react to them, however, the ghosts might attack them. So Miko tries her best not to provoke them in any way.
Mieruko-chan can be best described as a horror-comedy or a slice-of-life. It even gets quite humorous as we follow Miko through her day.
There are no battles, and no horrific incidents happen to Miko. It’s merely her observing the ghosts all around her.
As the manga progresses, the story picks up a little by introducing some additional characters. However, the original premise stays the same.
What sells this manga is the amazing art. The ghosts taken on outlandish and disturbingly horrible forms and are a delight to look at.
This manga is definitely weird and usually not what people look for in horror. Still, it’s a great read, and I’d recommend it to everyone who likes horror, if only for the design of the various ghosts.
Goth is based on the novel of the same name by Otsuichi. It’s the story of two high school students who share a strange fascination with gruesome murders.
Goth was one of the very first horror manga I ever read, and I truly enjoyed it.
It’s a relatively short manga, comprising only five chapters, but it’s still a great read and might hold the occasional surprise or two.
What makes Goth so special to me are the unique characters. In horror manga, we usually encounter normal people who get thrown into horrible situations. In Goth, our two main characters are anything but normal. Overall, one could say that quite a few characters in this horror manga are a bit special.
Another thing I enjoyed was the dynamic between the main characters and the backstory of one character revealed in later chapters.
Goth is a fantastic, quick read that features unique characters and quite the graphic imagery.
Tokyo Ghoul is another popular horror manga and one of the most popular manga of our time.
The story revolves around Kei Kaneki, who’s attacked by a young woman named Rise. Rise turns out to be a ghoul.
Ghouls are creatures who look like humans and mingle with them. However, they have superhuman powers and feed on humans to survive.
After his attack, Kaneki’s rescued by Dr. Kanou but soon learns that he’s now part ghoul and can’t stomach normal food anymore. He finds support at a cafe called Anteiku, which is a safe house for fellow ghouls.
As the story progresses, we learn more about ghouls and the different members of Anteiku. Slowly we get introduced to the various groups and characters who make up the world of Tokyo Ghoul.
Tokyo Ghoul is a lot more action-packed than other manga on this list and can be best compared to the likes of Attack on Titan or Gantz.
The story starts slowly, focusing first on Kaneki and how he comes to terms with his new life. Soon enough, though, as more lore surfaces, the story grows in proportion and gets much more interesting.
Tokyo Ghoul is a very enjoyable manga with lots of action and a fair bit of gore. It also features some great art, interesting characters as well as some amazing creature and weapon design.
The Shadow Out of Time is my favorite story by H. P. Lovecraft, and this adaption of it by Gou Tanabe is amazing.
Gou Tanabe is an amazing artist and up there with the best of the genre, in my opinion. Everything about this manga is gorgeous.
There isn’t much to say about the story. A professor suffers from a sudden attack and collapses during a lecture.
Years later, the man comes to himself only to discover that he wasn’t in a come, but that he wasn’t himself during that time and acted as if he was an entirely different person.
As the story progresses, the man slowly unravels what happened by putting together bits and pieces of his memory. The Shadow Out of Time is a cosmic horror masterpiece and introduces us to one of fiction’s most unique races.
What is there to say about Gou Tanabe’s adaptions of Lovecraft? They are amazing and this one’s no different. Regardless if you’re a fan of Lovecraft or cosmic or enjoy horror manga, I can highly recommend this work as well as Gou Tanabe’s other horror manga. If you want to check out yourself which stories of Lovecraft Gou Tanabe has adapted you can find them here:
Categorizing Ichi the Killer can be hard. It might not be a horror manga, but it’s definitely horrible.
Full disclosure here, Ichi the Killer is one of the most graphical and most disturbing pieces of manga out there. It’s also one of the best manga I’ve read in my entire life. Which might say a thing or two about me.
Yamamoto Hide created the manga. He’s outdone himself by creating a manga in which almost every character is batshit insane.
I first got to know Ichi the Killer by watching Takashi Miike’s movie of the same name. It’s a damn fantastic movie and as insane as the manga.
There’s a key difference, though. The movie’s overdrawn and almost comical in its depiction of violence and depravity. The manga is not.
Ichi the Killer is the story of the titular killer, but more so of the Yakuza Kakihara.
After Kakihara’s boss vanishes, he first searches for him and later for Ichi. This eventually leads to a confrontation between the two.
Ichi the Killer is less a horror manga, but predominately a mature and psychological tale about two characters who are downright insane.
It heavily explores themes such as sadism, masochism, identity disorder, manipulation and mixes them into one of the most depraved manga of all time.
I like to warn you again. Ichi is fucked up, at times disgusting, and features graphical content. If one’s up for that, though, one’s treated with an amazing manga.
Fuan no Tane written by Masaaki Nakayama is one of the best horror manga of all time. It’s one of the few pieces out there that focuses solely on being scary and creepy.
Fuan no Tane is also different from other, more conventional horror manga since it doesn’t have a plot or a story.
Instead, it’s a collection of short and creepy incidents, often involving ghosts or other supernatural entities. As I said, there’s no plot. Each chapter of this manga comprises a few creepy incidents, based on a central theme. It might be a location such as a school or a concept, such as uninvited guests.
Each of these incidents is only a few pages long. Characters aren’t developed, but are just there to witness these incidents. That’s what makes this horror manga so good. It wastes no time to show us who people are, doesn’t slowly introduce a story, instead it goes right into the creepiness, right to the scary incidents that take place.
Some stories in Fuan no Tane are a bit on the lighter side and are more humorous than scary, but others are truly disturbing.
I highly recommend Fuan no Tane to anyone since it’s one of the best horror manga ever created.
Another work by mangaka Masaaki Nakayama. Kouishou Rajio starts similar to his other horror manga Fuan no Tane.
At first look, Kouishou Rajio seems to be a similar collection of short, unconnected horror incidents. As we continue reading, though, we soon learn that something ties all those stories together. It’s hair.
Hair is a major focus of Kouishou Rajio and many of its shorts, often only a handful of pages long, center on it. People are haunted by images of losing their hair, encounter ghosts made of it, or those obsessed with it.
Slowly but steadily, though, Nakayama Masaak establishes an overarching narrative. It revolves around a spiritual entity only known as the God of Hair.
