No Longer Human (Junji Ito)

Product Information

Tantimedh, Ali (December 10, 2019). "Review: Junji Ito Adapts "No Longer Human" into a Masterpiece of Existential Horror". Bleeding Cool. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.

Badman, Derik (January 29, 2020). "No Longer Human". The Comics Journal. Fantagraphics. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. The most common obsessions are with beauty, long hair, and beautiful girls, especially in his Tomie and Flesh-Colored Horror comic collections. 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. Jones, Grant (December 16, 2019). "No Longer Human Hardcover Manga Review". The Fandom Post. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. 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.

Comment

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. An unpleasant and unappealing semi-autobiographical iteration of the artist as a tortured soul is adapted into a quasi-horror manga by Junji Ito filled with dread and supernatural flourishes. I haven't read the original novel, but my understanding is that Ito has taken many liberties, including the insertion of original author Osamu Dazai as an actual character.

in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. 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.

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a b 人間失格 ３ (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.

Eventually the narrative is reduced to hallucinations and an extended dream sequence as Oba becomes increasingly unhinged. And we get a child posed in a monkey-ish way, but instead of a nauseating feeling one just see a stupid looking pose.The latter part was different from the novel with the appearance of Dazai as a character, I think its unique. It gave me sadness as i read this part, i was emotional because of it. I usually write much more about the formal qualities of comics, but I found myself unable to avoid the problematic content of this manga. And then, I was unable to avoid thinking about how much of the content was Dazai's and how much was Ito's. It feels like Ito, by bringing in his horror tropes, amplified what was already problematic, taking the subtler elements and making them all too obvious. The fourth misfortune [of his "ten misfortunes"] was woman. Human women. More than difficult, these incomprehensible, insidious beings. The ones who always drew near and looked after me for some reason. [...] Women have no sense of moderation. They always asked for more of me. Their demands are insatiable. They sap me of all my energy. Pesadilla existencial donde el descenso a los infiernos de un autor, está directamente contrapuesto con la propia ansiedad de tener que vivir el día a día cuando realmente apenas es capaz de luchar contra la oscuridad que envuelve su vida. Junji Ito capta a la perfección la esencia de Osamu Dazai.

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. 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! a b c d "No Longer Human". Viz Media. Archived from the original on September 6, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. This is a hard read. I have an immense affection for the original novel by Dazai particularly for how it made me feel. Junji Ito really shined here with his interpretations of Yozo Oba's demons and fears. They were potrayed in these vivid, cruel horrible, disgusting and disturbing images that came to life so extravagantly. I felt dread creeping all over my body, I was very much uncomfortable with all of the horrific and traumatising visuals. it showed the rawness of human. Rather than the grim, bleak and depressing prose by Dazai, Ito made the story seems more horror than sad. 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. Apart from the ghastly, convincingly-drawn deaths, the book projects an effective atmosphere of creeping fear as the town's inhabitants become less and less human, and more and more bizarre things begin to happen.Originally I read Junji's piece first, not even knowing that it was a version of a Japanese classic book. After finishing it, I decided to read the original and give Dazai his dues. I would also suggest reading into Osamu Dazai's biography as well to get a better picture of what exactly all these pieces mean. Dazai's stand-in, Yozo Oba, seems to suffer from trauma and impostor syndrome due to childhood molestation and daddy issues. To compensate he becomes a class clown and womanizer in attempts fit in with other people -- from whom he feels separate and whom he hates and fears. He carves his way through the lives of others leaving suicide and murder in his wake, periodically attempting suicide himself. He alternates between living off a family allowance, being a kept man, and a life of poverty as a struggling manga artist and aspiring painter. He dabbles in Marxism and relationships but tends to betray everyone, really only committing to alcohol and drugs.