This was a science fiction story rather than a horror story. Mr. Ito has a unique perspective on the subject, which I admire. I knew what they were talking about right away because of my knowledge of blind spot, but that didn't stop me from being excited and enjoying the story. 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. Content warnings for: murder, torture, violence, body horror, corpse desecration, necrophilia, animal deaths, stalking, scenes of terror

This one starts off with a bang: a baby has been discovered within the grave of young master Toyoji’s first wife—a woman who has been dead for nine months. In the time since her death, Toyoji has taken his mistress as his wife and welcomed their first child. I've read the original Rampo story, which is told from the perspective of the man in the chair instead of the woman like in Ito's version. This offers a completely different mood than the original which, while startling, still attempted to get readers to understand the man in the chair. Like many of Rampo's stories, there is an overtly sexual element and Ito's version casts the unwilling participant as the main character. However, his unique "twist" at the end undid much of the satisfaction I got from the story.The Sad Tale of the Principal Post- 3 stars This is the most forgettable story in the collection. The concept is there, but the execution isn’t fleshed out for it to be memorable or groundbreaking in the horror genre. What a parable about the perils of gathering in groups! ( And the gruesome lengths to which a murderous vigilante group will go to enforce social distancing, if we wanna take a 2020 lens to the whole shebang 😅) This one’s based on the English-language story “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens. Obsessive love abounds once again; this time, though, we witness one woman pining after Professor Kirida and another lusting after Father Murchison, a white preacher that Kirida has recruited to teach him about Christianity.

An Unearthly Love (Edogawa Ranpo): This one is a disturbing re-telling. What happens when a man’s one true love… is a doll? stars: Billions Alone (rating went up), The Human Chair (rating went up), The Enigma of Amigara FaultThis collection reminded me quite viscerally of when I was a kid and I’d spend my evenings reading horror folklore anthologies at my local library (featuring stories like “The Green Ribbon,” about a girl also named Jenny whose fate freaked me out for years).

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.

I feel like this was missing a critical piece but of something. Yet I can’t quite figure out what that might be... This was another solid collection from the brilliant and talented horror manga author, Junji Ito. Like all his previous work, the artwork was stunning, disturbing and disgusting… often at the same time. As with any short story collections, there were standouts and forgettable ones. The Human Chair- 3.5 stars This is a chilling story about a story being told to a woman in a shop as she views a chair that once belonged to a famous writer who was being stalked by someone who had sewn themselves into a chair in her home. Horrifying. No, thanks. I liked the concept, but this story was missing a certain something really that makes my horror heart skip some beats. Translation & Adaptation: Jocelyne Allen and Yuji Oniki (“The Enigma of Amigara Fault” and “The Sad Tale of the Principal Post”)