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8. Street of Gravestones/ Tombs/ Gravetown-

This is one of Ito’s cleverest stories.

While there is some great imagery at the end, most of the terror in the story comes from the feelings of paranoia and guilt.

The story begins with these two characters: Kaoru and a guy, and they’re all right characters. They have personalities and a fun sibling-like banter. That makes sense, because they are siblings.

The two of them are visiting a town where a friend of Kaeoru lives when they accidentally run over a person, killing them.

Not wanting to be charged with manslaughter, they stuff the person in their trunk.

The rest of the story has terror that unfolds in two different plotlines:

The first is our two main characters trying to keep the dead body a secret.

The second is our two main characters exploring the mysteries of this town.

These two plotlines meet together multiple times, and they also come to a head at the same time.

Mr. Ito does a great job at building the tension by slowly revealing more and more information and showing stranger and stranger sights.

It turns out the person they hit was the sister of Kaoru’s friend, and this just increases the anxiety. Then, Kaoru’s friend starts acting suspicious, and you slowly begin to realize that there is no way this will end well.

Not only that, but the story never loses its main idea: guilt. The main characters did something bad, and they’re afraid of the consequences, but that just leads to more consequences, and all the while, they feel like shit.

There’s a great part where the two of them realize that the guilt will always live with them even if they manage to make it out of this situation. That’s a really great moment that’s not even about the supernatural elements of the story.

The ending of this story is also perfectly tragic, as it basically robs our main characters of the ability to repent or atone. Kaoru finally realizes that she needs to fess up and accept the consequences, but it’s too late.

7. Army of One/ Billions Alone-

This is the story where a mysterious group sews people together.

This story is very on the nose. There’s a part where our lonely main character thinks to himself “Being on your own’s the only way.”

However, that’s my only problem.

Other than that, oh ho ho!

Mr. Ito was cooking with this concept:

There’s a guy who’s lonely and afraid of human connection, and just as he’s starting to come out of his shell, some force starts sewing together anyone who meets up in a large group.

This story gets loneliness and social isolation in the way only very few stories get. It also gets how closely it’s tied with self hatred, with our main character thinking that everyone trying to talk to him is just being nice to him.

I feel bad for our main character.

I also like how the force trying to get people together has the opposite effect, increasing isolation.

This story also has an excellent structure. Our cold open is someone seeing two people sewn together, which is a very intriguing set up. Then, we are introduced to our main character. That scene is fairly heavy-handed, but it still succeeds as an introduction both to him and to the plot with the class reunion.

The rest of the plot is a slow buildup. The number of people sewn together always increases each time.

Everytime we see some people sewn together, there are more than there were before. It also slowly becomes more and more clear that this isn’t the work of a few people, but some sort of force.

Throughout this, our main character is slowly given more and more incentives to get out of his shell while also simultaneously being given more reasons not to.

The very ending is a bit odd. None of our questions are answered, but it works well as a great way of giving our character one last kick in the teeth.

I do object to the fact that it shows a dog being killed.

This story also never really says anything about loneliness, unlike two of the stories listed above it.

Overall, the cool concept, very memorable imagery, and perfect structure of this story makes it one of Ito’s best.

6. Madonna/The Witch-

(Spoilers)

I like horror stories with religious imagery because religion is pretty spooky.

This is the story about the girl at the catholic boarding school, and there’s a lot of salt.

The most interesting thing about this story is the character of the principal, a man who dates young women, believing them to be the virgin mary, and then ditching them when they grow “old and ugly”. It’s sort of an exploration of the idea of the divine feminine.

This principal worships a divine feminine, but he’s worshiping an ideal of femininity. Women aren’t gods, they grow up, they get mad at you sometimes, and they have bad hair days.

This shows how idealization is not the opposition of dehumanization. When we idolize someone, we’re just dehumanizing them in a different way. This principal, despite worshiping a woman and being really horny for women, is totally sexist. He worships the virgin Mary for her beauty and her innocence and her purity, not for her bravery or strength. He can only see her as a woman, not as a person.

This mindset leads him to attempt to molest a teenage girl.

When we meet the titular character of this story, the principal’s wife, she seems like a total bitch. However, it quickly becomes clear that her attitude is a result of her husband. She blames her husband’s infidelity on herself. Obviously, she is righteously angry at her husband, but we see that she is ashamed of her anger- which is stupid, but this is a result of her being manipulated by her husband (and also a society which views women as objects).

When the principal’s wife prays to the virgin mary, she asks forgiveness for aging, not having a baby, and feeling emotions. There are all things that humans do. She wants to be this beautiful and pure and holy person her husband once saw her as, but she can’t be because she’s human.

As a result, she takes out her anger on other women.

And, like the complete piece of shit he is, the principal goes “Man, my wife sure is angry all the time.” Dude, she’s angry because you’re a piece of shit! The book literally says that the principal cheating on her turned her into the “angry witch woman”.

However, that’s how a lot of men are like, and also how the world treats women. It’s like what America Ferrara says in that monologue in Barbie about how women need to meet all these criteria.

It’s also funny that the principal is a man who worships a virgin but cheats on his second wife.

Junji Ito loves evil women who hate other women and want to be beautiful, but the principal’s wife in this story is the best version of this, as we understand why she is this way.

This story actually investigates sexism and beauty standards through the vision of religion.

Oh, also, it’s mentioned how everyone in the special class at the school is really pretty, which makes this whole school seem like one massive grooming campaign by the principal.

Overall, this is a pretty perfect story. I guess I can critique the fact that the main character, the girl who goes to the school, is kind of a nothing character, but this story is more centered around the ideas.

Plus, this character is actually kind of active in the story, being the one to start the entire final confrontation.

Not only that, but the imagery of people turning into salt is pretty horrific.

5. Hellstar Remina

This story is the shit.

Firstly, a giant planet that eats other planets? Fantastic.

Not only that, but this story works well as an exploration of fame. It’s on-the-nose, sure, but so what?

This story is also fantastic at portraying mass panic.

Also, while our main character, Remina, is lacking in the personality department, she’s still an easy character to root for because she’s a child who doesn’t deserve what’s happening. Even before everything goes to shit, I still feel bad for her because she’s shy and doesn’t like being famous.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Something I like is how there are all of these men in her life trying to comfort her and they all fail.

This is a story about how uncomfortable being idolized is. Every man Remina meets seems to want something out of her.

It’s also probably creepy as a child to have a bunch of adult men show up with flowers and tell you they love you.

The beginning is pretty well paced. We get enough time to set everything up before people realize Remina (the planet) is heading towards earth and then shit hits the fan.

We get a pretty realistic view of how conspiracy theories form, with people finding patterns where there are none.

Our protagonists run around a bit as people try to kill them, and that’s exciting, I guess. The story slowly becomes more and more action-heavy until it’s nothing but constant action.

We also get lots of torture, and it does start to feel like cruelty for cruelty’s sake. I get the point, that this mob is so messed up they’re willing to torture a little girl, but after a bit, it starts to feel indulgent.

However, I think it’s interesting that the hooded man licking the human Remina is compared to the planet Remina licking earth. Like, the planet Remina is a giant beast whose only desire is consumption, and I guess the hooded man is similar.

The homeless man also talks about how the planet Remina thinks the earth is beautiful, which is why it’s taking its time. That’s a really random thing to say, so I guess Ito was trying to make the point more clear.

Moving on, the planet Remina is very horrifying as a concept, and the surface of the planet has some very creative imagery.

The ending of the story is also wonderfully bleak.

4. Lovesick Dead/ Lovesickness-

(Spoilers)

This is the story about the tall dude at the crossroads who tells women to kill themselves.

A key theme in a lot of Ito’s stories is superstition and tradition. However, even when there are supernatural additions, the superstition isn’t true, and oftentimes, it hurts the characters.

I don’t know if Ito knows about the superstition of the “devil at the crossroads”, as it’s a very American superstition, but this story definitely reminds me of it.

Anywhoo, the main character of our story is a boy named Ryusuke, and he’s one of Ito’s more well defined characters, in the sense that he is an extremely moody teenager.

We later learn that this is because of some pretty serious trauma he had as a child, and this trauma is a result of the crossroads and the superstition around it.

Our main character’s relationship with a girl he likes, Midori, is also really interesting. Ryusuke likes her, but he’s afraid of human interaction due to the guilt he feels. As a result, Midori thinks he doesn’t like her. That’s some very realistic drama.

Ryusuke’s fear is something that a lot of people can relate to.

In this beginning part, we are also introduced to a character named Suzue, a friend of Midori. At first, we see Suzue serving as an intermediate between the two, only to keep on failing.

However, after she goes to the crossroads, she is told to worry about herself, and she then decides to try to date Ryusuke, constantly hounding him despite him clearly not being interested in her. That part just sucks. That is the quickest time I’ve seen a character be set up and then assassinated.

I get that the magic of the crossroads man is causing this, and she is as much of a victim as everyone else, but it still annoys me.

Then, Suzue kills herself so that Ryusuke can feel bad about it.

That’s kind of a…waste of a character.

I suppose the idea is that Suzue already liked Ryusuke, but she was nice enough to hide that. However, the thin man magically affected her, making her devoted to this one singular idea, as that’s what the thin man does. He doesn’t change people’s opinions, he merely makes them obsessed with one thing.

The problem is, we are getting a female character killing herself, and this extremely tragic event is mostly in service of the character growth of a male character.