Kouishou Rajio is a great read, especially since many of its tales are bite-sized glimpses at scary incidents. The art is as unique and amazing as it was in Fuan no Tane. Many of the ghosts encountered look scary, unique, and creative.
What makes it even better is when we slowly realize that everything that’s happening is connected.
Kouishou Rajio is another great manga that I can highly recommend, to fans of Fuan no Tane but also to horror fans in general
It’s the surreal tale set in the city of Hole and features Kaiman, an amnesiac with the head of a reptilian.
The city of Hole is connected to the Sorcerer’s World, a world populated by magic users. These magic users often visit the city of Hole to test out their magic powers.
Kaiman believes himself to be the victim of one such magic-user, and together with his female friend Nikaido, he goes after them. It’s Kaiman’s goal to figure out who transformed him and who he really is.
The story starts as weird as it sounds and only gets strange as we read on.
We get to know various characters, both in the city of Hole and the Sorcerer’s World.
The imagery in this horror manga is outlandish, but absolutely beautiful. Q Hayashida renders both, the run-down city of Hole and the weirdness of the Sorcerer’s World, in gorgeous detail.
The same is true for many characters. The transformed and disfigured inhabitants of Hole paint a strange picture while the magic users look outlandish and scary.
Homunculus is another horror manga by Yamamoto Hideo.
While Ichi the Killer is brutal and fucked up, Homunculus is way, way stranger.
It’s the story of a man called Susumu Nakoshi, who’s homeless and lives in his car.
He eventually encounters a young man, Manabu Ito, who’s researching the process of trepanation, the drilling of holes into the human skull. He proposes to Nakoshi that he’s looking for a test subject on which to perform the process.
As the story progresses, Nakoshi eventually agrees and undergoes the procedure.
From then on, Nakoshi can see distorted versions of humans when looking at them with only his left eye. These distorted versions are the titular Homunculi.
Homunculus is an absolutely amazing and unique manga. It starts relatively normal, but soon becomes very strange.
It’s a psychological masterpiece that deals heavily with various topics, such as vanity, trauma, identity disorder, materialism, and many other things.
It’s definitely one of the stranger manga on the list, but it’s also very, very interesting.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in strange, psychological horror manga.
The series also isn’t shy in killing off its characters. Many times, a character’s backstory is revealed only to witness their demise a chapter or two later. No one’s truly safe in this manga.
It’s a great horror manga, especially because of the creativity of the death games and the unique characters.
Gantz is another one of my favorite horror manga of all time.
It tells the story of Kei Kurono. One day, he and his childhood friend Kato die in a tragic train accident when trying to save a homeless man.
Following the accident, they awake in a Tokyo apartment in which a group of other people, as clueless as them, have gathered.
A black sphere in the center of the room, called Gantz, explains to them it’s now their job to hunt down aliens living among humans. Soon after, they get teleported to a different location and the first of many similar hunts begins.
At almost 400 chapters, Gantz is the longest manga on this list, but it’s well worth the read. The reason Gantz stands out among many other, similar action-oriented horror manga is the amazing art, the unique and creative alien design, and the sheer insanity of the story.
Another fantastic thing about Gantz is the main character, Kurono. He starts as an unlikable, egoistic teenager, but in the story’s course, he shows tremendous amounts of character development. It’s a delight to see Kurono grow and eventually become the leader of the Gantz team.
Gantz features not only Kurono though, but a plethora of memorable characters.
While Gantz’s story isn’t always clearly structured and some plotlines seem to be cut short or abandoned, it’s still a masterpiece.
What sells Gantz is the art, the craziness of the story, and the fact that it doesn’t shy away from presenting us with glorified violence, gore, but also deep emotions.
Uzumaki is a tale that’s as simple as it’s weird. The small town of Kurouzu-cho is haunted by spirals. Yes, you heard that right.
The story features Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi, who stumble upon one freakishly scary incident after another in the course of this three-volume long horror manga.
What makes Uzumaki so special is not its story, it’s the art and the creativity behind it. Junji Ito’s imagination is incredible and disturbing. People in Uzumaki are twisted, warped, and changed until they represent the titular spiral in various disturbing ways.
Uzumaki is as good as it gets in the world of horror manga and clearly one of the best horror manga of all time. Not only that, but it’s also a work that’s truly unique and at times utterly disturbing.
Blame! is one of the greatest manga of all time and my personal favorite.
It can best be described as a cyberpunk epic, but can also be called a horror manga. It’s an absolutely amazing read and the art in Blame! is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Tsutomu Nihei is an absolute master of his craft.
Blame! follows the character of Killy as he travels through a gigantic labyrinth of concrete and steel, known as The City.
Killy’s mission is to find a human with Net Terminal Genes who’d be able to access the so-called Netsphere, a computerized control network of The City. Such a person could put an end to the chaotic growth of The City and stop the so-called Safeguard from exterminating all of humanity.
Throughout the manga, Killy travels through vast technological and architectural wastelands populated by cyborgs and other technological horrors.
Killy also encounters various pockets of civilization that make a living in this dangerous environment.
As the manga continues we see more of those communities, learn more about the Safeguard and The City itself.
Blame! is an absolute visual masterpiece. It’s not only the cyborgs or the other creatures Killy encounters, but the entire landscape that is rendered in fantastic detail.
The world of Blame! is huge, gigantic even, and it shows in many of the manga’s panels when we get a glance at the gigantic structures that make up The City.
The story of Blame! however, is complicated and doesn’t make much sense at the best of times. It’s divided into general arcs which are all combined by Killy’s overarching quest for a human with Net Terminal Genes.
Near the end, the story gets even more confusing and we’re left with not so much an ending but yet another mystery to add to an already huge list.
Even though the story is lackluster, Blame! is worth it for the art and the world it’s set in alone.
There’s few manga who can compare to Blame! Especially for fans of cyberpunk, there aren’t as many works out there as good as this one.
Blame! is a visual delight and a manga I can highly recommend to anyone who loves cyberpunk or is interested in a more technological kind of horror manga.
What better way to finish this list than with an absolute masterpiece such as Kentaro Miura’s Berserk.
Berserk is another one of my all-time favorites, both for the amazingly detailed art and the story told.
Berserk is the story of Guts, the Black Swordsman.
At first glance, Berserk might appear simple. We’ve got Guts, a man with a sword as huge as himself who fights giant monsters, so-called apostles.
