Junji Ito has been one of my life long favourite horror mangaka. I was first introduced to his work in High School when I friend recommended I read ‘Uzumaki’, where a town becomes obsessed with spirals. One scene where a woman stabs herself in the ear – because of the spiral structure of the eardrum, haunted me for months after. I then got really into his one shots and short stories. Without further ado, here are my top 5!
Warning: there’s a bit of gore in the pics!
Phantom Mansion
A man is hired for an unusual job – to ease a boy’s phantom pains. The man and about 4 other workers, run around the boy’s mansion, massaging and spraying painkiller on spots the boy specifies. At first it seems ridiculous, but the pay is good, but the man slowly realises something is up. Workers get hurt and don’t feel any pain, the boy’s mother becomes manic is soothing her son’s discomfort, and it seems no one can leave the phantom mansion.
In the Valley of Mirrors
A group of friends go hiking and find an unusual valley scattered
with mirror shards. Intrigued they set up mirrors on either side, wanting to see what the locals were trying to achieve. A character experiences a horrific flashback with a Romeo-Juliet love story. The friends soon see that it’s not just your reflection in the mirror.
Ribs Woman
Everyone wants to achieve that Kim Kardashian waist, but to what lengths would you go? A young girl, follows in her friend’s footsteps,
and undergoes cosmetic surgery to remove some of her ribs. While she gets her desired results, she can’t shake the sound of strumming that haunts her every night. When she investigates, she finds a woman playing a harp that looks oddly shaped like a rib…
Secret of the Haunted House
A haunted house shows up in a village town, and scares the towns folk silly. After complaints, a policeman investigates but mysteriously disappears. So two 10 years olds think they’ll do a better job! You also get to see a grown up Soichi – one of Ito’s infamous characters.
Ma no Kakera (Red Turtleneck)
A guy cheats on his girlfriend with a fortune teller. When the fortune teller tries to remove his head, he comes crawling back for help. It’s a race against time as he tries to keep his head on!
I hope you enjoyed these one shots, it was really hard to choose just 5. I’m sure there’s also a few others that I love but have just forgotten to include! Let me know in the comments if there’s any on that you love!
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I love Junji Ito and his works!!! I started with Tomie and Uzumaki and then from there all of his oneshots and Gyo (though the movie was kind of meh)
Oh man you read my mind with this post lol I have a fangirl Friday post in the works for one of his works coming out soon
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He’s an absolute genius! Oooh I loved Tomie, have been meaning to check out Gyo. Yay, I can’t wait to read it. Junji Ito fans unite ^_^
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Gyo the manga was good, the same creepy strange stuff Junji Ito is known for lol!! Junji Ito fans unite!!
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I just got Uzumaki, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m not really a horror manga fan, but so many people rave about him that I had to check it out.
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I reckon Uzumaki is a really good way to introduce you to Ito’s style. If you get about half way through and you don’t like it, then you definitely won’t like any of his other works. Although some parts of Uzumaki are really gory >_<
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Wow, these look fierce. I’ve never read anything by him, but now I’m curious @_@
/is a chicken that gets super frightened by horror movies and horror games with jump scares
Since they’re manga, I won’t get as scared, right? :’D
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Haha! I find a lot of Junji Ito’s works are a bit more gory than scary >_<! But if you are interested in getting into horror manga I recommend starting with ‘Zero – Kage Miko’ by Amagi Seimaru ^
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Oh, that’s good then. I prefer gory to horror/too scary~! I guess I can try his works out then (≧∇≦)/
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Ooh yes definitely! Let me know if you like them 🙂 !
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