However, it is after that when the story gets really good. Ryusuke does some snooping at the crossroads, but people keep asking him his fortune, so he has to start giving people fortunes, but he’s all nice about it. This makes him the opposite of the thin evil dude. Hmmmm…I wonder if this is foreshadowing anything.

That is great character shit right there. This guy is trying to make up for his past deeds by saving others and being good. However, we see that through this, he is sacrificing his own mental health.

This makes him similar to the victims of the thin dude at the crossroads, as he becomes devoted to a singular concept and a singular goal, thereby hurting both his mental and psychical health.

Then, Rysusuke encounters a woman who is similar to the woman who is the source of his trauma.

Now, this part of the story works for me because it forces Ryusuke to confront his trauma by encountering such a similar situation. However, Ryusuke’s desire to right the wrong leads to the woman constantly hounding him and obsessing over him.

There’s the idea that constantly devoting yourself to others means that you can hurt yourself.

Ryusuke is, in the immortal words of Rainbow Kitten Surprise, “too busy saving others to save (himself)”. In many ways, Ryusuke’s help starts to even make the woman’s situation worse.

Eventually, Ryusuke realizes that the woman is just committing acts to make her life worse, and the woman reveals this is because the tall evil dude told her that her problem wasn’t serious enough.

That’s such an interesting psychological idea, as it means that the tall dude is sort of like a paranoid voice inside someone’s head.

The idea of someone committing these acts of self destruction because they feel the need to prove their pain is interesting, even if that’s now how I think self-destruction works.

This whole part of the story is a very interesting examination of trauma and trying to help others.

However, it also has the problem of being a story where a woman’s internal turmoil is merely in service of a male character’s growth, it’s well done growth, sure, but still…

Obviously, the woman Ryusuke is dealing with is mentally ill. The story isn't saying “Don’t help mentally ill women” it’s “If you’re a seventh grader you probably don’t have the skills to help a mentally ill woman, and she instead needs a psychologist or something.”

The idea is that Ryusuke has all of this guilt which leads him to:

A. distance himself from others, and

B. put all of this responsibility on his shoulders, despite him being to young to carry that burden.

However, still…

The only other female character in this story who is given any amount of depth similar to Ryusuke is Midori, the girl Ryusuke likes. However, she also later gets corrupted by the evil dude and ends up killing herself.

Female suicide seems to be a plot device in this story.

That’s unfortunate because, if it weren’t for that, this story would probably be number one.

As the story goes on, we also see how many girls have begun to worship the tall evil dude like some sort of celebrity. They see him as some sort of almost messianic figure meant to save them from the pain of lovesickness.

That’s a very interesting idea.

The problem is, women and girls aren’t the only people who fall in love. Obviously, this story shows that, as we get multiple male characters motivated by love, but they’re also never victimized by the tall evil dude.

The story progresses, and stuff gets worse for our main character before it gets better.

The conclusion of this story kind of makes it all worth it, as it’s equal parts tragic and hopeful.

Ryusuke becomes this opposing figure to the tall evil dude, making people do good by giving people good fortunes. We see that he’s actually helping other people on, and he’s also making other people help other people on.

The sad thing is, he’s also dead. He’s a ghost. The happiness/closure he’s giving others is something he can never attain.

Obviously, the central idea of this story is closure and moving on. Obviously, the ghosts in this story need to move on from the living, just as our characters need to move on from their grief and love. What Ryusuke does is tell the ghosts to move on.

The biggest problem with this story is that it’s a bit to casual about the idea of suicide, wich is a big problem with a lot of Junji Ito stories. It also depicts all these women as being obsessive and lovesick and emotional. Of course, there is also that one random boy who tries to kill Ryusuke because he had a crush on Suzue. Also, it’s not like Ito is afraid to depict men in that way, as that’s the entirety of Tomie. Also, our main character is also obsessive and lovesick and emotional, even if he’s much more reserved and stoic about it.

We also do see how two of the suicides are a result of one man being a douche.

The thing is, this story isn’t interesting in examining gender. It’s about grief, the dangers of singular obsession, and moving on.

Another interesting idea in this story is people wanting guidance from this spirit. However, the idea is that they should think for themselves.

There’s an argument to be made that this is Ito’s best story, as it’s probably the most interesting to discuss, and it’s the most psychological. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface here.

With most Ito stories, the plot is driven mostly by the environment around the characters. However, the actions of Ryusuke are central to this narrative, and his actions are very clearly driven by his internal psychology and the journey he is going through. A lot of the protagonists in Mr. Ito’s stories are just people who have stumbled into situations, but this situation seems to be specifically catered to Ryusuke’s growth as a character.

As such this is easily Ito’s most character driven story, so it helps that the characters are actually three dimensional people.

We feel like we know Ryusuke personally, which makes the ending really effective.

Ryusuke’s fear of connection very clearly parallels the character of Batman in the cinematic masterpiece The Lego Batman movie.

Both characters learn that it's still worth it to form meaningful connections, even if there’s the risk of them getting hurt.

As Batman said, “Losing people is part of life, but that doesn’t mean you stop letting them in.”

The tragedy of Lovesickness is that, despite his realization, Ryusuke still ends up becoming a ghost figure, doomed to help people reach an enlightenment he can never enjoy. What makes this tragedy all the more effective is the fact that it basically gives him exactly what he wanted all along.

Despite how long that review was, I still feel like I’m missing a lot of important details, and I need to re-read the story to add more.

3. Uzumaki-

(Spoilers)

There was no way that Uzumaki was ever going to end up lower than this. This book has some of the best imagery of Ito’s entire career, with body horror that sticks with you years after.

There’s an obvious parallel between this story and the difficulty in running away from trauma. This town is something inescapable, a place which traps everyone in a giant spiral.

Not only that, but our main characters are very much so defined by trauma, with our main male character, Shuichi, having to deal with the loss of two parents at the hands of the spiral.

Of course, that makes the ending pretty defeatist.

However, we’ll get to that.

While this idea isn’t something that I can relate to, I know that there are a lot of people who have experienced the same desire to escape from their hometown and their past.

Shuichi’s words to Kirie at the beginning of the story read like the lyrics to a Bruce Springstein song. “Let’s leave this town together. We’ll go crazy if we stay here.” isn’t far off from “Oh baby, this town rips the bones from your back…we gotta get out while we’re young.” (Born to Run).

The subtext of Suichi’s words is that he is afraid that he’ll become like his parents if he stays there.

Let’s talk about characters. They’re very fun, even if they’re just your usual Ito archetypes. Shuichi is basically the classic emo boy, but he’s executed with a level of realism. He has many eccentricities, like the way he constantly apologizes for everything (especially his parents), the way often starts saying something then goes “nevermind”, and his constant neuroticism.

Kirie is also the archetype of the proper final girl. However, once again, she feels realistic. She’s a genuinely nice person with a cheerful personality, and she bounces off of Shuichi fantastically.

Our first episode in this story is a pretty tight one, seeing Shuichi’s father obsessing over spirals. Ito once again shows his skill at slowly building up the tension, with each event weirder than the last. This all builds up towards one of the most horrifying images I’ve ever seen. If you’ve read the book, then you know what I mean. That whole scene is just perfect with its suspense. We already know that the Dad is dead, but we don’t know how, and we get this entire page of just the lid of the bath being opened.

This story also has Ito executing his ideas of obsession pretty much perfectly. A man’s obsession with spirals drives him apart from his family, turns him into a jerk, and then finally kills him. While that isn’t something that has killed him, there are many parallels between this and many real-world issues.

Our second story is also pretty horrific, seeing Shuichi’s Mom slowly spiraling into insanity. I do really appreciate how so many of the events in this story have consequences, as it’s neat when the events actually affect our characters.

It’s also pretty disturbing to watch Shuichi’s Mom’s descent, as it feels very real. We saw in the first chapter that her husband was abusive to her, and now spirals sort of represent him.

There’s also this fear that she is going to end up like him. Shuichi’s Mom doesn’t want to go to a mental hospital because they planned on sending Shuichi’s Dad there. The hallucinations of Shuichi’s Dad tell the mother to “join him”. Her desire not to be like her husband leads her to taking the opposite approach to spirals, but these both lead the characters to the same place.

Despite all of this, the Mom does have brief moments of lucidity which make this feel all the more real.

It’s also easy to feel bad for Shuichi, who has to watch all of this happen to his Mom. We see how Shuichi keeps going to all of these lengths to care for his Mom, but it’s not enough in the end, and his job is a thankless one. There are also many parallels to this story and real life. Also, Shuichi is a teenager who has no idea how to handle the situation. There’s a great scene where he kind of snaps at his Mom, and it’s perfect because of how real it feels. Shuichi isn’t doing a great job at taking care of his Mom because he doesn’t know how and he shouldn’t be in this position.

It’s also easy to feel bad about Kirie, who very clearly cares for Shuichi, but doesn’t know how to comfort him.

These first two chapters paint a fantastic depiction of how hopeless the situation is. The situation is bad, and it’s going to keep getting worse, spreading like a disease, with every event causing another one.

Then, the third chapter centers around a completely new character.

Oh, well. This chapter is also pretty great, as it is about the pretty girl with the birthmark, and it features that image everyone loves making fanart of.

This chapter does continue the idea of obsession. Birthmark Girl has a similar problem to Shuichi’s Dad, and it causes them to have a similar fate.

While this story is a step down in terms of pathos and interesting psychology, it does show a progression in scale and the supernatural.

The fourth chapter centers around Kirie’s dad making spooky pottery.

