Nov 20 From the U.S. to Japan, You Can Control the Life-Size Moving Gundam from the Comfort of Your Own Home

No word of a lie I am shaking after reading this one. If you are claustrophobic in any way at all this story is an absolute nightmare.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. 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. A fiendish love… an unearthly love… those who feel such a love are numbed to their very souls by this mysterious pleasure… Genres: Comics & Graphic Novels, Manga, General, Horror, Media Tie-In, Supernatural, Literary, Science Fiction Master Umezz and Me' is something completely different: an autobiographical story about the young Junji Ito's adoration of horror manga, and particularly his lifelong admiration for the artist Kazuo Umezz. It feels a bit out of place in the middle of the book and would perhaps have worked better at the end. Due to the ways in which expressions are drawn, it's not without its unnerving moments.

Translation & Adaptation: Jocelyne Allen and Yuji Oniki (“The Enigma of Amigara Fault” and “The Sad Tale of the Principal Post”) Th-this looks like the principal post… If you move it just to rescue me, the entire house might fall over. Billions Alone… This was my favourite of the "new-to-me" stories in the collection. It one felt so timely, warning against the dangers of social gatherings and rewarding those who choose to self isolate.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 😅) Venus In The Blind Spot is yet another short horror story anthology by one of the masters of horror, Junji Ito. There are also two adapted stories originally by Edogawa Ranpo, and one by Robert Hichens. 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. The final notable chapter is none other than "The Amigara Fault," a story that has perhaps been meme-ed to death at this point but still stands as a strong story about compulsion with an undercurrent of trypophobia. When an earthquake shifts the landscape, it reveals a series of human-shaped holes carved in the mountainside with no logical source. People from all around begin heading to the faultline after seeing its footage on television, each convinced they have found the hole made just for them. One after another, individuals begin filling their respective voids – seemingly compelled the moment they became aware of its existence. That’s it. That’s *basically* the story. 😂 Reminds me of those two-sentence horror stories people like to exchange.

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. Overall, this was a solid collection with several standout stories. This is well worth adding to anyone's collection. Venus in the Blind Spot is described as a 'best of' collection, featuring 'the most remarkable short works of Junji Ito's career'. Standouts from the book are 'An Unearthly Love' (unpredictable and tense), 'How Love Came to Professor Kirida' (incredibly entertaining) and the classic 'The Enigma of Amigara Fault' (disturbing as hell). However, I found the selection here less compelling than the previous collection Shiver (which incidentally is also described as a best of!) and the complete Tomie. 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. Venus In The Blind Spot: The titular tale. What would you do if you couldn’t see the person you love up close but only from a distance? Could it be the work of aliens or something more human…?Junji Ito is, perhaps, a creator who needs no introduction. He is long beloved of many manga fans, recently rising in popularity with a much wider audience, his horror comics touching upon universal fears and fancies. Publisher VIZ Media has committed to bringing more and more of his work to North America, the most recent installment being the short story collection Venus in the Blind Spot . More disturbing than creepy I think... although the more I consider the story the creepier it becomes. The Sad Tale of Principal Post… Another re-read from a different book. Short and depressingly dark. The Human Chair” is just bizarre, about a guy who lives inside a chair so a woman will sit on him. An adaptation of a story by Edogawa Ranpo, the Japanese Edgar Allan Poe. Based off another original story by Edogawa Ranpo (aka the seminal Japanese mystery writer who took pen-name inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe), this tells of a woman who marries an emaciated-looking man known to “hate women.” While it doesn’t appear that he hates her, he certainly is strange—sneaking off in the middle of the night to visit a woman who the narrator is convinced is his lover.