Fragments of Horror (2015)

Fragments of Horror (2015)

Author and Illustrator: Junji Ito  |  Page Count: 224

"I'm looking for a special someone to dissect me!"

After an eight year absence from the horror manga genre that his name has become synonymous with, Japanese author and illustrator Junji Ito returned with a collection of eight short tales of bizarre terrors.

Ito notes in his afterword that the time spent away from writing horror may have resulted in his becoming a little rusty, and sure enough the first story he penned is a little weak, but there's enough of the creeping wiggins in some of the subsequent stories to keep fans of his warped worlds happy.

Themes he's explored before resurface, such as a typically safe environment becoming something menacing and the strain of personal relationships being a precursor to even greater terrors, but there's enough new stuff to balance it out.

While it's likely that each of us will be enthralled or appalled by different situations in many different ways, and not everyone will fear the same things, quite often the effects on Ito's characters are scary even if the specific focus of his story isn't. The moments wherein a distressed character moves forward with arms outstretched, seeking aid while being both helpless and horrifying at the same time, creep me out the most. (I want to help you, sure, I do, but you've making me shit my pants!)

Something that I'm sure is intentional is the way panels filled with expectation are perfectly placed at the very end of a page, encouraging you to keep turning while simultaneously instilling a kind of emotional hesitation at going further into the unknown. Quite often Ito's timing is excellent.

As always with his work, you need to give the expressions on the faces of his characters the attention they deserve, because while the tentacles and eyeballs in odd places are unsettling, it's in the relatable faces that he best translates the feelings of fear and sadness into imagery.

My favourites were the stories titled Blackbird (weird as fuck!) and Whispering Woman (pictured left). I could almost feel the withered breath on my neck as I was reading.

NOTE: The full colour dust jacket is removable, and doing so reveals a beautiful B+W image. It differs somewhat from Viz Media's previous Ito volumes, namely Uzumaki: 3-in-1 (2013) and Gyo: 2-in-1 (2015), plus it lacks the red identifying mark, but it's still better than the colour spine and doesn't look so out of place next to the other two.