The drama in it is nice. I like the part where Kirie has to literally drag Shuichi to go have dinner at her place. The whole dinner scene is also interesting, as it features Shuichi being confronted with reminders of his Dad’s demise and Kirie’s Dad being just the biggest asshole about it. It feels pretty real. Many people are not very empathetic to others' mental struggles. There’s a line where Kirie’s mom muses that Shuichi is overreacting, and it’s like “Yeah, he’s overreacting because his parents are both dead. People are irrational sometimes. That’s a symptom of distress.” However, this is a positive, as I can definitely see this happening in real life.

This chapter is a bit underwhelming in the scare department, however, as nothing really bad happens. Well, their house burns down, but no one really dies, so it’s alright.

I do like how this chapter sees Kirie and Shuichi being active participants in the story, with Kirie calling Shuichi to destroy the kiln in order to save her family. Something I’ve never noticed is that it’s previously mentioned that Shuichi is afraid of going to Kirie’s house because it’s located near Dragonfly Pond, but when Kirie says she’s in danger, he rushes over there.

There’s a bit of a character arc given to Shuichi in this chapter, and this character arc actually affects the story! Shuichi changed for the better, and as a result, he was awarded! That’s how good writing works!

The chapter after this is the Romeo and Juliet one. It’s just cool body horror. Thumbs up.

It does have the problem of having some very convoluted drama between a large cast of characters introduced in this one chapter, but the ending has some very creative imagery.

It also does have some nice character progression for both Shuichi and Kirie, with Shuichi originally not wanting anything to do with the story and with Kirie being fine with interfering by herself, but the two of them eventually working together.

Also, their actions once again actually affect the story, so that’s nice.

The sixth chapter is the hair one. It may be the weakest story of the lot, as it engages in to many classic Junji Ito tropes (suicide, a girl who is obsessed with being very pretty, people acting unwise due to their horniness). It also feels pretty inconsequential, and it doesn’t help that hair isn’t that scary.

However, there’s nothing insulting about this chapter.

Something I’ve realized on my eighth or so re-read of this book is that the side characters in this story act weirder as it goes along. In the first two stories, everyone’s pretty normal, but then we get events like the random teacher telling Kiri to “fix” her hair when it’s fucking magically floating. These instances of nonsensical side character actions will grow over the course of the story, with the slug story being a pretty great example.

The seventh chapter is the jack in the box one! It’s fucked up. The body horror at the end is disturbing AF.

It also has a fantastic moment of comedy where Shuichi explains that he’s going to hammer a stake into a corpse to prevent it from waking up…despite not knowing if that will work. It’s like he’s semi-genre aware. A lot of supernatural horror stories have characters researching the supernatural in order to defeat it, or hiring an expert such as Van Helsing, but that is never seen as an option in this story, and I like that.

It’s also funny how Shuichi is also acting like he knows what’s going on, but he’s clearly as clueless as everyone else, the only difference is that he’s just had a bunch of experiences with the spiral.

The eighth chapter is the snail chapter. The snail chapter is such a chapter.

We start off with this rather pudgy kid who’s lazy, and that may be my biggest complaint about the chapter. The setup is kind of a dumb fat joke.

However, the execution isn’t silly at all. Seeing this kid slowly turning into a snail is pretty horrific.

I also love the fact that he keeps coming to school. It’s so bizarre, but the story treats this all like it is dead serious.

Junji Ito often has problems with tone, but the tone here is pitch perfect. It takes something that is disturbing in a weird way and also kind of campy, and then it treats it with total seriousness. Even though the concept is a joke, the story never makes any jokes. In fact, the biggest emotion I feel at the beginning is sympathy for this poor kid who is being bullied.

The story also tries to make the situation make sense by saying that he had been “hiding in the hills”, and he hadn’t been at his house in days. Of course, that raises the question of why the school didn’t contact the parents before this, but they do eventually contact the kid’s parents.

Whatever.

The next absolutely bizarre occurrence in the story is the class keeping the snail kid as a pet. It works because it has a certain logic to it. Like, where else is the kid going to go? Of course, what makes this chapter really work is that the jerk who bullied the pudgy kid before turns into a snail. It’s such a simple act of karma that works so perfectly.

Then, the two snails have snail sex.

At this point while first reading the story, I thought to myself that this could not get any weirder. I’m wrong, as this story has a beautifully bizarre ending.

This story is so close to not working, but it manages to thread the needle between horror and humor just right. It’s an extremely delicate balance that is achieved with the help of some excellent art.

The chapter after that is the lighthouse chapter, which is just kind of unnoteworthy, as it’s nowhere near as bizarre as the preceding story. However, it does let Kirie once again be an active character whose decisions affect the story. It also does show how the scale of the spiral is growing.

We are brought back into bizarreness with the next two chapters, the hospital stories with the pregnant ladies who become vampires and their weird mushroom babies.

Both of these chapters have their own wonderful little mysteries which have wonderfully bizarre solutions.

Also, I do like how these chapters are a result of Kirie being injured in the lighthouse chapter. I always like it when characters suffer injuries and we actually see them recover over an extended period of time.

My only disappointment is that we never really return to the hospital and the pregnant vampires inside.

However, after this, the chapters get really serialized as the situation gets worse very quickly.

The next chapter is the one where the storm wants to bang Kirie. I do think it’s weird that the story never reiterates on why a storm wants to bang Kirie. Also, there’s no reason why the characters survive the horny storm. They just survive.

The next chapter is the one with the tendril monster. The suspense is as good as it always is, the monster looks awesome, and the idea of becoming such a monster is horrific. However, this is the second problem within the story that just kind of solves itself.

However, this story goes to the next level when shit really hits the fan in the following chapters. It is then when we see the spiral wrapping in people from outside Koruz-cho, such as the reporter character. I’ve complained previously about stories suddenly shifting perspective, but it works in this story because the outsider perspective makes for a perfect pair of eyes to see the new state of Koruz-cho.

In these chapters, we get more snail people and people eating the snail people and the evil whirlpool kids and it’s all delightfully crazy. I love seeing all of the ways the society of Koruz-cho breaks down, as it, once again, feels very real. There’s a spectrum of asshole-ness amid the citizens of Koruz-cho. Some people are down right evil, some are chaotic jerks, and others are just kind of apathetic. The diminishment of resources has made people head into “survival of the fittest” mode.

There’s also an increase in tribalism, with the people getting all knotted together being a metaphorical representation of this.

Of course, when we get the people all knotted together in the house is when the story truly kicks into high gear. It’s some extremely horrific imagery that I think about all of the time.

The last few chapters are a never ending stream of surreality and horror, and it’s hard to put the book down. Some of Ito’s most haunting and powerful imagery comes from these chapters.

After all of this slow build up, you would assume that this finale wouldn’t live up to the hype, and yet, it totally does live up, just because of how visually overwhelming it all is. The images of those people trapped in the houses and the tangled corpses and the city underground are going to be lodged in my brain forever.

The very end is…interesting. Throughout the series, Shouchi has consistently tried to get Kirie to leave, and finally, in the 16th or so chapter, Kirie agrees. However, they can’t escape.

The ending of the final chapter sees Kirie and Shouchi accepting their fate and embracing, as there’s simply nothing else they can do.

The problem is, that kind of means the story is sort of saying that trauma is escapable.

I suppose there is some theme of companionship, that Kirie and Shouchi were able to be friends even at the end. Their relationship seems happier than Shouchi’s parents. It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet-esque tragedy in the sense that their relationship ends when it’s at its most passionate, so we never see it decay. There’s something kind of tempting and romantic about that, but it’s also not a happy ending.

The thing about Shouchi as a character is that he’s someone who seems afraid of companionship, so the fate of becoming one of the people packed into the rooms must be pretty horrifying to him. That’s a fate faced by many people in many Ito stories. There’s a fear of a loss of individuality.

However, the ending sees Shouchi accepting companionship, with him permanently being attached to someone else and becoming a small piece of the spiral city. This is a complete loss of individuality.

Something else I’ve always appreciated about Uzumaki is how out of time it feels. There’s a sense that it could take place anytime in the fifty years, barring a few details. It even feels culturally vague. Obviously, the names and food put its location as Japan, but it still feels like you would only need to make some minor changes, and then it could take place anywhere from Australia to Argentina to Astapor.

I guess there’s a universality to this story.

Everyone can relate to wanting to grow up as a kid.

In a sense, Shouchi is a character who is more eager to grow up than Kirie, and the ending sees Kirie’s mindset winning, with the two of them frozen in eternal youth. The spiral kind of represents an absence of change, something antithetic to the idea of growing up.

Circling back to the idea of individuality, a big part of growing up is getting your identity. After all, everyone says college is about finding yourself.

The people in the underground spiral city aren't individuals so much as they are small pieces of a whole. Shouchi’s acceptance of this shows him being willing to accept companionship.

Also, Shouchi has spent this entire series being afraid of spirals, and then he kind of accepts becoming a spiral. I guess the idea is that the only way to obtain meaningful relationships is to face your worst fear and stand up to your trauma.

Throughout Uzumaki, Shouchi bars himself up in his room, constantly afraid of the spiral, only to be dragged out due to his love for Kirie. Aaahhh.

Shouchi really has no stake in the story at the end, as it’s just Kirie looking for her parents. However, he’s willing to go to Dragonfly Pond and observe the source of all his trauma for her. Aaahhh.

Perhaps it is the dynamic between Shouchi and Kirie which makes them legitimately likable protagonists. Shouchi is a little emo boy who you can tell really likes Kirie because he keeps putting himself in situations he doesn’t like for her, and Kirie is a little sunshine girl who’s willing to spend her time trying to make Shouchi feel better. They’re opposites who complete each other.

Of course, both characters have similarities. They both like to yell when they get frustrated, they’re both pretty caring people, and they’re both rather mature for their ages, I guess.

I’ve always liked how Shouchi and Kirie didn’t kiss or anything at the end. Like, yeah, your soulmate who you want to share oblivion with can be just a friend. That’s a really sweet message.

Overall, Uzumaki is one of the best examples of build-up in a story. With one or two exceptions, every story in this book ramps up the tension ever so slightly before finally delivering it into one of the most horrific, imaginative, and chaotix climaxes possible.

2. The Enigma of Amigara Fault-

(Spoilers)

There is a french phrase, l’appel du vide, or “the call of the void”. It’s that voice telling someone to jump when they’re standing at the edge of a cliff.

Lots of Ito stories deal with that, but I think the Enigma of Amigara Fault handles it the best.

That’s because if most people were in the situation the characters were in, they would probably feel that call of the void. Imagine seeing a hole and knowing that it is just your right size. There’s something about that which seems very pleasing to my OCD.

Of course, the idea of going into one of those holes is also terrifying. I’m sure we all had some experience as a kid where we got temporarily stuck in some sort of tight space. There’s a very certain feeling of fear associated with that, a mix between claustrophobia and the fear of loss of control. Being stuck in these holes is that taken to its most extreme extent.

Let me put this another way. Imagine there’s an itch, and you really want to scratch the itch, but that would cause you to experience the most painful event imaginable, and you won’t be able to un-do it. That’s another scary part of this story, the permanence. Going into the hole is such a simple and quick decision, but you can never go back.

What also makes this story so chilling is the fact that multiple characters say they know the hole will kill them, but they have to go in the hole. That’s such a horrifying concept, you know that there is a decision that will lead to your death/stretching out, but you also know that you will make this decision at some point.

The danger in this story feels constant, because it’s entirely psychological. The character’s can’t escape their minds.

Circling back to the call of the void, Ito is also very interested in desire in general, specifically self destructive desires. So many stories involve people going to ridiculous lengths because they’re horny.

Enigma asks “Why? Why do we desire doing things that cause us harm?”

This question is never answered. There are ideas: loneliness, a belief that there is nothing for you in reality, a desire to escape from the uncomfortableness of a world that you don’t fit into. There’s a reason why the most famous panel in this story is a guy saying “It was made for me!” This is a person believing that some sort of destiny lies in their destruction, and that it will correct whatever is wrong about the universe or themselves.

This is a perfect story. It does a fantastic job at setting up clear stakes, with us slowly learning the consequences of stepping into a hole. Not only that, but as more and more people enter the holes, the suspense slowly builds and builds before finally bursting into a crescendo with that one last horrific image.

The concept of this story is terrifying, the pacing is perfect, the suspense is bone-chilling, the exposition never feels like too much, and even though the characters are fairly flat, I don’t really mind, as this story doesn’t require them to be anything more.

Long Dream-

(Spoilers)

The beginning of this story does a fantastic job of setting up suspense, showing a girl in a hospital room thinking about she’s going to die, only for a mysterious silhouette to appear at the window on the door, with this alarming the girl.

Moving on, I love how inescapable the horror is in this story. There is nothing the characters can do.

I also like how there’s a certain point where the horror isn’t about the afflicted man wanting to stay in the waking world, but the dreaming world being preferable. That thought makes me want to sit down, curl in a corner, and not think about anything for a while.

Also, the man liking what happens in his dream because he has fallen in love there is kind of sweet, and it has that same sense of tragedy as that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. You know the one.

There’s sort of an evolution with the horror in this story, as it goes from psychological to existential to body horror back to psychological. This is all done seamlessly, with it feeling like a natural progression from the previous.

Another great aspect of this story is how it chooses to focus on the doctors, as they’re kind of the source of the actual conflict of the story. They’re feverishly trying to understand exactly what is going on, and all the while they have to try to control the two patients.

In many ways, the doctors are kind of jerks, as they’re not believing their patients and smallifying their issues. However, it’s probably also a real pain to have to take care of two patients suffering from a horrific unexplainable disease.

There’s no hero and villain in this story. Everyone is a victim…except for that one doctor at the end who nonconsensually infects the girl. Fuck him. I hope he dies.

Still, he’s more than just a one dimensional villain who twiddles his thumbs, and that final moment makes for one more fantastic emotional gut punch. Also, this character starts out legitimately trying to help the patients. His descent into villainy gives him a bit of a character arc.

Also, it’s neat that this story is from the perspective of the people trying to understand the phenomenon, rather than the direct victims of the phenomenon themselves. That is a very classic sci-fi trope. It makes sense, as we, the audience, are in the same situation as the doctors, trying to understand this phenomenon as we’re all creeped out. The ending sees a doctor basically surrendering, admitting there’s no solution to this, and this comes after the doctor spent the entire story trying to understand this illness. As such, it feels like we have also lost the battle to understand this illness.

This story is a battle versus the unknown, and the unknown wins.

Despite how fantastical the premise of Long Dream is, this is a very down to earth story. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone in that way.

Also, as a major Speculative Evolution fan, this story perfectly exemplifies why Speculative Evolution regarding humans is so captivating: the idea of humanity becoming something else is horrific, but it’s sort of the preferable option. That’s also how it is with life, where you’re going to end up becoming a different person who looks very different- and that’s if you’re lucky.

Time is the one monster none of us can defeat.

In conclusion, this is a perfect story. It’s horrifying in a hundred different ways, it’s legitimately thought provoking, and the imagery and ideas stay with you for a long time after reading it.

The Junji Ito Story Ranking, Worst to Best

Trigger warning:

Suicide, self harm, mentions of body horror, death, animal death, rape, marital abuse, transphobia, and sexism.

This will not include Junji Ito’s adaptations of others' works. There are also some works which couldn’t be put in this story because they simply aren’t available in English.

Also, there are two kinds of Junji Ito stories: one shots and longer stories.

One shots are stories such as Slug Girl and the Enigma of Amigara Fault.

Longer stories include Gyo and Remina.

There are some stories which are kind of on the fence between the two such as Tomie, Souchi, Uzumaki, and the Dissolving Classroom. These are collections of multiple different stories which can work together as one cohesive story. I ranked all of the Tomie chapters as separate stories as I felt like their quality varied, but Uzumaki, Souchi and Dissolving Classroom had more consistent quality (for better or for worse), so they were ranked as one whole work.

Penultimately, some of these stories have multiple titles. I have tried to show both titles when that happens, but there are most likely some times when I have made a mistake.

Lastly, some of my reviews will contain spoilers while others will not. Those with spoilers will contain a (Spoilers) tag.

Worst to best

133. The Bizarre Hikizuri Siblings:

The Seance-

I hate every character in this story.

This story is about a family and they’re all spooky weirdos, like the Addams family if they were all annoying.

There’s the fat guy.

His design is obnoxious, and his entire existence is a never ending stream of stupid, overdone fat jokes. Wait, actually, that’s not fair, there is also a bunch of gross out humor.

There’s the little girl. She’s the “evil little girl” trope. She’s obnoxious and I hate her design.

There’s the little boy. He’s the “evil little boy” trope. He’s obnoxious and I hate his design.

There’s the eldest girl. She’s…she’s there.

There’s the eldest boy. He’s pretending to be mature and he speaks in a weird false-eloquent manner. He is not extremely obnoxious.

There’s Narumi. She’s “normal”, which means she’s boring.

The first half of the story sees us being introduced to our main characters. The eldest boy invites a girl to dinner. At the dinner, ee see the fat guy drooling and eating lots of food in a gross way.

The family has a fight and I don’t know what emotion I should be feeling in that scene. Is it funny? If so, it fails, because there aren't any actual jokes. Is it supposed to be dramatic? If so, it fails because I don’t care about any of these characters. It’s clear that the family is grieving, but they’re all grieving in these extremely inhuman ways- so I can’t relate to them.

The family decides to have a seance for their dead parents, and that takes up the rest of the story. It’s filled with gross-out humor, inane banter, and extremely repetitive character beats. I think the little girl cries like ten or so times.

The family is also just arguing all of the time. Every page is another argument. I know that families argue with each other, but this is ridiculous. I don’t think this family likes each other.

All of this arguing means that the plot has the pacing of molasses, as none of this arguing moves the plot forward.

Also, family drama isn’t interesting when the family are just annoying caricatures of tired archetypes.

This story sucks in every way. It’s not even nice to look at because the designs of the family make me want to vomit.

God, I hate this story so much.

132. All of the Souichi Stories-

The Souichi stories are too silly to be scary, too dark to be funny, too down-to-earth to be campy, and too annoying to be likable.

Souichi is a child who never poses a threat to our main characters, so he’s never scary.

However, his hijinks are also not fun to watch because they usually involve hurting people.

Fictional characters getting seriously hurt can be funny in a fucked up way, but only if something is added to make it funny. These stories just have someone getting their hand hit with a hammer. People getting hurt can also be fun if they are being injured in an extraordinarily cartoony manner, like in Evil Dead 2, but the injuries characters receive here are stuff like stepping on a nail, which is a very simple and realistic way to injure oneself, meaning that it’s not fun.

Despite being about a child who’s evil, these stories never have much fun with that premise or do anything creative. The only way Souichi being a child barely affects his career as an asshole is that he doesn’t face consequences.

