Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection

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Unfortunately he runs into his rabid and mad lovestruck fans once again, who are noticeably thinner. I enjoyed it, but I stand by my previous recommendations of Shiver and the complete Tomie as better places to start for Ito newbies. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each other; a woman treats her skin with lotion so she can take it off and look at her muscles, but the skin dissolves and she tries to steal her sister's skin, etc. An outsider pays a visit to the town, curious about the whole fortune telling thing and the mass suicide incident. Ominous Fog: The town is filled with it at night when the beautiful boy is out, though it disappears once the supernatural evils are gone.

The majority, who are told they will never have love, become obsessed with their crushes until a final rejection pushes them to kill themselves. Ryusuke, after becoming the boy in white, tells the undead horde of spirits to go right ahead and love him, and the chaotic swarm destroys them all, finally giving the town some peace.Where at first his connection to it all seemed too convenient from a storytelling angle, it became a great motivation for just how dogged Ryusuke becomes in trying to resolve the bizarre events unfolding. As the man does so, another couple joins him and they make their rounds, realizing that by being nice they are solving the problem. Especially all the schoolgirl suicides - they all just happen to carry box cutters and they all decide to kill themselves within moments of the beautiful boy telling them a dumb fortune? Slashed Throat: Possibly as a side effect of whatever has gripped the town, the girls all commit suicide by cutting their necks with box cutters.

If you're new to the author's works or horror manga, this would be a solid introduction to his bibliography or the genre as a whole. Lovesickness takes place in a town obsessed with fortune-telling, where citizens ask strangers at the crossroads what their fate will be.Ryuusuke has taken off to an abandoned shed where he is kept company and fed by Midori who visits every so often, saddened still about what has happened to Ryuusuke.

He is seemingly killed by the ghosts of the girls who played the game and the Intersection Bishounen, but in the end, he becomes the White-Clothed Pretty Boy, who spreads happiness to girls playing the game. Ito's stories always center on a strange compulsion that takes over one person, and then a whole lot of people at once: be it an obsession with spiral shapes ("Uzumaki"), or an obsession with the cracks in the side of a mountain ("The Enigma of Amigara Fault") or, in this latest collection "Lovesickness," an obsession with following a stranger's cryptic love advice to the most horrific and self-destructive outcomes possible. Miki had been struggling with one sided love, while Mitsuru had been depressed for being alone, but after hearing what the white clothed pretty boy had to say, they became happy. Sometimes, Ito seems to want to tell stories that are more goofy and grotesque than straight-up horror, and these definitely fell under that.

There are a couple of backup stories that are also fine, alongside weirdo inclusions like the two-part "Strange Hikizuri Siblings" story (that are reminiscent of the much better Soichi stories) and the presumably semi-autobiographical "Memories of Real Poop. This story was a real gem among the other Ito stories I’ve read most recently, in this and other books. Also included are several stories about the ghastly Hikizuri siblings, with some of the more disturbing characterisations I've seen from Junji Ito. The local lore is that you stand at an intersection and ask the first person you meet for your fortune. Finally three unrelated stories - The mansion of phantom pain and the rib woman easily being the highlight of the entire volume.

I think the story about a group of twisted siblings trying to make contact with the spirits of their dead parents was pretty neat, but all of the other ones were quite forgettable in my opinion. The primary portion of the manga follows a multi-chapter story of a boy who moves back to his childhood town, only to find his past is haunting him through the spirit of a beautiful boy, targeting young girls at crossroads and leading them to drastic ends.Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The beautiful boy at the crossroads has pale skin that stands out against his black hair and clothing. It turns out that he man was the one who impregnated both Midori's aunt and the woman that had tormented them before (see Chpt 2) as two mistresses.