Manga Review: Deserter by Junji Ito
This volume says that the contents are mostly from the early horror work of noted manga creator Junji Ito. There’s no initial publication dates in the indicia, but his debut was in 1987, so I’m guessing late Eighties to early Nineties. Let’s see what his stuff was like before he hit it big!
The first story is “Bio House.” Kubota is the new personal assistant to the head of a biotechnology firm. He’s invited her to his house for dinner, and his all-female servants play a welcome tune. It turns out that Kubota and her boss share a hobby–exotic cuisine. So the fact that dinner is things most folks won’t eat isn’t creepy. At first.
However, Kubota draws the line at eating insects alive rather than dead, while her boss believes that consuming lives adds to his own life. He’s disappointed Kubota isn’t up to his level, but hey, there’s still the piece de resistance, his own blood! The boss wants Kubota to drink his blood, and he’s not going to take no for an answer.
I could believe this is Ito’s earliest published work, as the art has a certain crudeness that rapidly disappears in the remaining stories. The boss has a bunch of “creepy” animals in his manor for future meals, and there’s a twist involving the servants that raises questions the story absolutely does not address.
The final story in the volume is the title piece, “Deserter.” It plays the “Japanese soldier doesn’t know the war is over” cliche for horror. Nine years ago, Furukawa got fed up with the awful treatment of soldiers on the home front during World War Two and deserted. He hid in the warehouse on the farm of his old friend Adera, who’d been injured in a fall and thus not drafted. While hiding out, he got romantically involved with Adera’s sister Kirie. A series of events spiraling from this got Kirie killed in an air raid, for which Adera blamed Furukawa.
A year later, the war ended, but the vengeful Adera deliberately did not tell Furukawa. He and his family have been pretending that the war is still going for eight years, decorating the dining room with pro-war propaganda for Furukawa’s one meal outside the warehouse per day, spinning a tale of how Japan is totally winning (with an invasion of America underway) and having regular visits by a military officer looking for deserters to shoot.
This “officer” is actually a veteran who Furukawa betrayed during his desertion, so bears his own grudge and is happy to play along in exchange for veggies from the farm.
There’s a fireworks exhibition coming up, and Adera’s family decides to pretend this is an air raid for more terror to Furukawa. But there’s a final twist…
Other stories that stood out:
“The Face Thief” plays with our expectations, in a normal manga story, we’d be expected to sympathize with the girl who wants to be friends with a social outcast, but it’s actually the mean delinquent girl who’s in danger. There’s also an innovative way of dealing with a shapeshifter. The iffy bit is when we learn that the adults knew what was happening all along, but had been unable to think of a way to handle the situation. (Oh, and there’s cameos by other manga characters, see if you can name them all.)
“Scripted Love” doesn’t involve any supernatural elements, but has an interesting way that a playboy’s toying with maidens’ hearts comes back to bite him. His plan for the breakup is just too good.
“Unendurable Labyrinth” has two hikers stumbling across a fanatical Buddhist sect in their hidden temple. The fate of the true believers combine with one hiker’s hidden phobia to make for an especially effective final image.
The art (especially once Ito hits his stride) and writing are up to the usual standards, and the stories have on average excellent scary ideas. However, the same-face for pretty girls does show, and in The Face Thief it feels like Ito is straining to differentiate the girls.
Content note: Gore, body horror, animal death, infanticide and an entire story about bullying and the cycle of abuse. Older teens on up, please.
Recommended to Junji Ito fans, and general horror fans who don’t mind watching an author grow.