Also, the others characters in this story are blacks of wood with no personalities and no dimensions. As such, the story is extraordinarily boring whenever Souichi isn’t on screen.

Watching a child be annoying to a bunch of boring people gets extremely old extremely quickly, especially with how repetitive these stories are. There are about fourteen of them, and they all have the same plot.

Lastly, Souichi is just annoying. He has all of the most annoying character traits of children: he always repeats things, he screams way too much, he eats really messily, he’s a gleeful asshole, and he never faces any consequences for his actions.

This kind of character can work, like that prince kid from the Tintin comics, Abdullah or whatever. However, that kid appears in like fifteen pages over the course of two different books.

However, Souchi is the main focus of these many stories.

Even when Souchi gets what is coming to him, it’s never cathartic because it’s always way too much, like him getting nails through his cheeks. That’s disturbing.

Essentially, the problem with these stories is that they have no sense of tone. The mix of morbidity and wackiness leads to the stories just being really annoying.

They’re also really repetitive, both in the sense that almost all of these stories follow the same formula with the same beats, but this formula is one where the plot is one continuous cycle of Souchi being a little shit, getting away with it, and then getting angry for some reason.

131. Fashion Model-

(Spoilers)

Haha it’s funny because the woman is ugly and aaah! it’s also scary because the woman is ugly and haha it’s funny because the ugly woman is going to rape the man as punishment for being slightly paranoid.

This story is stupid. It’s cruel to every character involved, it’s not funny, the tone is all over the place, the pacing is extremely slow, and its attempts at suspense are laughably pathetic because they’re based on us being scared by a woman for no other reason than her being ugly.

It also has two really annoying tropes being taken to their extreme:

A woman pursuing a man who is clearly not interested in her and

Ugly people are evil/gross/funny.

When this story isn’t being absolutely awful, it’s just boring because every character ranges from bland to just kind of unlikable, like our main character.

Despite him being kind of a jerk, seeing bad things happen to him isn’t gratifying because they are far worse than what he deserves.

130. The Bizarre Hikizuri Siblings:

Narumi’s Boyfriend-

(Spoilers)

This first two pages of this story see a teenage girl, Narumi Hikizuri, about to commit suicide, only to be saved by her boyfriend. You would assume that the rest of the story explores depression. You would not be wrong.

We then meet the other Hikizuri siblings, who, as I mentioned previously, suck, and there are five of them!

Then, we cut back to the teenage girl, Narumi obviously, and her boyfriend. Narumi is depressed and threatening to commit suicide again. Her boyfriend is kind of being an asshole about it, complaining about how hard it is to care for her.

It’s pretty fucked up that there is really no good support network for Narumi.

Then, Narumi’s family finds her and kidnaps her, and it’s at this point where I can’t help but wonder if Narumi’s siblings are supposed to be scary or funny in this story. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to be scary, as their designs are weird and they talk weirdly, and they’re stupid and silly and wacky and dumb. However, them being funny makes no sense considering the fact that this is a story wich starts with a suicide attempt. Also, it’s hard to laugh because the siblings are so fucking stupid looking. They make me nauseous. Not only that, but the family members are being abusive to Narumi, and that’s not funny, even if their abuse is silly.

Anywhoo, the story randomly swerves in tone when Narumi says she’s going to kill herself, douses herself with gasoline, and flicks a cigarette lighter. You assume she’s on fire and is dying. You would be…uhh…wrong?

After that happens, the family gets Narumi’s boyfriend, takes him to their house, and tortures him by forcing him to lay in a bag with what appears to be the burnt body of Narumi.

It’s kind of disturbing, but it’s also very silly. So, what emotion am I supposed to be feeling?

Then, Narumi shows up, and the boyfriend dies of a heart attack.

As it turns out, the thing that burned was a mannequin, and the family were just messing with the boyfriend.

Narumi only seems a bit angry about her boyfriend dying, and the last panel sees her saying she “Had no intention of actually doing it” meaning she had no intention of setting herself on fire.

Now, I’m going to give the story the benefit of the doubt and say that Narumi was actually going to kill herself. I sure hope that when the family told Narumi she was just doing this for attention, they weren’t right. I sure hope that when Narumi threatened to kill herself in front of her boyfriend, she wasn’t manipulating him.

If that was true, this story would be awful.

I’m going to assume that Narumi is just lying. The story still sucks because we have a depressed character trapped with her abusive family and the story doesn’t seem to care. However, it sucks a little bit less because it’s not insinuating that depressed people are “looking for attention”.

In conclusion, this story is one of the most tonally bizarre things I’ve ever seen. It goes back and forth between silly hijinks and serious drama.

It also doesn’t help that the silly hijinks aren’t funny, and I don’t even know much about Narumi and her boyfriend, so I don’t care about the drama of their story!

129. Groaning Pipes-

(Spoilers)

This is the story about the people getting stuck in pipes.

To truly understand this story, we need to go in deep.

The story starts off with black haired girl being stalked by, gasp!, a guy who is overweight and ugly. Now, I’d argue that the comic seems to want us to find him gross through the way the panels frame him.

So, we’re not off to a great start.

The pudgy kid asks black haired girl out and black haired girl rebukes him, something we are told has happened many times before. So, this guy sucks.

However, black haired girl then insults this guy by calling him a “swollen and ugly".

Now, obviously, black haired girl has every right to insult someone who is being a creep. However, she is not insulting him on the grounds of being a creep, but instead focusing on his appearance, something he can’t control. In fact, all of the insults the black haired girl levels against the pudgy kid, and there are many, revolve around his appearance. The pudgy kid isn’t bad because he’s pudgy, he’s bad because he’s being a creep.

A result of this is that I kind of dislike both characters in this situation. Maybe that’s the point. If so, then I can congratulate this story on being rather complex in making the point that the girl had the right to not want to have sex with a guy she doesn’t like. Meanwhile, the guy, however much of a piece of shit he is, has the right to not be belittled for his appearance.

Of course, I’m assuming that’s the point. It’s probably not, because the rest of the story is very stupid. Also, the way both characters act is so extreme, it makes them seem like complete caricatures. The pudgy guy is a gross creepy incel and the black haired girl is a vapid valley girl.

Anywhoo, once that scene happens, black haired girl and her sister go to their house, where they bathe for way too long. At first, I was a bit unsure if these siblings were actually siblings because they look to be the same age and act less like siblings and more like casual work friends.

Then, we learn there is something wrong with the pipes in this house. We also see that the mom of this character is a total neat freak. The story feels the need to tell us this fifty or so times in these ten or so pages, and it quickly gets very annoying. There’s also an agonizingly pointless scene where the mom yells at a plumber.

It is also in this part where the two girls hatch a plan to let the pudgy guy go to their house so the neat freak mother can scare him off.

To finish our set up, we also meet the Dad of the family, who is divorced from the Mom and hasn’t seen his kids in a while. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t have the time to explore what it’s like to be a child of divorce in any meaningful way.

So, the story has just been set up. There isn’t even the suggestion of something scary.

The plan of the two sisters goes perfectly, and the mom throws eggs at the pudgy kid.

Anywhoo, then the plot actually kicks off when the mom accidentally kills the Dad because she thinks he’s the fat kid when he sneaks into the house at night. I guess the Dad just really wanted to see his kids again, and IDK, maybe he was drunk or something. None of the members of the family seem concerned about the death of this man.

The mom tells the cops that the husband had a knife, so her killing of him was in self defense. I suppose that makes sense. However, what doesn’t make sense is that the family is just allowed to stay in this house that has become a crime scene. I suppose I’m nitpicking. Whatever.

We then see the Mom obsessing over her husband’s blood being cleaned from the floor, and the harassment causes the maid to quit. Why does the maid even exist in the story? I don’t know.

After these excruciatingly long sequences of nothing, we finally get some suspense when mysterious sounds start coming from the pipes.

This, among many other things, causes the Mom to freaking lose it. This is not the only Junji Ito story where a stressed out mom with a dead husband goes crazy. Another one will be near the top. However, this one doesn’t work because the mom is an annoying caricature of a mom, and her neurosciences are so extreme she becomes unbelievable.

Anywhoo, it turns out that the pudgy kid is in the pipes, which is where the sound is coming from.

The black haired girl suddenly starts acting like an asshole for no reason, and the story ends with the sister getting pulled into the pipes- presumably by the pudgy kid. I should mention that she is wearing a towel, so there is an unsettling subtext to this.

That’s fucked up. What is this story saying? Fat people are rapists?

Also, the mom just disappears from the story.

One kind of wonders why the husband and his death was even included, as he’s absolutely inessential to the actual main plot, which is the incel in the pipes. The mom is also pretty pointless, with her only important action being throwing eggs at the pudgy kid.

This whole story is convoluted, contrived, and nonsensical. Every character in it is a caricature, whether it be of women or of fat people. It also seems uninterested in actually creating an atmosphere of dread and suspense.

Unfortunately, a common theme throughout Ito’s stories (specifically his earlier work) is unattractive people being cast as villains and women going through extremely traumatic events in a way which feels indulgent. This story has these two being taken to the extreme.

128. Nanakuse Kyokumi-

This is the transphobic story.

It follows a woman , Koroketsu, who is obsessed with a writer. She goes to see that writer, Nanakuse, only for Nanakuse to turn out to be evil…and also a trans woman.

Anywhoo, the main character, Koroketsu, of this story is one of the more colorful main characters because she’s really weird.

