Manga Review: Smashed by Junji Ito
Who’s ready for another big collection of horrific tales from one of Japan’s best scary manga creators? I know I am!
The volume opens with “Bloodsucking Darkness” about a girl with an eating disorder and the well-meaning boy who tries to help her with his swarm of vampire bats. We can all take a valuable lesson from this story, namely that forcing your amateur help on someone without their permission is likely to backfire in a rain of blood.
The title story, “Smashed”, is the final one. A traveler returns to Japan from South America with a jar of “nectar” that tastes so delicious that everything else you eat pales to comparison. But it’s not the habit-forming nature of the nectar that’s the real problem. If you get “noticed” while you eat it, you’re going to get smashed. But what does “noticed” mean, and how can you avoid it? Lots of images of smashed people.
There are several tales of Soichi, the nail-biting boy (that’s metal nails, not fingernails) including a possible future where he runs a haunted house (with guest appearance by the scary supermodel.) He’s one of those villains that’s scary but isn’t as competent as he thinks he is.
I also very much enjoyed “Ghosts of Prime Time” which is about the phenomenon of breakout hit comedians that you just don’t find funny, and “Earthbound”, in which certain people find themselves unable to move from the spot they’re in–but why?
My least favorite was “Death Row Doorbell”, about a criminal on Death Row who is haunting the surviving family members of his murder victims, which just felt like an exercise in cruelty.
The art is as always excellent with plenty of creepy detail, but Ito still uses a limited selection of normal human faces, especially for “pretty girl.”
If you like Junji Ito’s other horror work, you’ll certainly like this volume as well.
Here’s the ending theme of the recent anime:
