Tears of Joy: J-kun when Mu sleeps next to him. Except it's not really Mu, it's just a fold in his bedding. Junji Ito is a horror manga artist known best for exceptionally creative and terrifying works such as Uzumaki and Tomie. I've read almost everything of his that has been released in America (still waiting for my bf to finish one anthology so he can lend it to me). His works are creepy, disturbing, spectacularly drawn, and always something I have never seen before. This book is no exception, just that it is also very funny. Nov 20 From the U.S. to Japan, You Can Control the Life-Size Moving Gundam from the Comfort of Your Own Home Style [ edit ] J-kun attempts to play with the cats, to no avail; his mouth becomes more horrific as he fails to capture their interest. [3] The Unreveal: Gorou, the skittish and elusive stray cat A-ko's parents adopted, is always drawn as a shadowy blob to represent J-kun's unfamiliarity with him. Despite J-kun's attempts to befriend him and then lamenting that he still hasn't gotten a good look at him in over a year, the reader never sees him drawn as an actual cat, remaining a shadow even when Mu plays with him.

Junji Ito's Cat Diary appeared as an intermittent serial in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Monthly Magazine Z from 26 November 2007 [10] to 26 December 2008. [11] Kodansha collected the ten installments into a bound volume and published it on 13 March 2009. [12] Kodansha USA announced that it had obtained the manga's license at the 2015 Anime Boston convention, [13] and published the English-language translation in North America on 27 October 2015. [14] The English-language edition also included the pieces contributed by Ito and his wife for Teach Me, Michael! A Textbook in Support of Feline Disaster Victims (2011), a book which was intended to raise support for cat shelters after the Great Tohoku Earthquake. Their contributions consist of Ito's comic, "Yon Went to Heaven," and his wife's letter chronicling the death of Yon from heart failure on 3 February 2011, about a month before the earthquake, and their subsequent grieving. [15] Junji Ito's Cat Diary has also been translated into French by Tonkam [16] and Italian by Panini Comics. [17] Reception [ edit ] Today, we’re looking at his cat diary that he wrote when he and his wife first got married. In the manga, he dubbed over their names and called them like J-san, A-ko, Yon, Muu, etc. It actually hardly matters because the focus on the story on how he’s trying to cope living with cats, since he’s a dog person. In "Mu's Castration," the couple takes Mu to the veterinarian to be neutered. Despite a brief medical scare, Mu survives. It's the true enough story of what happened when his fiance moved into his house and brought two cats with her. Ito had never considered himself a cat person before and found her first cat to have a bad vibe about him. But he soon finds himself lured in by the cuteness and wants the cat to love him as much as it does his wife. He bounces between being afraid of the cat and having an uncontrollable urge to smother it with affection. to eventually accepting their presence in his life to the extent that he is jealous of their relationship with his wife.Here though he’s telling simple and comedic moments about his own life with his fiancée and her two cats… but he’s a horror artist through and through, so how does he tell this tale? As if the cats are monsters invading his life. He frequently will draw them ominously staring at him, he will draw distorted faces in horror (and his fiancée is almost always drawn with just blank white eyes). Despite the imagery (and maybe even because of it) the comedy works even better as these monstrous creatures slowly win over his dog loving heart. Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu" (in Italian). Panini Comics. Archived from the original on 29 July 2019 . Retrieved 29 July 2019. Nov 25 i☆Ris the Movie - Full Energy!! - Anime Film Teaser Visual Revealed at i☆Ris Live Stage in Anime NYC & i☆Ris First Performance in New York Successfully Completed

Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga. Yon and Mu are not only recognizable in the images of them, but also in the way Ito portrays their personalities. If you've ever had a cat who clearly felt that you co-habitated but did not own him, you will recognize Yon – the cranky, holier-than-thou attitude comes through in the stories as well as the body language. Chapter five, “ Yon is a Weird Cat,” is not only one of the funnier sections, but also captures the essence of living with a cat with a mind of his own as an over-tired and overworked Ito has a late night encounter with the feline and comes away utterly creeped out. It is made very clear over the course of the volume that there is no one “cat personality,” with Mu being far more easy going and the author's encounter with Goro, the shy formerly feral cat who lives with A-ko's parents.a b c Ito, Junji (2015). "Question 6". Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. Kodansha Comics USA. p.90. ISBN 978-1-63236-197-4. Lightmare Fuel: In essence, Ito parodies his own work by writing and drawing in the same style as his iconic horror fiction...except that it's an (almost) completely harmless story about him and his wife taking care of their cute kitties. Ito, Junji (2015). "Question 4". Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. Kodansha Comics USA. p.46. ISBN 978-1-63236-197-4. His wife wants a cat. Junji panics over not wanting one, while simultaneously appeasing his wife and saying 'of course'. They get the cat. His wife says that the cat is lonely and surely needs another cat. Junji has another mental spiral. But when both cats arrive, he swiftly descends into a breakdown because the cats don't love him as much as he discovers he loves them. Thus ensues a long journey of a man trying desperately to make two moody cats adore him while also upholding the facade of not caring if they do or don't. Affectionate Parody: Of Ito's own work as a horror mangaka, since he still draws this series in his usual horror-oriented art style despite it being an autobiographical Slice of Life.

This work showcases that perfectly. While he contains nightmarish depths, this displays how undeniably human he is. a b c McCulloch, Joe (8 April 2015). "This Week in Comics! (4/8/15 –– Sit, Ubu, sit!)". The Comics Journal. Archived from the original on 28 November 2019 . Retrieved 28 November 2019. a b Marie, April (3 June 2016). "Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu (Manga)". Dread Central. Archived from the original on 29 July 2019 . Retrieved 9 November 2019.Art-Style Dissonance: Played for Laughs, since Ito still uses his trademark scary art techniques despite this manga being a Slice of Life story about cats rather than his typical horror fare. Author Avatar: J-kun is clearly a stand-in for Junji Ito himself, while A-ko is a stand-in for his wife Ayako.