This means that the beginning of this story is…interesting with how strange it is.

Then, we meet Nanakuse, the author. She is drawn with a very pronounced chin and nose, and our main character literally thinks “A male!” when she first sees her.

It’s at this point when I stopped wanting to read the story, but I had to because of this fucking list.

After this, the author throws the main character into a dungeon, our main character suffers some body horror, and then the story ends.

If it wasn’t for the transphobia, this story would probably be in C. It is very quickly paced. In fact, it’s too quickly paced, as there’s no time given to creating suspense and atmosphere. We don’t see the author seeming more and more off putting as we get more hints that she is evil. The second the main character shows up, the author acts like an absolute asshole. Then, we get a scene of the two of them drinking which does nothing to build suspense. At the end of that scene, the author randomly reveals themself as evil when they toss the main character in a dungeon. It’s kind of sudden. There’s no buildup with this story.

You know Dracula? That’s a story about a person visiting the house of someone mysterious (Dracula), and we get more and more red flags about Dracula throughout the beginning of the story. It’s fun and suspenseful. If Dracula hypnotized Renfield after one conversation, the story would be very boring.

Moving on, the quick pacing means that the stuff about people having “quirks” doesn’t have time to be fleshed out. It seems interesting, but we barely get to see any of it, or the consequences of it, or why all of these people are obsessed with it.

A bunch of exposition is given, but it's all surface level stuff that doesn’t even help us to genuinely understand what’s going on. We learn how the author bought the house and why she keeps people in the prison, but none of this explores the idea of having quirks. Obviously, horror stories thrive when the horror isn’t explained, but it’s helpful if we at least understand what the horrifying thing even is. Imagine Jaws, but we never learn that it’s a shark.

Not only that, the body horror is a little more silly than scary. It’s also very sudden, much like the rest of this story.

Overall, even without the extreme transphobia, this story is just half-baked, with a half-baked idea that never makes any sense or seems all that scary.

Also, what was the deal with the old servant lady?

#junji ito #long post #uzumaki #the enigma of amigara fault #tomie #gyo

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spammreviews · 3 months

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19. Glyceride-

(Spoilers)

This is that extremely disgusting story about grease.

Whether intentional or not, this story definitely works as a metaphor for abuse. One of the most well remembered images from this story sees the brother character squirting a liquid out of his body onto the sister. That’s a disgusting sentence.

Even without the metaphor, this story is still very gross. Grease is gross, and grease coming out of the human body is even grosser.

The body horror of this story is less fantastical than other body horror in Ito stories, but that makes it so effective.

Whether or not this story intentionally wants to be metaphorical, it does achieve a real life plight very well, that being the plight of people growing up in working class families where their whole life is kind of consumed by poverty. The reason for the grease issue is because their house is above a barbecue restaurant that their Dad runs, and their low-income house has sucky ventilation. So many of the problems in this story evolve from the family having to deal with this grease, with the brother being messed up because he’s bullied for his acne and also having a strange addiction to grease.

I also really appreciate the way Mount Fuji is used in this story, where it symbolizes calm and happiness to our main character, but then she has dreams where it erupts into grease. As a result, Mount Fuji no longer refreshes her. Her situation has engulfed every aspect of her life, and there’s no real escape from her trauma. Even her sort of happy place becomes a reminder. That’s really fucked up.

Also, the use of the oil index also works as a great way for this story to have a build to it.

Also also, the thing about the Dad giving the main character oil to drink in her sleep is so fucked up. The main character thinks he’s trying to turn her into her brother, but I’ve always assumed she’s wrong and the Dad is just so absorbed into his way of life he forgets some people are different.

No matter what the reason for the force feeding, it works well as a metaphor for how trauma is passed on, I guess. The Dad doesn’t know how to be a Dad, so he just ends up forcing his shitty tendencies onto his children.

Of course, it was probably Ito’s intention that the Dad was giving the daughter grease because he was planning on killing her and serving her as food, because it’s implied that the son was served as food, and we get a page where some customers ask the Dad where he’s going to get more meat. This page is immediately before the page where the Mount Fuji oil dream occurs, with this presumably being the first night that the Dad force fed the girl oil.

Moving on, the ending of this story is sudden, but there’s really no other way it could have been done. Where else could it go?

Overall, any complaint I could have involving this story really doesn’t matter because the point of this story is to be as gross and disturbing as possible, and it succeeds with flying colors. That one panel I talked about in the beginning makes me gag everytime I look at it, as do many of the panels with the brother character. For hours after, there’s usually a very bad taste in my mouth.

I feel like I need to sit down now.

18. The Earthbound-

I like how one of the darkest and unsettling Ito stories begins with a pretty funny joke. There’s a man standing still in a weird position in a public area, with a bunch of people staring at him. One of the people asks “Is he busking?” It’s silly.

Anywhoo, this is the story where people all across the world are stuck frozen in one place. It’s quite an intriguing concept, and the beginning of this story, which simply sees people reacting to this event, is interesting purely because of that.

However, the story doesn’t decrease in quality when we are introduced to our main character, Asano, as I like her. She has the same traits as the usual Junji Ito heroine, a nice girl who is nice.

However, she is very nice. Her first scene has her going to one of the earthbound and explaining that she’s with an organization trying to help him. She’s acting very respectful towards him, saying they’re not trying to “cure” him and all that. It was nice to see a social worker be good.

The scene after that is a step up, as we see Asano not only have to deal with an earthbound, but with the mother of the earthbound. This scene has a nice bit of pathos to it, with the Mom very clearly experiencing a huge amount of emotions. She’s kind of being rude to Asano, but Asano is being polite because the Mom is in obvious distress.

I like how, after that one joke, this story takes its concept very seriously, milking lots of drama out of it.

This scene with the mom and her earthbound son has many parallels to half a dozen events.

Overall, what a fantastic introduction. We get the tone, the core concept, and we’re introduced to our characters.

From there on out, the story can only get more interesting. We learn Asano’s backstory, and it was at this point when I figured out the big twist of this story. However, the predictability of the twist made the moment all the more impactful.

I also thought that Asano’s backstory added a really interesting dimension to her character. There are a lot of stories here where women are brutalized mostly just for shock value, but this story is one where the main character is a woman who experienced brutality long ago, meaning that we have the chance to explore how she deals with this trauma.

The story also raises the stakes by having the earthbound begin to freeze, and we get a legitimately pretty sad scene with the mom and the earthbound son from before.

The story ends pretty quickly after the twist is revealed, I guess because there’s really nothing left to do. There’s no real resolution to the mother with the earthbound son, but that’s kind of the point. This is a tragic story where nothing gets better. It’s just a bunch of people trying to deal with a reality that they can’t change.

Overall, this is one of the more grounded stories here.

17. The Bully-

I don’t need to explain this. If you’re familiar with Junji Ito, then you know about The Bully.

There’s the boy, Nao, and the girl, Kuriko.

It’s interesting that Kuriko doesn’t start out as a bully, just as a rather ill-tempered chill. However, she gets annoyed with Nao being around and being clingy, and, not being good at using communication skills, she decides to scare him away by being a jerk.

That’s kind of how a lot of people are in general, where they don’t want human companionship, so they just act like a jerk to everyone around them.

It’s interesting how her reasons for abuse grow from simply wanting to scare him away to her enjoying it. She’s made a habit out of it. However, it appears she only made a habit out of doing it to this one boy, which is interesting. We see from before that she has a lot of anger at everyone, as kids often have, and she’s taking it all out on this one kid.

She starts to act the traits of your classic abuser (despite being a child), saying that she’ll leave him if he doesn’t do things, and not wanting him to talk to others.

You know what’s disturbing? The way the kid later says that she was the only one who would play with him. So, the only reason why the kid is hanging out with her is because he doesn’t know what good friendship is like and he thinks that if he doesn’t have her, then he’ll have no one.

The idea of two children being in an abusive relationship seems absurd, but this story does it in such a way that it feels perfectly logical and realistic.

However, while this whole first 3/4th is a bit disturbing, it doesn’t get really disturbing until Nao and Kuriko’s child is born.

The son looks exactly like Nao, and we get a scene where he acts like him, and the son is framed just like Nao was before, pulling on Kuriko’s dress.

The rest of the story is just slowly growing, skin-tingling horror.

The ending has such a messed up insinuation.

It makes me want to vomit.

The whole thing is so fucked up. Like, adult Nao leaving and abandoning Kuriko made that resistance to human companionship come back.

This is a story which works exactly because it is realistic. Despite how ridiculous this is, I believe it can happen, and that’s scary.

16. Den of the Sleep Demon-

(Spoilers)

This is the story about the guy who turns inside out when he goes to sleep.

Firstly, horror stories where the monster attacks whenever you sleep are always terrifying, obviously. Sleep is something we have to all do, and it’s when we’re at our most vulnerable.

The idea of turning inside out is as creative as it is absolutely horrifying.

I quite like the main character of this story, as he’s a depressed writer who smokes, which is a fun archetype.

I like how much the guy’s apartment communicates his character. Obviously, it’s messy, with not alot of furniture, and he also has an acoustic guitar and what I’m pretty sure is a poster of the Beatles.

The ending here is also super horrific.

There’s also this idea that the creature turning the guy inside out is his dreams manifested. This is a guy who is depressed and kind of hates reality. However, the guy talks about how his dreams could never be a place of escape for him, as they were as real as the real world. Maybe that’s why he’s a fiction writer who owns a bunch of books.

