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Week 11

Junji Ito is one of my all time favorite mangaka! I've read all of his works that have been translated/scanlated into English. My favorite of his works is actually the short story manga, Glyceride. I think this short story sums up why Junji Ito is a master of horror manga. He is able to capture this unnerving and sometimes gross atmosphere with his stories and his art. Glyceride is absolutely disgusting in it's content, and it makes me slightly nauseous when I'm reading it. However, I think that's the genius of the work. The fact that it's able to compel such a reaction in me is exactly what makes it good.

Junji Ito is also funny to me, because a lot of the inspiration behind his work isn't very deep. For example, he's stated before for Gyo that his inspiration was basically "if sharks could be on land that'd be terrifying." And a lot of other of his works also just derive from him thinking about "if this happened, wouldn't that be scary?" I find that his simplest ideas are the ones that work the best, like Glyceride and Long Dream, not to mention the infamous classic, The Enigma of Amigara Fault. The simple but haunting plots Junji Ito comes up with are perfectly juxtaposed with his detailed and eerie drawings. I think in this way, his writing and his drawings perfectly compliment each other.

Even when it comes to long running series like Tomie, the core idea is still just a beautiful and demonic girl. The simplicity of the base concept is what really makes it work. Tomie is a demon, and therefore she can haunt and terrorize people in a number of ways. There's nothing more complex beyond that and it's precisely this element of Junji Ito's works that make them mesmerizing, in that you can infinitely imagine possibilities and theories behind his works because they allow a lot for the imagination.

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