Manga review: Shiver, by Junji Ito


 

            I’d long heard Junji Ito described as “the master of horror manga”, so I’d been eager to sample his work. This is a selection of nine stories selected by the author, with commentary about the history of each. While it lived up to its title – I did literally shiver at many of these – I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with many of the tales. I’m still trying to  figure out why.

            My best guess is that many of the concepts, while horrifying, are a little too off-the-wall. For instance, in the title story people’s bodies get riddled with holes through which they feel a cold wind, and they fear insects, and this is in some way connected to possessing a jade figure, and they are haunted by a sinister doctor…but why? The holes don’t seem to literally be being bored by insects (which would be super gross and horrifying) so where are they coming from? Likewise the image of a giant balloon version of your face floating in the sky and trying to strangle you with a noose, as in ‘Hanging blimp’ is pretty horrifying, but also not something that connects to any fear I’ve ever independently had. Are these events natural (in a sci-fi way) or supernatural? Are there any rules to them or are they just random? Therefore, those stories, to me, lack the “I could really imagine this happening” element that you get from the works of Poe (where human madness is often the threat), Lovecraft (where there is an established world of powerful other things lurking under the sea or beyond the stars), or even your standard ghost story. The notes on these stories indicate that they came from Ito’s own nightmares, which may explain it. Sometimes dreams tap into a shared primal fear, and sometimes you are left struggling to explain to anyone else why a room full of jars of dentures is terrifying rather than just mildly unsettling. Having to sleep on a dirty futon or having someone pop their zits at you might trigger a nightmare like ‘Greased’, but “being saturated with oil” is not something most people would come up with as a high-ranking fear.

            My favorite stories in the collection tended to be those that felt a bit more grounded or connected to common anxieties. ‘Used record’ draws on the extremes to which people will go for a collector’s item - in this case a cursed record. The idea of a body singing after it is definitely dead is spooky in a more subtle way than a giant face balloon, and really works well. ‘Honored ancestors’ works because it speaks to the fear a woman might have of being courted just to serve someone else’s purposes…in this case continuing their family line in a really gross and literal sense. While I didn’t care for ‘Painter’ quite as much as these two, it is again about human obsession – this time an artist going to extremes to try and capture the beauty of a woman who is probably not human herself.

            ‘Marionette Mansion’ and ‘Long Dream’ were intermediate, to me. I liked the idea of a puppet manipulating the puppeteer in the former, but was very confused by exactly what was happening. Who are the dead-eyed servants? Why did the mastermind puppet kill the girlfriend? In the latter, a man has dreams that feel increasingly long, his body and mind start changing in response. That was neat, but then his doctor decides to give a patient with the fear of death an inoculum that causes such long dreams on the reasoning that it is like eternity. But…guy #1 definitely didn’t LIKE those dreams; a lot of them were nightmares! So why is the doctor suddenly playing evil mad scientist? Finally, there’s ‘Fashion model’ and the bonus story that follows up on it. The premise is that there is a model who is just super horrifying-looking (seven feet tall with a long hollow-cheeked face and frickin’ shark teeth) who keeps getting work somehow even though she creeps people out and keeps eating her co-workers. That was just kind of funny, so I liked them on that basis!

            The artwork in the horror panels is good and does its job. The cover art is an amalgam of many of these concepts, so you can kind of get the idea from that. The rest of it is fine. But for a work that really blends the horrifying, the beautiful, and the mundane, I recommend the vampire manga ‘Happiness’, which is absolutely gorgeous even when it is grossing you out.

 

Overall recommendation: Worth checking out if you like horror stories…and if you are fine with such stories having a dreamlike irrationality, you’d probably enjoy it quite a bit.

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