While the main girl doesn’t have much of a personality, there is something very sweet about their relationship, how she’s willing to stay by this guy during all of this time.

At one point, the girl asks the guy a question, what he thinks the dream demon wants from the real world, and the guy doesn’t respond, suggesting that he doesn’t know what is good about the real world. However, later on, the guy kind of casually says that the only reason why he’s resisting the dream demon is because he doesn’t want to leave this world because of the girl. That’s sweet and also really heartbreaking.

At one point, the girl literally says “I’ll keep you anchored.” She’s the part of reality that is better than fantasy, and the guy’s desire for her keeps him staying in reality.

However, the end sees them both going into the dream world together. In a sense, it’s sweet. However, it’s also extremely disturbing. First off, you shouldn’t live in a fantasy. Second off, it’s sort of like his issues sucked her in as well. It seems like she was the one thing the guy cared about, and he ended up hurting her.

Even with all of this aside, the imagery in the back half of this chapter is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and that last line is very funny. I like it when demons quip.

Wait a minute, dream demon who makes quips. Shit. Freddy…

15. Hallucinations-

(Spoilers)

I really like stories about characters slowly going insane with guilt, and I also LOVE stories where it’s unclear what is real and what is not.

This is the story about a teenage boy who has killed his best friend due to jealousy about his height, and his guilt leads him to hallucinating people with long necks.

The beginning of this story does a great job at putting us in our main character’s headspace. He’s not even really certain if he killed his friend or not, and he also doesn’t even seem one hundred percent sure what his motives really were.

Obviously, the reason why our main character killed his best friend is not just because his best friend was taller. It was because he and his best friend used to be the same size, but, upon hitting puberty, his best friend’s growth spurt made him more popular and made more girls attracted to him.

Now, obviously, that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense, but this story has already established the idea that our main character is unreliable. The best friend probably got more popular and attracted more chicks due to a multitude of reasons, our main character has merely focused on this one reason.

Also, when you’re a kid, height is often seen as equivalent to being older, so it’s also possible that the best friend had matured more.

There’s also the suggestion that the two of them were growing apart, with the best friend spending more time hanging out with chicks.

Ito has many stories about women feeling bad because of their appearance, but this is the only time he’s depicted a man feeling bad about his appearance. There’s a specificity to our main character’s thoughts which makes the depiction work better.

It’s clear the hallucinations of long necks represent both our main character’s guilt and his feelings of inferiority.

What I like about this story is that our main character actually talks to a psychologist, or rather, his cousin who is a psychology major. Of course, we the audience can assume that he only told his cousin about the hallucinations, not the murders, so his diagnosis is faulty. This diagnosis is that our main character is hallucinating because he is isolated, as his parents are overseas. I do like how we are given this knowledge, as it lets us understand our main character a bit more.

This is one of Ito’s most character focused stories. Our main character even kind of goes through a character arc, kind of, a rarity for Mr. Ito.

My biggest problem with this story is the ending. It’s a wonderful “Oh shit!” moment and a legitimately surprising twist. However, it kind of takes away a bit of the impact of our main character’s descent into insanity.

Still, this is a story with some very fun, very clever character work, and also some really creative imagery.

14. Black Paradox-

Black Paradox is unique among the Ito canon, as it’s a big story with very little body horror.

The story begins with a group of four people all planning a group suicide.

On their drive to the place where they plan to kill themselves, our characters all state their reasons. This works as a nice way to familiarize us with these characters. This scene also has some fun foreshadowing in it.

I also like the way we slowly see more and more events showing that there is something wrong going on. This is buildup for a delicious bizarre sequence, and that’s the end of chapter one.

Chapter two begins with our characters going off to kill themselves again, which is darkly humorous, especially considering the fact that this second attempt also goes poorly.

Chapter two ends on a darkly comedic note, with our characters putting off killing themselves to start a business selling souls. I do love it when characters treat the supernatural very casually, like in the film Talk To Me. I also think it’s funny that these characters discover something which fundamentally changes the way we see the universe and decide to make a profit out of it.

By chapter three, the story is entirely a dark comedy. It works because of how absurd it is, these characters talking about how much profit they can make off of souls.

The characters are a mixed bag.

I like Pii-tan, the tall guy with the moustache, because he has a funny character design. Also, he’s the most innocent character among the group.

Another fun character is the blonde lady with the glasses. Her vaguely asshole nature is funny. One of my favorite lines in this comic is probably when she says, “Everyone knows the hardest substance on earth is diamond.” because I always read it in a condescending voice. She has the vibes of a business major, which is a fun character type.

A character I like somewhat less is the black-haired boy, as he’s kind of a jerk, but in a much more subdued and a much less interesting way. The cover image shows him with red hair, but I’m electing to ignore that.

Rounding out our group of four, there’s the black haired girl. She’s our main character, and she has no personality. Ignore the fact that the cover shows her with brown hair.

The ending of this chapter, featuring a TV program, has nothing to do with our main characters, but it is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever read. It’s simultaneously extremely dark and absolutely ridiculous.

Chapter four just continues this extremely morbid humor.

I do appreciate how much cause and effect there is in this story, with the fiery event at the end of the last chapter actually becoming a major plot point. I also like that the set up with Pii-tan in the car from a few chapters ago was paid off.

There’s also some fun horrific imagery in this chapter.

Chapter five and six get disturbing with this one doctor who is just the shittiest guy ever.

These chapters also make great use of a suicidal robot.

It’s also kind of darkly humorous how far the characters have gone from just wanting to kill themselves.

Chapter seven does a good job of wrapping the story up, leaving it on a very subtly horrific note.

This is easily Junji Ito’s tightest and cleverest plot. Most of his plots are just random things happening and characters reacting, but this plot feels like a series of dominoes falling as a specific result of our character’s actions.

There’s also some very clever plot twists.

This story is also fantastic at setting up rules and consistently following them. There is a well-defined logic to this story.

Pretty much everything in this story has an explanation to it. It is the least contrived story in the entire Ito canon.

I suppose I could argue that this story does minimize the act of suicide, something wich many of these stories do. However, I think that’s kind of the point. It’s supposed to feel weird that suicide is treated so casually.

13. Gyo-

(Spoilers)

This is a rather flawed story. The best part are the people in the gas machines. They’re absolutely horrific.

However, the first half is kind of weak because the idea of fish with legs, while kind of scary, isn’t that scary.

That still doesn’t mean the beginning is bad.

The very beginning does a great job at building suspense with this scene of a dude being attacked while under water.

However, after that, we are introduced to the two main characters: Kaori and IDK.

They’re kind of annoying.

We see Kaori and IDK having an argument. Like most arguments between married/dating couples, it starts out with something small, with Kaori not wanting to kiss IDK because he has bad breath and smells like fish.

However, it quickly turns to IDK being mad that Kaori is constantly complaining about everything, despite her being the one to schedule the trip, while Kaori…she…she just doesn’t seem to be happy in this relationship.

IDK claims Kaori has been constantly complaining, but at this point, we have only seen her saying she feels a bit queasy due to the smell of the sea once. It’s not even a complaint, it’s her explaining why she wants to stop being on a boat. We see her complain later, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Of course, Kaori saying that she wants IDK to brush his teeth every time they kiss is stupid.

I think she just doesn’t like IDK, and I don’t think IDK likes her either.

I suppose this is a fairly realistic depiction of a passionate-less relationship in turmoil.

The problem with Kaori is that she spends the next chapter or so of this story doing three things: complaining about smells, being saved by IDK, and complaining about other things. She also bathes a lot.

Having your female lead do nothing but complain about smells and be saved by the male main character isn’t great.

Kaori isn’t an extremely unrealistic character, and 25% of the time, her complaints are rational. She shouldn’t be attacked by sea creatures with legs. The problem is, listening to a character do nothing but complain and be useless is annoying.

There’s a pretty obvious comparison with Willy or whatever her name is from the second Indiana Jones film, but at least Willy goes through an arc and does a single action which ends up saving Indy and Short Round, even if it is just one action.

I’m not saying that every female character needs to be Ripley from Alien or anything, but it would be nice if your female character had more agency than a sack of potatoes.

It also doesn’t help that the drama starts to get so repetitive, like extremely repetitive. There are a million different times where Kaori asks her husband to do things, and I find that annoying.

There is also a part where she goes from “stereotype that maybe could exist” to “stereotype that probably could not exist”. The fact that she’s still complaining about the smell after the shark attack…like, I don’t think a person would do that. Even if they would, it doesn’t matter, because she does it so many times, and it’s annoying, very annoying.

Also, Kaori definitely does fit into the stereotype of the neurotic woman who slowly goes crazy, while our male lead barely seems to be scared by the events.

To be fair, most of the time when our male lead calls the female lead delusional and devalues her emotions, he is wrong. Not only that, but it is stated that the female character has a much stronger sense of smell than he does, and she also is infected while the husband is not. That does explain their different reactions.However, there are also times when the female lead freaks out over nothing, like when she thinks she sees a fish, but it’s just a cockroach. So, yeah, we have an instance of a woman freaking out because of a big bug that the husband swats.

Basically, this story is sexist. There’s no way around it. It indulges in sexist tropes.

However, the fish with legs do look really awesome, and it is very fun to see our characters fight them.

This whole beginning does a good job of slowly building up tension as we see more and more sea creatures and a wider and wider diversity of creatures. There’s a scene with a shark which is particularly well done, as we know the shark is going to have legs, so we’re eagerly awaiting it stepping on land. When it does, man oh man is it satisfying.

