Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories

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Remina fills in this gap by bringing us cosmic horror on an enormous scale. This Junji Ito manga tells the story of a scientist, Dr. Oguro, who discovers a new planet that has suddenly appeared via a wormhole. This is another story found in Shiver. I should mention that one of the cool things about Shiver (as is common with many manga tankobon) is the inclusion of little notes and anecdotes from the author. They’re often about what inspired the story to begin with. What if fish had legs and started walking out of the ocean? This long-form story details what happens when the fish invade the land and begin to cause havoc. After a while, the tale evolves from a creature feature to incorporate body horror and nauseating artwork.

The Uzumaki manga is arguably Junji Ito’s most famous book, apart from a select handful of his short stories (found below). In Sensor‘s first chapter, Kyoko Byakuya finds herself at the foot of Mount Sengoku, amidst the gentle falling of golden volcanic hair. This horror manga was published when Ito was only 24 and, despite it being his debut publication, it remains one of his most popular manga. Fashion Model is the story that gave us one of Ito’s most iconic characters. When you Google Junji Ito, certain images take the centre stage: Tomie’s face, the Uzumaki spirals, and the fashion model: a predatory, monstrous looking woman with sharp teeth, long fingers, piercing eyes, and a hungry stare. Madonna is the second story from Junji Ito’s The Liminal Zone; a collection of four standalone tales that were unrestrained by the magazine format and therefore as long as he wanted them to be.This town is affected by a curse involving the symbol of a spiral. It’s a story that plays on the impact that symbols have in both modern and ancient societies, especially in Japan. Shivers, also titled Coldness and The Chill, is the fourth chapter from volume 7 of the Horror World of Junji Ito Collection, Slug Girl. I’ve read this book multiple times and, as a Frankenstein obsessive, I’m happy to say that it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Danny Boyle’s stage adaptation as the best interpretation of Shelley’s original novel. Ito takes that Lovecraftian approach to the wide open unknown and runs with it in this story. The Thing That Drifted Ashore presents us with an enormous, impossible, strange creature. Honored Ancestors (from The Face Burglar, 顔泥棒 Kao Dorobou), a story about an amnesiac girl and the encounter that caused her to lose her memories and about carrying on the family line. At all costs.

This is a story found in one of Ito’s earlier short story collections, known as the Slug Girl Collection (named after one of the book’s stories).That night, Hideo, now completely hollowed out with holes breaks into Yuuji's room. On the day they found the diary, he went looking for the jade statue in the bushes outside Rina's house. He took a chance with the curse because he knew the jade must be valuable; but then the holes began to open up in his body. He is now possessed by the statue and can't throw it away, although he has tried many times. He says that the doctor is the curse's "messenger", who appears wherever the jade is. Suddenly, the doctor appears and Hideo runs screaming from him. It tells the story of a private girls’ school, lorded over by a principal and his wife, a woman who believes herself the Virgin Mary reincarnate. Since he is so scared and she looks so very obviously scary, doubt is immediately sewn into our minds about whether or not she is actually a threat.

Later, Mori finds out that Tomie has teamed up with a sculptor from his old art school, a man who has contempt for Mori for being a sellout. Driven further into madness, Mori confronts the sculptor, and the story’s violent endgame begins. The image of a dozen or so shattered sculptures, none beautiful enough to satisfy Tomie, is a haunting one that foreshadows things to come. It’s a little too late though to be foreshadowing, since the payoff happens in the very next scene. Honored Ancestors” shows a woman experiencing amnesia from witnessing something so horrible. Before the story is over, she’ll witness it again — and the reader will see everything. Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga.

Other subgenres featured in his work include creature features and cosmic horror. These and other varieties of horror can be found alongside science fiction and folklore. Who publishes Junji Ito’s work? Unlike other popular Japanese writers like Haruki Murakami, whose debut works are often overlooked today, Ito’s earlier works are still treasured. The now defunct ComicsOne published some of Junji Ito’s early work. However, these editions are hard to come by and it’s likely that you won’t encounter these. Where can I find Junji Ito manga? The Long Dream feels a bit too familiar, the dreams are played more for laughs than really showing the horror aspect of them. Being told a character was looking for a restroom for eight years is always going to be funny to me, you either need to show what it's like (because the image I have is definitely funny) or find something else. Of course, the humour may be what he intended, and not every story has to be straight horror, but I still think it was a great premise that could've lead to a better story.

La gran mayoría ya las había leído, pero son muy buenas y sin duda este tomo vale la pena adquirirlo, una variedad excelente que deja en a la vista la maestría y originalidad perturbadora del mangaka. Painter: un pintor obsesionado con la belleza de una modelo. La vanidad, la locura y los celos una combinacion fatal. 3/5 There’s a sense that these writers dare to describe what should never be described. What takes Junji Ito’s manga one step beyond even the stories of H.P. Lovecraft is that he dares to draw them as well as write them. To a large extent this is easy stuff – we can all come up with strange or horrible ideas from dreams - I dreamed I was the last chocolate in a box and a huge hand was trying to find me and eat me; I dreamed when I went into a department store in town all the store assistants started unzipping their clothing to reveal a smaller store assistant inside; but Junji Ito’s artwork makes it nearly worthwhile ploughing through the daftness.Ito followed up on Shiverwith Smashedand, unfortunately, none of the stories in Smashedcan be found here because they simply don’t measure up to the quality of imagination on display in Shiver. What makes the body horror of The Long Dream so unique is that it doesn’t come in the usual form of explosive and monstrous change (think werewolf transformations from old horror films). The enigma draws public attention and news crews begin to report on it. Soon enough, people are coming from all over to see the human-shaped holes for themselves.