No Longer Human (Junji Ito)

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But Ito, apparently, did not want to really take on the challenge of the adaptation as it was. He changes the plot heavily in places, adding death, gore, more sex and ghosts (or at least visions of the dead). And more importantly, he makes the story even more misogynistic, adding plotlines for various women characters that are even more awful and prone to offensive stupid tropes than the original. This was my first experience with Osamu Dazai's novel No Longer Human, which has been considered his suicide note and which is, at least in this form, a haunting and painful tale of, well, lots of things, but perhaps mostly misery and the ways in which our own misery leads us to inflict misery on others. And this is how women are portrayed in the novel and the manga. In the novel there is some small room for distance between the narrator and the author, as the novel is offered as a series of notebooks by Oba, with a preface and afterword by an unnamed narrator who came into possession of the notebooks along with a few photos of Oba. Dazai inserted someone between Oba and himself, though, in the end, it is generally seen as an example of the so called I-Novel genre, a naturalist novel written in the first person, where there is assumed to be a connection between the protagonist/narrator's life and the novel's author. Many consider No Longer Human to be a form of suicide note. The protagonist attempts suicide multiple times, and Dazai killed himself (a double suicide with his lover) shortly after the novel's publication. For fans of Dazai, or newcomers to the narrative, Junji Ito’s No Longer Human is a truly engaging and unnerving experience. This is a massive manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. I mean it is chunky. And I feel so guilty that this adaptation is… getting 5 stars, while the original got 4. Seriously, Junji Ito has this way of capturing sheer terror in one or two drawings, in his characters’ eyes – they remain with you when you turn the lights off right before you take the five or six steps to your bed.

This graphic novel is a departure from Ito's trademark narratives, interpreting as it does a Dazai classic that stands as one of the best-ever selling books in Japan. While the original seems to have focused on the sadness and pathos that marked the existential crisis that our lead (who seems to have been patterned after Dazai himself) labored under, true to Ito's style this book lets the horrors and absurdities of his experiences take the limelight. Then the cousins both fall in love with Oba and sleep with him. The younger one goes crazy upon seeing Oba with the older one (and you know someone has gone crazy in this manga because their face is draw in closeup with their often bloodshot eyes opened wide, their upper face is stroked with hatching), murders the older one, and then has Oba's baby. He later reconnects with that cousin in the mental hospital, where she is still crazy, but he goes to live with her and her son, who is drawn to look like Takeichi. in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.a b 人間失格 ３ (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.

Apparently Dazai’s style was autobiographical fiction and I’ve never read the original book (nor ever will) so I can’t say how much of this is directly taken from the book or whether Ito added in biographical elements from Dazai’s life. But the book opens with an alcoholic writer and his young girlfriend committing suicide by drowning, which is really how Dazai died. This manga was a great adaptation of the novel. It's clear that Ito took some risks here. Where Dazai was more elusive, Ito chose to be more explicit. I personally am not a fan of sexual depictions, but thankfully this wasn't the focus of the story - and keeping in mind his usual demographic and the one targeted with this adaptation I do get the choices he made. I was really pleased to see how this manga was able to keep the essence of the story and I enjoyed most of the creative liberties Ito took. No Longer Human is an incredibly story and I don't think it is suitable for everyone. If one does however, I would highly recommend reading the novel beforehand as well as reading up on Dazai (there are a lot of autobiographical elements in the novel). I did so and it definitely payed off - I don't think I would have appreciated this manga as much as I do now. I'm working on a video discussing No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai and this adaptation for my Youtube channel, so stay tuned for that :).

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To start with an early example (and yes, I am going to start spoiling the story a bit). As a child Oba goes to high school and ends up living with some cousins, including two younger women (slightly older than he). He also meets this classmate, Takeichi, a social outcast, who one infers had some kind of mental illness. Takeichi sees Oba clowning around, purposefully failing at some gym activity to get laughs, and tells Oba that he knows he did it on purpose. Oba is horrified by this (as if he thinks no one else could imagine that his clowning is a put-on), and then tries to win the boy over so he won't expose Oba to their classmates. It didn’t help that almost nothing that happened was remotely interesting. In addition to being tedious, some episodes were simply baffling. Like when Oba, as a defence mechanism, becomes the class clown, purposely making an ass of himself for the amusement of his classmates. But the grotesque friend Takeichi says that he knows Oba is making a fool of himself on purpose, which is apparently a terrible secret that sends Oba on a mental spiral where he contemplates murdering Takeichi to protect this “secret” - what?!? Yeah, he’s being an ass on purpose - so what?! Maybe it’s a cultural thing or has something to do with the era but I totally failed to grasp the significance of this.

Junji Ito lleva a su terreno la obra de Osamu Dazai, le da forma, la desarrolla e incluso añade elementos nuevos, como es usar al mismo Osamu Dazai como un personaje más. El mundo de pesadilla que normalmente desarrolla Junji Ito en sus ilustraciones a través del estado mental de sus personajes, está aquí perfectamente reflejado y de alguna forma y aunque sea una adaptación libre, es muy fiel a la obra de Dazai. Written and illustrated by Junji Ito, the series began serialization in Big Comic Original on May 2, 2017. [2] The series completed its serialization on April 20, 2018. [3] Shogakukan collected the series' individual chapters into three tankōbon volumes. [4] What a bizarre and boring book! Horror manga artist Junji Ito adapts Osamu Dazai’s 1948 novel No Longer Human into comic form with mixed results. Ito’s art is fantastic as always but the story, etc.? Yeah, all of that is utter rubbish! Well and to tell the truth, I started getting myself into all this contemporary Japanese literature stuff after reading the Bungo Stray Dogs manga series. LOL That final image though - it's just so apt. Somehow it seems absolutely, painfully inevitable. This all spurred my interest in the Dazai novel, which I shall be reading soon.

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In this version, Yōzō meets Osamu Dazai himself during an asylum recovery, thus giving him permission to tell his story in his next book. The manga includes a retelling of Dazai's suicide from Ōba's perspective. TW: sexual abuse, rape, graphic mature scenes and violence, suicide, depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, parental neglect, domestic cheating Junji Ito has created quite the impressive and haunting visual feat with his massive manga adaptation of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai’s fairly autobiographical novel about the dark impulses that lurk within us. Known for his horror manga-ka artwork,Junji Ito is the perfect artist to helm such a work of darkly introspective intensity, transforming Dazai’s prose of searing anxiety into visceral, surreal and hallucinogenic visual storytelling. At over 600pgs long, this is quite the dense and emotionally arresting work but Ito’s signature art and the seamless storytelling propel the book along as you feel yourself pulled deeper into the unraveling mind of Oba Yozo, the fictional narrator of Dazai’s story who draws much inspiration from the author himself. While Ito has taken a few liberties with the plot, this manga adaptation remains largely faithful to Dazai’s original and explores darkness, guilt and self-degradation in a viscerally chilling new angle through Ito’s incredible artwork. In February 2019, Viz Media announced they licensed the series for English publication. [5] They released the entire series in one hardcover book. [6] Volumes [ edit ] No.