Gyo does a very good job overall at making you wait.

So, as an apocalyptic disaster story, it works very well, and the unique premise helps it to stick out.

This story also has some rather palatable exposition dumps. The exposition dumps feel necessary, as it’s information we are eager to know, and they don’t last too long.

However, the reason why this story is so high is because of the second half.

The buildup to this second half is pretty great. Before we see a person in a gas machine, we see an arm, which makes us really excited to see what a person would look like in one of those machines, and this story definitely does not disappoint.

The story also builds up to Kaori’s infection very well, with her noticing small boils on herself before we even see the arm in the machine.

I also like the scene where the IDK has to carry an infected Kaori on his back while running away from a shark because I love action scenes where our main character is held back by something.

Also, Ito knows how to draw action, as I’ve talked about previously.

Despite there being two halves to this story, they blend into each other very seamlessly because there isn’t one particular place where one ends and the other begins.

However, the fundamental problem with this story is that we don’t care about the relationship between IDK and Kaori, so it’s hard to be invested in the plot. IDK being forced to take care of someone and watch as they are slowly transformed by a horrific disease is, on its own, a very tragic idea. However, Kaori is rather annoying, and IDK is a block of wood.

Anywhoo, the reveal where we see Kaori in a gas machine is one of the best panels ever because of how much the story has built up to it. It’s obvious to us that she is going to be in a machine, but we don’t know what it is going to look like.

Also, having the first person we see in a gas machine being a named character we’re already familiar with is effective, even if this character is annoying.

Everything after that panel is just perfect, with fucked up image after fucked up image.

The part with the circus feels like a detour, but it’s a rather entertaining detour, and I suppose it was the most interesting way to have IDK reunite with Kaori.

It is kind of funny that Kaori is a far more active and capable character in death than she was in life.

Anywhoo, it’s clear that Ito didn’t know how to wrap up the story, so he just added this faint glimmer of hope and ended it there.

One last note about Gyo…

Even if it was unintentional, this story does very clearly show a cynicism towards the military, with them being the cause of the problem and failing to fix it. Gyo’s run in magazines was from 2001 to 2002, so it probably wasn’t influenced by the gulf war, but I’m sure it fit in well with the atmosphere at the time.

12. Weeping Woman Way-

This is the story about the lady who starts crying all of the time and it turns out that she’s the chosen weeping woman.

I like that this story is from the perspective of her fiance. This story gets the feeling of seeing someone you love suffer while being unable to comfort them. Despite both of our characters being kind of bland and devoid of personality, their drama is still interesting because of how real it feels. A good example of this is a scene where the fiance thinks “Hey, maybe you’re really sad because you’re scared about the wedding, maybe we should call it off.” Obviously, this makes her sadder, so he has to comfort her. It feels very real, as our well-intentioned man has no idea how to deal with this situation. It’s clear that it’s also taking a toll on him, with him saying he also feels like crying at one point.

What’s also interesting is the idea that the main lady is so well equipped to be a weeping woman because of how sad she is.

Something that’s interesting is that the point of the weeping women is that someone needs to cry over the dead who don’t have someone to mourn for them.

There’s an urban legend I heard about which says that if you feel sad for no reason, you’re grieving someone who has no one else to grieve for them. This story reminds me of that.

The fact that they are all weeping women is also interesting, as women are stereotypically seen as being more emotional.

People also often romanticize their own suffering, and you can definitely say this story is about that. There’s an idea that sadness is necessary.

Of course, the story never really challenges that idea. In fact, it seems to agree with it. Oh well.

You could also say the story is talking about how the grief of women is often infantilized and diminished and made to seem unimportant.

I suppose there are a lot of different ways to view this story.

Overall, this story is rather thought provoking, and it also has some very nice imagery with all the dead spirits in the sky.

11. Layers of Fear-

This…look, if you haven’t read this story, I’m not sure I can explain it to you.

What I like about this story is that it begins with an archaeology dig. It’s nice when horror stories do that, because then you just know that some spooky shit is gonna be dug up.

After that cold open, our story cuts to a car ride which introduces us to our main characters.

The characters in this story aren’t half bad.

The two main characters are a Mom and her daughter, Reimi, and our first interaction between these characters does a fine job of setting up the Mom’s overprotective nature and the pride the Mom takes in Reimi’s appearance.

This scene also shows the nostalgia the Mom feels for Reimi being younger.

However, this intro does kind of make the Mom a bit over-the-top, with her telling her other daughter Narumi, that she is ugly. I suppose a problem I have with this scene overall is how unsubtle it is, the dialogue is unashamedly expositional and very on-the-nose.

The mother telling Narumi that she is ugly is also really unnecessary because it was already pretty obvious that Reimi was the favorite.

However, despite how over the top the Mom is, she still feels real because her traits are exaggerated versions of traits lots of parents have. Specifically, missing when your kid was a baby seems to be a thing all or almost all parents go through.

Anywhoo, this scene in the car ends with a car crash and a pretty horrific image of part of a face hanging off a seat.

The following scene in the hospital further shows how the Mom kind of sees her daughters as products, with her specifically mourning the loss of “Reimi’s pretty face” and telling the doctor to “fix her”. The Mom seems more concerned about her daughter's stats than her general well-being. This helps to explain her later actions in the story.

Following some mild body horror and an MRI, the story then ties back to the original archeology scene in a really neat way, with the reveal that the Dad was the archeologist in that first scene.

We then get a surprisingly realistic scene where Reimi gets mad at her mom for continuing to baby her despite her “not being a child anymore”. That’s a pretty common conflict between parents and their kids, even if it’s not as over-the-top as this.

This scene makes the Mom all the more uncomfortable with the reality of her kids growing up by showing her the writing on the wall: she can’t control Reimi.

This leads the Mom to forcibly exert her will over Reimi in a pretty gnarly body horror sequence.

I like stories where characters find a magical solution to a common problem, only for this magical solution to have unexpected consequences. There are a lot of stories where characters find immortality or make themselves look better or be more popular at a cost. This story sees the Mom finding a solution to being forced to live with her child growing up, but at a cost. These kinds of supernatural stories are nice because the supernatural aspects don’t cause or replace the conflict, they merely add to it.

The body horror scene is fantastic, with lots of skin tearing and horrific imagery crescendoing into an extremely horrific image.

Everytime I read this story, that image haunts my brain for hours afterward.

The only problem I have with this scene is that the motivations of Narumi make no sense, with her helping her Mom just because she said so. I guess the idea is that Narumi really wants her Mom’s love, so she’s willing to do whatever she says. However, the story did a fantastic job at setting up the Mom’s motivations, so whatever.

Overall, this story is a great example of dramatic irony, with the Mom’s desire to make her daughter young and beautiful again causing Reimi to turn into something spooky.

It’s also really tragic that Narumi is kind of dragged down by her need to care for her family, even if she didn’t suffer any physical harm. The conflict between Narumi and her Mom is never really resolved, but I think that works to this story's favor, as you kind of feel like there is no way for this drama to resolve as long as the Mom continues to be a jerk.

It’s also funny how Narumi is now the more conventionally attractive of the two siblings.

The drama in this story is simple and unsubtle, but it still has a sense of realism because it bases itself in a lot of very real conflicts many people encounter, even if these conflicts are exaggerated. Plus, skin tearing is a really icky idea, and this story has a lot of it.

Not only that, but this story does not waste any time. The opening car ride that sets up our three characters and their conflicts is only four pages long.

10. Mansion (the Tomie story)-

This is the story where Tomie and that one doctor guy are in a mansion, and they’ve got the girl they’ve turned into a big Tomie monster kept in the attic.

In a sense, this story breaks all of the rules of a good Tomie story. However…it’s still easily my favorite Tomie story.

Once again, body horror is at its most effective when we feel like this can happen to us, and let me tell you, I don’t want to turn into that giant Tomie creature at the end. That one panel is a fucking masterpiece of creature design, being extrenely creative and unique. I kind of don’t care about the rest of the story, I just care about that singular image of all the Tomie heads and that worm body. The fact that was once a person is extremely horrific.

The only reason why this story is so high is for that creature design only.

It also is such a creative use of the Tomie character.

By the way, I think it’s interesting that the doctor says Tomie divides when under stress, meaning the only time we actually see her being under stress is when she is insulted.

A key theme in Ito’s stories is pride. After all, Tomie uses men’s pride against them.

Early on in the Tomie series, we do see Tomie split because that photography girl called her a monster. It’s interesting to think that Tomie is not just a person with emotions, but actually a pretty sensitive person. Tomie is kind of an endless spiral of mystery where you can never truly get to the heart of who she is, what she wants, or how she works.

9. The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara-

This is the story about the cave who’s spirit energy cures a man’s terminal illness and slowly makes him thin and streamlined.

The main conflict of the story is between the man and his girlfriend. She’s trying to be supportive, but the spirit flow is addicting, and he’s kind of falling in love with another dude who’s also getting streamlined.

It’s funny and kind of sad how this is the closest we’ve gotten to (good) queer representation in a Junji Ito story.

It’s easy to feel bad for the girl, as she’s doing all of this for her hubby, but he’s being a total jerk to her.

However, the reason why this story is so high is because the ideas and imagery are so unique and uncanny, making this story really stick in your head.

This is definitely one of Ito’s most unsettling stories. I can’t really explain why; I guess the concept of being streamlined is so simple yet so horrifying.

Also, it’s a pretty fast paced story that doesn’t waste any time. I appreciate that.

There’s really nothing to complain about.