That might be true for the first volumes of the manga, the so-called Black Swordsman arc. Soon enough, though, we discover that there’s more to Guts than we first believed and that he’s a much more complex character.
After the Black Swordsman arc, we enter the Golden Age arc. It’s here that we learn more about Guts’ backstory and his connection to the man named Griffith.
Berserk is deep, shows us a complex relationship between two complex and unique characters, and can get quite philosophical.
The art in Berserk is breathtakingly beautiful. There’s a reason that Kentaro Miura is not regarded as another mangaka, but a true master of his craft.
You can easily find more details on a single page of Berserk than in an entire chapter of a different manga.
It’s this art that brings forth the unique world of Berserk and the people and monsters populating it.
Berserk’s world is a dark and grim one though, much darker than what we’re used to. It’s a world rampant with war and atrocities.
Berserk also doesn’t shy away from gore and violence. Especially since Guts doesn’t shy away from cleaving anything standing in his way, be it humans or monsters. We see guts flying, people being cut to pieces, torn apart, and much worse things.
However, as dark as Berserk is, the story is masterfully told.
When Berserk’s at its best there’s very few manga that can compare to it.
At first glance, especially during the first chapters or even volumes, Berserk might not appear the masterpiece it truly is, but if you read on, you’re sure to be blown away by it.
I can’t recommend Berserk highly enough and for that reason it’s the number one on this list. Anyone interested in horror manga or manga, in general, should check out Berserk. It’s at the very peak of the genre and as good as it gets.
As a horror writer, I’ve always engrossed myself in the horror genre. From an early age, I consumed any, and all media related to horror. It was more than a decade ago that I first read my first of the many Junji Ito stories out there.
Junji Ito is one of the greatest horror mangaka and one of the greatest horror artists of our time. There’s something special about his work. It’s not simply his style and his dedicated line-work, but also his narrative style that makes his work so original.
Many of his stories feature cosmic horror, distortions of body and mind, phobias, fears, and many other, stranger things. One can easily say that Ito’s works are completely unique and there’s no other mangaka that’s like him in both style and narrative.
Some works such as Uzumaki feature classical Lovecraftian horror. Others like The Bully are more realistic and can best be categorized as psychological horror. Yet some are utterly bizarre and absurd, like Hanging Balloons.
Want to know more about Junji Ito and his work? Check out the Writers Mythos and their episode on Junji Ito which was co-written by me.
If you’re interested in learning more about those things, and my ideas about it, I wrote a long article about Junji Ito’s style. You can read it here.
It’s often hard to review Ito’s works since his stories don’t rely on twists and plots like other stories. Most of his stories give us a glimpse into a horrible world and let us see the horrible events that happen to his main characters.
I’ll try my best not to spoil the crucial details about his stories, but at times it’s unavoidable. So here’s an obligatory spoiler warning.
As a fan of over a decade, I’ve decided to put together a long list of my favorite works by Junji Ito. Even though this is a long list, it’s still only a fraction of his entire body of work.
So here’s a list of my favorite 40 Junji Ito stories.
Slug Girl is a very short tale and can be best described as a typical piece of body horror. It’s one of Junji Ito’s most popular tales and has been featured in various other lists and recommendations.
There’s a certain appeal to the story of Slug Girl. It brings everything to the table a typical Junji Ito story needs. It’s bizarre, creepy, disgusting, and the ending is downright sad.
Still, it’s a bit on the short side and I wish the idea’d have been explored more.
Slug Girl tells the story of Yuuko, who suddenly suffers from a swollen tongue. At the same time, her family’s backyard is infested by slugs which her parents try to get rid of.
Yuuko soon starts to feel sick and the true nature of her sickness is discovered.
It’s an outlandish tale that plays with our fears of irrational and strange sicknesses.
I first read Bronze Statue in its raw, Japanese version and didn’t understand a thing of what was going on in this story by Junji Ito.
What stayed with me was the image of murdering people by encasing them in plaster and later creating statues that showed their demise.
Most of Junji Ito’s stories are brutal and disturbing, many far worse than this, but somehow this image stayed with me.
Once I could actually read the story and understand the plot, it wasn’t one of my favorites. The story centers on vanity, jealousy, and obsession with beauty. It’s still worth a read, if only for the gruesome depiction of murder. The rest though is rather forgettable.
This is another, somewhat weirder story by Junji Ito that I enjoyed quite a bit. It’s one I never really see mentioned by other people or on lists, and I know why. It’s not one of Junji Ito’s typical, horrific tale, but a more somber and thematically heavy one.
In a small town, strange drifting spores appear that can mimic people’s voices and even repeat what they said. Soon enough people collect those spores, not only to hear their voices but also for the spores to reveal their secrets.
The story features such topics as the invasion of privacy and the urge to know the secrets that others keep to themselves. Throughout the story, this urge of some grows to an obsession of one character and ultimately drives him to commit a menacing act. It’s a tale that shows how far we can be driven when we mess with things we don’t understand and which are beyond our control.
It’s a tale that’s not driven by sheer horror or outlandish imagery, but one that shows how far our nature can drive us.
This another underrate Junji Ito tale that I never see mentioned by anyone.
It’s the story of a young doctor named Furahata who moves to a small remote village. The people there look lifeless, gloomy, and withered. They suffer from a strange illness that makes them bleed profoundly at varying intervals.
As Furahata tries to figure out what’s wrong with the villagers, he ultimately learns the cause of the sickness and the terrible nature of the village.
It’s a slower, more Lovecraftian tale that ultimately pays off. I enjoyed this tale, especially since the scenario is like the one featured in my novel New Haven.
Reading this title, I’m surely not the only one who thinks back to fond childhood memories. Even now I remember the ice cream truck that appeared at my home once a week selling sweat treads and other delights.
Of course, this is a story by Junji Ito and it’s not about reminiscing the good old times.
Each week when the ice cream man appears with his truck, he not only offers the kids ice cream but also a ride around the neighborhood inside his truck. The narrator, a recent divorcee, eventually lets his son join in on the fun.
After a while, the narrator notices that things around the house, around the neighborhood kids and his son get increasingly stickier. Eventually, things come to a horrifying conclusion.
This is not one of Junji Ito’s best tales and the scenario is frankly said, almost comically bizarre. What makes this story special is how Junji Ito twists the mundane and sweet childhood memories into something terrifying. It’s always a delight to experience stories like that.
This is one of Junji Ito’s most disgusting stories as you might guess from the title.
The premise is simple. A young man returns to his house after a year abroad, only to find it abandoned by his subtenants. Even worse, they left the house in a disgusting state of destitute, and mold is growing everywhere.
Said subtenant was his old teacher, Mr. Rogi, a man who had a passion for studying fungi.
The narrator tries to clean up his house, but it’s to no avail. The mold keeps spreading further and intensifies, slowly warping the entire house. As the story progresses, the mold grows everywhere, forming giant tubes that pump out disgusting black liquid.
Eventually, the narrator discovers what happened to Mr. Rogi and his family and will most likely suffer a similar fate.
This story is absolute hell for any germophobe. Especially because of Junji Ito’s style, which creates an utterly haunting, rotten hell.
Scarecrows is another story with a simple premise.
The inhabitants of a small town realize that if they plant a scarecrow on the grave of a deceased relative, it will take on their likeness.
Things don’t stop there, and soon mysterious things happen in the graveyard.
While it’s a weird and creative story, it’s also not as outlandish as some of Junji Ito’s other tales. Still, it’s an interesting premise and a worthy read.
There isn’t much to say about this story. It’s about a group of fishermen out at sea who eventually hear the titular demon’s voice.
The next day, after a long dry patch, the crew makes a big catch, but only one member of the crew, not affected by the shrill cry of the demon, sees what they truly pull from the sea.
Demon’s Voice is a delightfully short read with some great and disturbing imagery that’s so typical to Junji Ito.
I enjoy stories that not only incorporate popular tropes but change them up and breathe new life into them. It’s not a beautiful woman that drives the men to their death against the cliffs. No, it’s a demon’s voice that makes them hallucinate and causes them to ultimately suffer their demise.
Rib’s woman is a tale that focuses on plastic surgery and body image. One thing I found weird about this tale is the reliance on plastic surgery. Especially considering that the main characters Yuki, as well as Ruriko, are both still in high school.
Rib’s woman is the tale of Yuki, who wants to be pretty and eventually relies on plastic surgery to have some of her ribs removed to get a slender waist.
Soon enough though, her friend Ruriko, who underwent a similar procedure, starts to hear awful music. Eventually, the two of them discover that it’s caused by a mysterious, creepy woman. She’s playing on a strange harp made from bone.
From here on things only get crazier as the true nature of the instrument, and the mysterious woman, are revealed.
The revelation features one of Ito’s most iconic images of body horror that’s become popular on the internet.
The story itself is a bit of a mess, especially the aforementioned aspect of plastic surgery. Yet, the body horror, and the strange nature of the instrument, make up for it.
In this story, we get to know a young woman, Sayoko, who goes on a hiking trip with a friend. Sayoko’s friend is worried about her since she hasn’t come to school for a while, for reasons she hasn’t disclosed yet.
The two of them get lost in the mountains and eventually find their way to a monastery.
On a whim, Sayoko stays and joins their healing meditation program. It’s because of her fears and her state of mind.
From another visitor, Sayoko and her friend learn that things aren’t what they seem. The monastery’s members ultimately enter a state of eternal meditation, which means they become Buddhist mummies.
Eventually, Sayoko and her friend end up in the labyrinth which is the final resting place for those members of the monastery. As the two of them get lost, they eventually encounter an area where the members are still alive. Under the gazes of hundreds of monks, Sayoko finally reveals that she’s suffering from a fear of being watched.
This story isn’t too special, both in the premise and execution. What makes it so good, is that Junji Ito’s able to create a scenario in which Sayoko ends up in her personal hell, an endless row of people all staring at her.
Mimi’s Ghost Stories is a collection of six tales about ghosts which the titular character, Mimi, encounters.
The interesting thing about this collection is that Junji Ito didn’t write the stories, but he merely collected them. All the stories in this collection are all based on Japanese urban legends.
The volume features Junji Ito’s typical style, but to me, none of them stood out particularly. It might because they haven’t been written by Ito himself.
The one I enjoyed the most was the chapter titled ‘The Seashore,’ but even this one felt rather lukewarm compared to Junji Ito’s other works.
Now don’t get me wrong, Mimi’s Ghost Stories is an interesting and enjoyable volume of stories, and I’d highly recommend it to any fan of Junji Ito’s work. However, there are other, better works of his available.
Hellstar Remina is one of Junji Ito’s best example of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Professor Oguro discovers first a wormhole and then a new planet that appears to have entered our universe via this wormhole.
He names this newly discovered planet after his daughter, Remina, who’s propelled to stardom because of the event. What’s weird about Planet Remina is that it moves in random directions with no clear orbit. Even stranger, all the stars in its vicinity seem to vanish.
It soon becomes clear that the planet has set its sight on Earth and is closing on it. Soon Remina enters our solar system and one by one all the other planets are destroyed or devoured by Remina.
The story only gets weirder and more insane from this. Unfortunately, Hellstar Remina also becomes sillier the longer it goes on and I had a hard time taking it seriously in later parts.
However, one has to give Junji Ito credit where credits due. An apocalypse caused by a sentient planetary entity is fantastic. It just seems that the story focuses a bit too much on the humanities’ reaction and especially the hunt for the professor’s daughter.
The imagery in this story is fantastic though. It’s a terrifying delight to see Planet Remina with its eyes and mouth. Its surface, as we later see, is as horrifying as its general appearance.
As I said though, the crazy and silly plot made it hard for me to enjoy the later parts of this work. As a Junji Ito fan, it’s still an interesting read, if only for the imagery of the titular Hellstar.
At the beginning of this story, we get to know Miss Takigawa, a kindergarten teacher. One night, on her way home, she’s assaulted by an unknown person and drenched into a strange liquid.
At the kindergarten itself, there are problems too, caused by one of the kids Chikara. He’s a troublemaker and behaves violently towards the other kids.
Eventually, Miss Takigawa visits Chikara’s home only to discover the true horror of this story and the reason for his behavior.
Flesh Colored Horror was another one of the first Junji Ito stories I read, and boy was I in for a surprise. It’s one of those stories that demonstrates how imaginative Junji Ito is and how creative he can get.
Here we have another typical Junji Ito tale. It’s short, it’s terrifying, and it comes with some very crazy visuals.
