Deserter: Junji Ito Story Collection

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It explains why the art is a little less polished than his newer books but the stories remain as daffy and original as readers have come to expect from this creator. I was really happy to indulge in some old school Junji body horror as the last couple of releases have been a bit lack lustre. I wish I'd written down ratings for each piece of the collection individually as I was reading through it, but this was one of those times where I was more in the mood to just zone out with the manga rather than take notes, and it wasn't good enough to want to re-read it for more thorough reviewing purposes (sorry!

A warm, unsentimental and beautifully-observed book for our times' Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days 'If I were in bother I'd want the Ballybrady bunch at my back. But then there’s ones like “The Reanimator’s Sword” which seems interesting at first, but then it devolves into an immortal chosen one style of story. Junji Ito’s story collection Deserter was only recently published in English a few months ago but it was originally published ten years ago in Japan. In ‘Face Thief’, the simple art combined with the premise (there are two unrelated girls who look identical) results in a lot of confusion; I didn’t know who was supposed to be who half the time. Unendurable Labyrinth has an intriguing premise of a couple of hikers stumbling across an extreme band of ascetic monks who are trying to mummify themselves alive for… no real reason.What was Junji Ito, the author and illustrator behind such terrifying stories as Uzumaki and Remina like during his early days? Bio House is about vampires out for blood, Village of the Siren is about demons wanting human sacrifice because that’s what demons want, Deserter is about a haunted family, and The Devil’s Logic is about a cursed videotape that kills - I know, how original, eh? The first story, “Bio House,” has shakier artwork than we’re used to seeing from him, but it still gets across all those gruesome vibes he’s so good at creating.

Or “Scripted Love” about a jilted lover who murders her ex after she receives a tape of pre-recorded messages from him. A Father’s Love’ works well because it’s one of the longer stories, and takes plenty of time to flesh out its tale of a tyrannical patriarch who has a unique hold on his children.

One of the tourists is Evan, taking an enforced holiday from his family and work in Belfast after breaking down after the death of his daughter in infancy.

Junji Ito made his professional manga debut in 1987 and since then has gone on to be recognized as one of the greatest contemporary artists working in the horror genre. Face Thief” is about a teenage girl who can inexplicably change her face to the appearance of whoever she is in proximity of the most, setting her sights on the new girl in class.The girls toy aisles aren't our regular ball park but we occasionally like to try something different to our norm. There were three stories that stood out to me - I wouldn’t say I liked them completely but they were more than just “whacky horror cliche blood arrgh” which makes up the others. By this, I mean that I wasn’t especially blown away by any one story, but the majority of them were nevertheless great reads that left me very satisfied, with only a few outlying moments. His longest work, the three-volume Uzumaki, is about a town's obsession with spirals: people become variously fascinated with, terrified of, and consumed by the countless occurrences of the spiral in nature. Because these are early stories, the illustrations aren’t always up to the standards of Ito’s later work.

The title story “Deserter” and “The Long Hair in the Attic” had unexplainable manifestations of evil that made me want just a few more answers. Instead, it grapples with the dilemma of having to deal with such a person and whether the retribution doled out by the other students is going too far, punctuated by a perfectly unsettling moment at the end that leaves things in suspense without feeling unresolved. The final and titular story, “Deserter,” is about a military deserter hiding in Japan years after World War II, because the people hiding him convince him the war is still going on. Before Uzumaki, Ito was best known for Tomie, a comic series about a beautiful, teasing and eternally youthful high school girl who inspires her stricken admirers to murder each other in fits of jealous rage.However, when I heard that this collection would feature some of his earliest stories, I found myself getting excited to check out a new book of his once again. The Devil’s Logic’ introduces a great concept – a ‘philosophy of death’ so powerful it makes people instantly suicidal – but the ending is such a cop-out as to be laughable. Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising.