Sensor

Product Information

Dr. Kurodera, the psychiatrist that treated Kyoko, reveals that he came from the village Kiyokami that got caught in a volcanic eruption sixty years ago. He has a single strand of amigami in his hair, which he hoped would provide insight into treating Kyoko. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: All those people that helped Kyoko while she traveled, including kindly Dr. Kurodera, Rie, and Wataro? The second cult kidnaps them and reduces most of them to skeletons with a mass meditation to find Kyoko. Evil Counterpart: Kagero Aido is a clear one to Father Miguel, with both being long-haired men who lead groups who obtain a matching hair color from mystical volcano fibers. Miguel is the Messianic Archetype of the story, while Aido turns out to be the Satanic Archetype from the villagers' terrifying vision. Interrupted Suicide: Invoked. The teahouse owners and staff keep an eye on people in the town with the suicide bugs, noting any that stand over the cliff. If someone is there too long, they take them to the inn and treat them to tea.

Junji Ito was born in the Gifu prefecture of Japan in 1963. He was inspired from a young age by both his older sisters' drawings and the work of Kazuo Umezu. Ito first began writing and drawing manga as a hobby while working as a dental technician in the early 1990s. In 1987, he submitted a short story to Gekkan Halloween that won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize (with Umezu himself as one of the judges). This story was later serialized as Tomie. All this is ably conveyed by Erbes’ lettering, which helps sell both the calm detachment and the wild frenzies characters get worked up into, and by Allen’s smooth yet suitably melodramatic translation. This team has worked on previous Ito releases before (including Remina) and they seem perfectly in sync at this point, Erbes skillfully rendering Allen’s translation with the gravity and bombast it deserves.

Customer reviews

When Brown dryly pointed out that this was somewhat ironic given Ito’s long history scary, frightening images (the legged fish of Gyo, the haunting spirals of Uzumaki and the singular horror icon that is Tomie), Ito countered with his belief that “[ Sensor] may be a story that brings hope.” In his afterword, Ito talked of how the characters frequently refused to behave how he wanted them to and followed their own paths, which resulted in a sprawling, unpredictable story full of turns even he didn't expect. He just had to put them on paper. He credits his editor with helping him wrestle the story into something that held together and reached a logical, satisfying ending. This highlights the importance of manga editors in helping creators shape their stories into something readable. Ito may feel Sensor is his failed attempt to find an answer to why the universe exists, but the journey is as grotesque, insane, and horrific as ever, and that's what we read him for. Junji Ito: "Welcome to our horror story for today. SENSOR. This book is about a young girl with amnesia who goes to a small Japanese village that's been covered in golden volcanic hair. Also called Pele hair. Small tiny fibres of gold-looking glass that sometimes result from volcanic eruptions. Anyways an entire town is covered in it, making it look shaggy. And all of the people in the town have volcanic hair attached to their heads. It gives them psychic powers and lets them communicate with the universe."

a b c Davidson, Danica (August 25, 2021). "Junji Ito's Sensor Is a Creepy Horror Manga with Sci-Fi Mixed In". Otaku USA . Retrieved December 22, 2021. Loveridge, Lynzee (August 16, 2021). "Review: Sensor". Anime News Network . Retrieved December 22, 2021. I had to write a thousand words for this afterword, so I went on and on there about things that didn't really need to be said."

Recommendations

Decoy Protagonist: Kyoko Byakuya is the point-of-view character for the first chapter, but after her changes from the amagami, she becomes more of a driving figure in other people's lives, with Wataro Tsuchiyado becoming the point-of-view character as he tries to investigate her story. In the climax, only Dr. Kurodera and Wataro survive the mass meditation while the other people who helped Kyoko are reduced to skeletons. it made sense in the end when he made a note of how he went in with one thought about Kyoko being the narrator but left differently. I liked her but she wasn’t as fleshed out. I love Beniko. I think she could be one of his most interesting antagonists if he built her out. The one jumps are with her in the mirror was one of the best scares of the manga. But I didn’t know why she was stalking him or anything so sadly she wasn’t as great as she could’ve been. (Still a fan because love his evil women) What you said is very true about the windy path of storytelling. For a long story, I will usually sit down and have a plot planned out, but Sensor’s approach of having no particular premeditated ending actually ended up resulting in more ideas, unexpected ideas, then finding a plot from there. This is, of course, if these discoveries go well, because sometimes they don't. And specifically for the suicide bugs, that fundamental idea already existed. It was intended to just be a one-off story, but during the writing of Sensor I thought oh, I need to put in a really good idea here. So I took that idea and wove it into the story.

Mullicane, Evan (August 18, 2021). "Junji Ito's New 'Sensor' May Be Scariest Manga Series Ever Printed". Screen Rant . Retrieved December 22, 2021. You’ve referred a few times in this interview to getting older. How has age affected what scares you?In Ito’s afterword he says he had 1,000 words to write in the afterword and admits he doesn’t have much to say:

It's also the first Junji Ito work I've read, where the ending has a tiny spark of hope in it, which was nice, actually.

Advance Praise

Junji Ito’s comics have become really popular these last few years so demand might’ve caused him to rush projects like this. His publisher needs new product - hurry hurry hurry! - so he can’t spend enough time planning his stories and so you get books like this. That said, I don’t know for sure if that’s the case, I’m just speculating, so I’m probably wrong. Maybe he approaches all of his books the same way and Sensor just didn’t come out as well as the others? Because Destiny Says So: Father Miguel accepts his execution because it was foretold to him. He urges his brethren to leave him so they have a chance to live. The reason is that he needs to die to help Kyoko take on Aido. A esta historia se le agregará un segundo personaje, Wataru, un reportero desconocido que al ver una extraña nube negra, debido que ese día de la celebracion el volcán, Sengoku, cercano al pueblo hizo erupción, por lo que decide ir a investigar. Al llegar al lugar se encuentra con esta chica en la montaña y también con Kagero Aido, lider de una secta llamada Indigo Shadow. The Bad Guy Wins: Mostly subverted. While Kagero does manage to become an Eldritch Abomination, Kyoko and Miguel become another god who he can never defeat and who will eventually overcome him.