The main character Yuji, a young writer, confesses to his girlfriend, Mari, that he hasn’t slept for three days. It’s because of his fear of his dream-self, an entity with the goal to replace Yuji here in the real world. Whenever Yuji falls asleep, he says, his dream-self is coming out.
Mari doesn’t believe him, but is worried and agrees to help him overcome his fears.
Eventually, though, Mari learns that Yuji’s fears aren’t as irrational as she thought.
The most terrifying part of this story is that it throws Yuji into a fight he can’t win. We’ve seen similar scenarios in other media before, and we all know that it’s impossible to stay awake forever.
Gyo means fish in Japan and knowing that you might think you’re prepared for what’s coming. Believe me, if you’ve never heard about this story, you don’t. Gyo is without a doubt one of Junji Ito’s most iconic and popular works.
Yet, it’s also one of his weirdest and most absurd stories.
The premise is simple. Sea-dwelling creatures emerge from the depth and invade the land, but not in the way we’d expect them to.
The story starts with Tadashi and his girlfriend Kaori going on a vacation. Kaori, who’s very sensitive to smells, soon complains about a terrible, rotten stench. Soon the two of them notice a strange fish on robotic legs that’s skittering through their holiday home, spreading the disgusting smell.
While it’s only a tiny fish at first, soon bigger fish, including a giant shark, emerge from the depths.
Back in Tokyo, the story enters full-fledged apocalypse territory as the so-called death-stench spreads, and millions of sea-creatures flood the city and Japan.
Gyo is without a doubt a very creative story. There’s nothing like it out there. What’s interesting here is that Junji Ito combined two common fears. First, the fear of the deep sea and what’s hidden down there, second our fear of the skittering, multi-legged movements of insects. As if this wasn’t enough, he also adds the disgusting, rotten smell known as the death stench.
While I can praise Gyo for its creativity, it also suffers from many problems. The predominant one being that Junji Ito tries to explain what’s going on. Things start absurd, but as the story continues they become ridiculous and finally downright silly. It was hard for me to take any part of Junji Ito’s explanation seriously because it made no sense at all. Horror is often best when it’s unexplained and we don’t uncover the mystery. In Gyo Junji Ito tried and, in my opinion, failed at it.
The strongest part of Gyo is definitely the outlandish imagery, especially in the later parts of the manga when it’s not just fish, but also bloated, disfigured humans walking the streets.
My absolute favorite chapter in Gyo is the one about the circus. It comes completely out of nowhere and features the single greatest page in the entire manga.
For all the criticism I give Gyo here, it’s still an iconic story, and a fun read if one doesn’t look at the story too critically.
Considering Junji Ito’s interest in phobias, there had to be one that features trypophobia. This is it, and it’s a fabulous story. There’s something about holes appearing all over your body that’s deeply unsettling but also strangely fascinating.
The story starts with Yuuji, who talks about his neighbor Rina, who spends most of her days inside because of a strange illness. Said illness causes holes to appear all over Rina’s arm. When Yuuji sees this he remembers that his grandfather too suffered and died because of a similar illness.
Yuuji tells his best friend Hideo and together the two of them try to uncover what happened. That’s how they learn about a strange jade statue related to it.
This is another one of Ito’s story that talks about man messing with things he doesn’t understand, greed, and obsession. And of course, holes, lots and lots of holes.
The Human Chair is a story that was originally written by Japanese writer Yoshiko Togawa and adapted as a manga by Junji Ito.
The story features a female writer, named after the author of the original story who receives a letter from a fan. The letter contains a very unsettling manuscript about someone hiding and living inside an armchair.
It’s another of Ito’s most popular stories that I see mentioned a lot. The entire premise of the story is very unsettling and brings forth the topics of privacy and obsession.
What drives this story home is again Ito’s unique art style combined with a truly unsettling idea.
This story is a prime example of Junji Ito’s mastery of the body horror genre, and his artistic skill.
At its core, it’s a story about body dysmorphia, but once again Junji Ito drives it up a notch. It’s not about changing your body, it’s about having your body cut open and being dissected.
Ruriko is a young doctor who’s visited by a mysterious woman who wants him to dissect her. As the story progresses, we learn more about the titular character and the reason for her obsession.
Dissection girl is as typical a Junji Ito story as can be. It features two of his predominant themes, body horror and mental illness.
What makes this one stand out is the disturbing imagery, especially that of the last page. It’s truly one of the most absurd, yet most creative images of body horror I’ve ever seen.
The story features, as the title says, a haunted mansion or better a haunted house.
Our main characters are two young boys who find out about a new haunted house in their town. The of them witness as other people visit the attraction and flee the place scared half to death.
Eventually, the two of them make their way there and get invited by the owner for free.
There are quite a few surprises ahead, not only for our main character but also for our readers who might recognize a few reoccurring characters.
This is another story that features one of Ito’s most unsettling drawings, which you can find above.
The deep sea is one of the few places on our planet that’s still mostly unknown.
The same could be said about the universe, but it’s huge, infinite by our standards. The ocean however is right here, right next door to some of us, yet we barely know a thing about it. It can be unsettling to think about what horrors lurk down there, in its depths.
The premise of this story by Junji Ito is simple. A horrific deep sea creature is washed ashore. It’s not a whale or anything that was ever seen before. It’s an unknown, disgusting, and almost Lovecraftian creature.
People are driven to the beach in droves, some to see the strange creature, others to figure out what sort of creature it actually is.
As the story progresses another horrific truth is revealed, namely that something is moving inside its body, something that’s still alive.
What makes this Junji Ito story so interesting is the possibility that something like this creature could actually exist somewhere out in the depths of the ocean.
This is another one of Junji Ito’s very short works with a very simple premise.
Hiroshi and his family move into their new home, situated right next to a strange building. Said building has only one window, right opposite Hiroshi’s very own.
The family learns that the building is the home of a strange, secluded lady. When we finally get to see her though we are presented with another iconic one of Junji Ito’s drawings.
It’s this drawing, the details, and the artistic skill displayed that makes this story so special. The rest is almost forgettable, anticlimactic even.
Yet, I can’t help but hold this story in high regard, especially since it inspired my series The Disappearing Alley.
Black Paradox is wild, Black Paradox is weird, and Black Paradox is actually quite interesting.
