And alongside those tales are one main feature: a 184-page adaptation of the lodestone of Gothic horror that invented science fiction, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Into Ito’s canon comes a new collection: Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection, released stateside by Viz Media, contains ten of Ito’s trademark short stories. Even if you don’t remember the rest of what happens in those stories, the core image will stick with you, and I think that’s an indispensable quality to have as a visual artist.” “Ito often likes to base his short stories around one “money shot” image,” says Jacob Chapman, associate editor of Anime News Network, “like a girl whose head becomes the shell of a snail (with the slug coming out of her mouth), or a canyon full of people-shaped holes that characters are compelled to dig into like sand fleas. Within these tales, Ito is able to conjure up gross, unsettling images that linger long after they’re read.
But the bulk of Ito’s output are short, punchy narratives that oscillate between the Twilight Zone-esque (like “The Sad Tale of the Principal Post,” about a man who dies literally holding up his new house) and disturbing body horror yarns with hyper-realistic detail (like “Greased,” which involves a teenage boy drinking cooking oil and squeezing a face full of zits onto his sibling). He has published several series, like the Eisner-nominated Uzumaki (about a town plagued by a curse involving spirals) and Gyo (where an aborted WWII Japanese military experiment leads to legged fish swarming the earth). Ito is able to conjure up unsettling images that linger long after they’re read
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