The story starts with a group of four people who form a suicide pact to end their lives together. Somehow though, our main character Marusou ends up with a group of doppelgangers.
After uncovering what’s happened and after meeting up with the real group, they postpone their attempts and meet again at a later point to go through with it.
From here on, the manga only gets stranger.
Black Paradox is one of Junji Ito’s longer works consisting of six chapters in total. The biggest problem with Black Paradox is the disjointed start. It starts with a suicide pact, but the focus of the series proofs to be about something entirely different.
Still, it features Junji Ito’s typical masterful art and his crazy imagination. For that alone, it would be worth the read. Yet, as weird as the story starts, the better it gets later on.
Overall, Black Paradox is quite an enjoyable experience, and I’d highly recommend it.
This story, oh god, this story. Many of Junji Ito’s stories feature disgusting images, but this story might be the worst.
It’s the story of a young girl, Yui, who lives with her sadistic older brother and her father above the family’s yakiniku restaurant. Said restaurant is the reason the entire house is coated in thick layers of grease.
Soon enough, her brother hits puberty and develops pimples. Because of the thick greasy air and his habit of drinking oil, his acne gets much, much worse than it usually would. I guess you can tell where things are going.
However, the story isn’t solely about the crater face’s eruption. There are even more sinister things going on at the family restaurant.
An interesting side note, I recently learned that this story stems from Junji Ito’s experience during dental school. When there he was forced to sleep on a dirty, sweaty futon himself.
It’s honestly one of Junji Ito’s most disgusting stories and of course, it features another one of his very popular drawings. Read it, but you’ve been warned.
I’ve always been a fan of concepts such as a city within a building. That’s the reason I also enjoy stories that are set in confined or restricted spaces.
This story by Junji Ito begins with Saiko, who’s sick and tired of her family constantly spying on her. So she leaves her family to live with her aunt instead.
She travels to her aunt’s town only to discover that all the streets have been blocked by wooden, make-shift buildings. That’s not the only thing though, the entire town has been boarded up by wooden constructions almost making it a single building.
Out of necessity, the people in this town had to find new passageways. Without streets, the only way to get anywhere was via people’s houses. This eliminated all privacy between the people living in the town.
Even worse there’s this constant feeling in the town that you’re being watched by someone, or… something.
I really enjoyed the bizarre setting of the town and Saiko’s walk through various buildings and different areas of the town.
There’s also a secondary plot happening about a killer appearing in people’s dreams. Yet again, it feels a bit disjointed and doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the story.
It’s obvious this story’s focus is the intrusion of privacy and the fear of being watched or being spied on. While I don’t think the dream killer story is necessary, perhaps it signifies yet another intrusion of privacy. Not even your dreams solely belong to you.
Either way, it’s a very interesting story which shows that Junji Ito doesn’t shy away from sometimes including more serious topics in his work.
Junji Ito’s stories are rarely grounded in reality. They feature monsters, outlandish powers, or supernatural entities. This one here’s a rare exception to the rule.
The Bully is the simple story of a young girl bullying a little boy. When the two of them meet again as adults though, things take a different turn, one for the better.
However, this is a Junji Ito story, so there’s no happy ending here. What makes this story so terrifying is the absence of supernatural forces. This one’s entirely grounded in reality, and it makes it so much worse.
Imagine a stranger runs up to you and licks your face. That’s the simple premise of this story by Junji Ito.
Miku’s fiancee Tsuyoshi gets licked by a mysterious woman on his way home. Of course, the story isn’t just about the disgust of being licked. No, the Licking Woman’s saliva is dangerous and soon Tusyoshi dies from it.
As time passes more cases related to the Licking Woman are reported and more people are getting hurt.
Miku of vows for revenge and plans to kill the Licking woman. However, there are quite a few surprises ahead for her.
This story has quite a few things to offer. There’s the general disgust of being licked by a stranger and worse, being hurt by it. What makes this story so great is once more Ito’s imagery. The disgusting, bloated, wet tongue, her mouth, her eyes, they almost warp the licking woman into something that’s not even human anymore.
Overall, it’s a great story and I really enjoyed it a lot.
I think most people are familiar with the story of Frankenstein, or have at least heard about it. Having read the original novel and having watched some movie adaptions, I can say that Junji Ito’s adaption is absolutely phenomenal. It might be the best adaption of Shelly’s source material out there.
This volume is frankly said a masterpiece. I’d can highly recommend it to anyone who’s either a fan of Junji Ito’s art style or the original novel by Mary Shelley.
Ito’s strange, unsettling imagery, his over the top way of conveying his characters emotions and his body horror make this an unforgettable experience.
Tomie is another one of Junji Ito’s reoccurring characters and probably his most popular character. Her stories span three volumes and spawned an entire series of live-action movies.
It’s even more interesting when you consider that Tomie was one of Junji Ito’s earliest works.
Even though the art style in the early chapters of Tomie isn’t as refines as in his later works, you can already get a glimpse of Junji Ito’s crazy imagination.
The story begins with Tomie being a normal, but gorgeous student who’s in an affair with her teacher. In the first chapter, she accidentally dies during a school trip, and the class bands together to hide the fact by cutting her body into pieces and getting rid of her.
The next day, however, Tomie returns and from this point onward things only prove to get stranger. As the stories surrounding Tomie continue, we learn that she’s not a normal person, but an entity with regenerative powers. It doesn’t matter what you do to Tomie, even the tiniest bit of her will regenerate and grow into a new version of herself.
As if that wasn’t enough, Tomie also has an almost supernatural hold upon man. Every man she meets is taken by her, falls in love with her, and eventually grows obsessed with her. This obsession always ends with a descent into madness.
Tomie was the first of Ito’s stories I discovered, and I read all the chapters in one day.
Looking back, the quality of Tomie’s chapters varies. Some are better, some are worse. At times, Junji Ito’s at the top of his game, and some chapters are masterfully done and contain some of the most horrific things he’s ever drawn. However, other chapters can be rather forgetful.
Oshikiri is another reoccurring character and most of his stories are centered on the strange events happening in the mansion he lives in.
I never hear people talk about Oshikiri’s tales, yet I feel that some imagery here is absolutely amazing.
As with some of Ito’s other stories featuring the same character, Oshikiri’s also doesn’t follow a general storyline. Considering the things we learn about his mansion, these stories might not even be related at all.
The main reason I adore these stories is that they feature some of Junji Ito’s greatest imagery and body horror.
The very first story centers on weird hallucinations in which people’s necks grow and distort. A later story features a strange medication that warps people’s appearances into ghastly abominations.
Overall Oshikiri’s stories are very strange, feature an idea I’ve never seen in any other story by Junji Ito, but they are also creative and at times horrifying. They are definitely worth a read and I feel they are truly underrated.
Another one of Ito’s earlier stories, but man do I love this one.
The story introduces us to our main character Rumi, her boyfriend and their teacher Mr. Okabe, who’s an artist specializing in the creation of headless statues.
At the start of the story, Mr. Okabe is tragically murdered. In the days that follow Rumi’s boyfriend Shimada, the last person Mr. Okabe hung out with starts behaving strangely. As the two of them return to the place of the crime, the teacher’s art room, things quickly spiral out of control in typical fashion for Junji Ito.
As with many other stories by Junji Ito, one can assume from the title alone what will happen. What I like so much about this one is the execution and the ghastly art. We get distorted faces and Junji Ito’s typical, nightmarish and brutal imagery.
I also think Headless Statues has one of the best, most terrifying ending panels in all of Ito’s stories.
Another fan favorite story by Junji Ito and oh is it deserved.
Miss Fuchi, the titular fashion model, makes us uneasy the moment we first see her on the pages of a fashion magazine.
The main character, Iwasaki, is so horrified by her he suffers from nightmares because of her outlandish appearance.
As the story progresses, Iwasaki eventually gets over his fears of Miss Fuchi. That is until he and his fellow students search for a female lead for their newest movie project.
The moment we see Miss Fuchi in person, we can already tell that there’s something amiss about her. She’s not only tall, but she’s also almost gigantic, her face is too long and her eyes don’t look like those of a normal human being. No, there’s something very wrong about this… person.
On the way to the project we get a first glimpse of how unnatural and monstrous Miss Fuchi is and from there, things only escalate further.
Miss Fuch is definitely one of Junji Ito’s most popular and iconic creations. The story itself might be rather conventional for Junji Ito. There’s no supernatural phenomenon happening, there are no distortions of the human body or mind, no, this is just a story about a monster.
But what a monster Miss Fuchi is. She will stay on your mind, just like she did on Iwasaki’s.
This is another one of the very first Junji Ito stories I read, and it always stayed on my mind. What puts it here, in the top ten, is as much nostalgia as anything else.
Lovesick Dead is another one of Junji Ito’s longer works, spanning five chapters in total.
The story’s set in Nanchou-Shi a town enshrouded by thick layers of fog. It’s definitely a great scenario for a horror story.
Right away we are introduced to the concept of intersection fortune-telling, a practice at the core of the story. It’s simple. People wait at an intersection for someone to pass by and ask them to tell their fortune.
Our main character Ryuusuke is returning home after him and his family left the town many years ago. As the story progresses a strange character called the Intersection’s Pretty Boy starts wandering the streets of the town. Whoever encounters him during intersection fortune-telling will only get an ill fortune, with dire consequences.
It’s a typical Junji Ito story. People act irrational, go insane, or get obsessed to the point of mutilating and even killing themselves.
There are some parts of the story that are a bit disjointed and don’t seem to fit in too with the overall narrative. It’s a problem we often encounter in Junji Ito’s longer works. Yet, does it really matter? People read Junji Ito’s works mostly for the horrifying imagery and his crazy ideas.
Overall, Lovesick Dead is a great read, and it features a lot of unsettling and at times quite gory art. What I love especially is the mysterious setting of a town perpetually enshrouded by thick, heavy fog.
Long Dream is another super story by Junji Ito with a concept that’s equal parts interesting and terrifying.
Mami, a young woman with a dire diagnosis, is terribly afraid of death. What makes it even worse is that she talks about death himself visiting her hospital room.
However, it’s not death, it’s another patient named Tetsuro Mukoda. The man suffers from a very strange condition that causes him to have the titular long dreams, dreams that last for days, weeks, months, and even entire lifetimes.
Long Dream is especially scary because of the idea of getting lost in your dreams and forgetting both the real world and who you really are.
It’s definitely one of Ito’s most creative and original stories. It also comes with its fair share of body horror, as the people suffering from long dreams slowly transform, degrade, and get warped into something terrible and alien-looking.
The most interesting part about this story is that there are no monsters here, no antagonistic powers, no, there are only dreams.
This is another great Junji Ito story and one of my absolute favorites.
Army of One was merely a bonus chapter to Hellstar Remina, but in my opinion, it’s much better than all of Remina combined.
What makes Army of One stand out among Junji Ito’s other stories is that starts as more of a thriller than a horror story. People go missing and soon after their stitched-together corpses are found.
At first, it’s only two people at once, but soon more and more people go missing and get strung together into nightmarish, public displays all over the city. It’s at this point that not only the characters in the story but also we as the readers realize that this can’t possibly be the work of a single person.
Even worse, there doesn’t seem to be any hint of struggle, and no bodily harm was done to the victims before being stitched together.
What makes this story so interesting is that it changes one of horror’s predominant rules: strength in numbers. If you want to live through any horrific scenario, you stay together. Not so in Army of One, here the rule is reversed. The first to die aren’t those who are alone, no, it’s those who get together and mingle with others.
Another story that sticks out among Junji Ito’s body of work. It’s not one of the terrifying and horrific tales we’re so used to, it’s rather a sad little tale.
The story starts with Akiko, a young woman always plagued by the fear of her father dying.
The story progresses and Akiko marries Makoto and joins the Tokura household. There’s one peculiarity about the Tokura family though, a special practice. When a relative dies, the members of the family get together and perform a ritual which will create an afterimage of the person.
Throughout the story learn more about afterimages, their nature and the characters.
Everything about this story is great and, to me, it holds a very special place among Junji Ito’s many works.
We enter the top five with another one of Junji Ito’s most popular stories and definitely one of his masterpieces. The story was first translated on 4chan back in 2006 and went viral instantly.
The story’s premise is simple. People-shaped holes appear on the side of an earthquake fault line, and soon people from all over Japan flock to the location.
Most of those watching the event on TV became restless and were driven by a strange desire to visit the location themselves.
Our main characters are an unnamed young man and a young woman named Yoshida. Both share the strange feeling and are driven to the Amigara Faults.
As the story continues we see other people, who came in search of their hole and soon enough we see them enter them.
At the core of the story is the compulsive urge of people to understand the unexplainable. That itch inside their minds that questions why those holes are there, how they were created, and why there exists one with their exact shape.
Even worse, there seems to be no explanation for the event. We never find out what those holes are and why they exist.
What makes this story by Junji Ito so great is the mixture of claustrophobic horror, the fear of the unknown and the strange allusions of the impossible.
The Enigma of the Amigara Faults is truly an absolute masterpiece.
Layers of Fear is one of Junji Ito’s more recent work, and definitely my absolute favorite among them. It brings forth one of his craziest ideas and supports it with breathtakingly horrific imagery.
This story is absolutely wide. When I first read it, I could only read it in its original Japanese version. Even though I hadn’t understood a thing, I couldn’t help but stare at my screen in awe.
The story starts with a professor uncovering the grave of a child that was created by stacking layers upon one another.
After this event we move forward to the present time, years after the father’s death his family is on the way to a ceremony.
On the way there, the family has a car accident and one daughter, Remi, gets part of her face sliced off.
Instead of suffering a terrible wound as one would expect, it’s revealed that under her skin is another layer of skin. From here on out, the story only gets crazier and crazier.
The story doesn’t focus on this premise alone. As with many other stories by Junji Ito, it’s multilayered in its horror. There’s also Remi’s mother, an older woman obsessed with her daughter’s childhood.
What makes this story so amazing is not only the outlandish idea it puts forth, but once more Junji Ito’s imagery, which is at the top of its game here.
Layers of Fear is amazing and I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in Junji Ito.
Risa, a young woman, suffers from temporary amnesia and is plagued by nightmares of a giant, caterpillar-like creature.
Her boyfriend Shuichi tries to help her and brings her to his home to meet his father.
This is where things get strange. Her father enters the room in a very weird, almost spider-like fashion.
From this point on, the story takes a quick turn to the utterly bizarre as the reason for both the father’s weird behavior and Remi’s amnesia are revealed.
My Dear Ancestors is undoubtedly one of Ito’s most bizarre and grotesque stories.
Uzumaki is without a doubt an absolute masterpiece and Junji Ito’s magnum opus.
Manga can be a strange genre. There are many works out there and I’ve read my fair share of bizarre manga, but none was as weird as Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
It’s a three-volume long series set in the small Japanese coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which is infested by spirals.
Everything in this story, everything in the imagery, is linked to spirals. Even the horrific events that take place in town all happen because of spirals or are related to them.
Spiral shapes appear all over town, things take on the form of spirals, and soon enough even the townsfolk are obsessed with them.
This leads to some of Junji Ito’s greatest and most outlandish imagery. People are warped, changed, and transformed into various spiral-like shapes.
And this brings us to Junji Ito’s most iconic drawing.
This image is not at the climax of the story, no, it’s merely the first chapter and from then on things only get stranger and more horrible. Nothing in Kurouzu-cho is safe from the curse of the spiral. People transform into snails, lovers entangle each other like snakes and even hair develops a life of its own.
What sells Uzumaki is without a doubt Junji Ito’s terrifying and horrifying art, and in Uzumaki, he’s at his absolute best. His simple, clean black-and-white style, his precise craftsmanship brings forth the horrors that re happening in Kurouzu-cho in every last horrifying detail.
Most of Uzumaki’s story is episodic. The first two volumes feel almost like a collection of short stories that all feature the same setting and the same reoccurring characters.
In my opinion, Uzumaki is at its weakest in the last volume when Junji Ito brings everything together and drives the narration to its end.
It’s a satisfying conclusion to a fantastic piece of weird fiction, but once more I feel Ito’s at his best when things are left open and when we don’t find out what exactly is going on.
What makes Uzumaki stand out so much among a plethora of other horror works is the lack of a feasible antagonist. There are no monsters to fight, no killers to run from. No, there’s only the spiral, a concept that lingers of the town in the form of an omnipresent curse.
Reading Uzumaki for the first time is an utterly surreal and absolutely horrifying experience, but one that’s without a doubt satisfying to anyone interested in horror.
As I said I’ve been reading Junji Ito’s works for years and recently I came to appreciate Hanging Balloons just for how good it is. It’s, in my opinion, one of Ito’s best stories ever.
It’s bizarre, absurd, surreal, and downright creepy.
The story is long when compared to Junji Ito’s other one-shots. It starts slowly, with the suicide of Kazuko’s best friend, Terumi. Her body was found outside her apartment, dangling from a nose.
Soon enough though, Terumi’s boyfriend Shiroishi and other people start to see Terumi’s ghost lingering around town. What makes it even stranger, it’s just her head and a giant version of it.
At first, people try to explain it by mass hysteria and similar syndromes until the first picture of the floating head surfaces.
One night a troubled Shiroishi calls Kazuko. He’s been following Terium’s ghost and wants to prove to her it does truly exist. It’s then that Kazuko witnesses the true horror that’s happening in the story: The Hanging Balloons.
The sheer idea of a giant balloon with a replica of your face on it is creepy enough. This balloon coming after you to hang you with its noose makes this story so utterly nightmarish.
The great thing about this story is the horror and the scenario. It’s probably the most bizarre and surreal idea of an apocalypse ever put forth in fiction.
Sure, there have been many types of an apocalypse featured in fiction, but here it’s no monsters or zombies, it’s your own face stalking and eventually killing you. Even worse, you can’t destroy the balloon for you will share the same fate it does.
In terms of story-telling, I love the slow start of the story and the way it makes you believe it will be a ghost story.
Another fact that makes this story work so great is that similar to others like Army of One or The Enigma of the Amigara Faults, we never find out anything. We don’t learn where those heads came from or their true nature. No, it all stays an utter mystery. We’re thrown into the story, witness it with Kazuko, and at the end the mystery’s left intact.
And who could forget that terrible last panel?
To me, Hanging Balloons is an absolute masterpiece of bizarre and surreal storytelling and my favorite Junji Ito story of all time.
If you’re interested in Ito’s works, many of his short stories have been published for Western Audiences in the collections Shiver, Fragments of Horror and Smashed.
Many of his longer works are available as well, such as Uzumaki, Tomie and Gyo.
