I'd always found Junji Ito's manga to be a little incoherent but now I realize that everything I'd read before reading Black Paradox is as coherent asI'd always found Junji Ito's manga to be a little incoherent but now I realize that everything I'd read before reading Black Paradox is as coherent as Aristotelian logic when compared with Black Paradox....more
Maybe everyone knows this but it was news to me that at https://www.comixology.com I'm able to read graphic novels in a very reasonable way online--inMaybe everyone knows this but it was news to me that at https://www.comixology.com I'm able to read graphic novels in a very reasonable way online--including this novel, which is hard to find in English in a nondigital form (and maybe doesn't exist). I'm amending this review to include this information, for those who were interested in reading this after reading my review and didn't know exactly where to find it.
I can't recommend this graphic novel enough. I found it groundbreaking and intimate and humane, and, when called for, shockingly real.
This is the first book of any kind I've read that has an intersex protagonist. The story was so thoughtfully told. There is a fairy-tale level of coincidence in the top-story happenings that is lovely and that needs to be accepted on its own terms. The joyful buoyancy of that story allows a very nuanced and disturbing and enlightening and life-affirming story to be told underneath it. It's a story about gender, and genitals, and sexual attractiveness/confidence, and body acceptance, and listening. and agency, and medicine vs. healing. Just an incredible amount of stuff going on! This graphic novel exemplifies all the ways graphic novels can impart meanings that are deep and best told in this form and no other.
I loved both the art and the storytelling flow of this graphic novel. The main character Jean was instantaneously knowable and human, from simply drawn gestures, facial expressions, bare scraps of dialogue. The art is fantastic! I loved...Jean's ears! What a wonder how a few lines could show such subtle and thoughtful storytelling. The movement from frame to frame was a delight. My only regret is that I wasn't able to find a physical copy to buy that was in English--I did enjoy it in the Comixology app, though. I'm very curious now to read the novel on which it was based....more
Most people who read my reviews aren't aficionados of horror manga and I'm hoping to convert some of you to the unique and compulsively creepy world oMost people who read my reviews aren't aficionados of horror manga and I'm hoping to convert some of you to the unique and compulsively creepy world of Junji Ito, and to convince you to give his work a try.
Ito's stories always center on a strange compulsion that takes over one person, and then a whole lot of people at once: be it an obsession with spiral shapes ("Uzumaki"), or an obsession with the cracks in the side of a mountain ("The Enigma of Amigara Fault") or, in this latest collection "Lovesickness," an obsession with following a stranger's cryptic love advice to the most horrific and self-destructive outcomes possible.
There is always a feeling of eerie dread in Ito's stories. Sometimes the feeling builds to some shocking revelation when you turn a page, but soon the shock will be followed by a panel or scene that's almost-hopeful. In the way of the best eerie stories the moods shift under your feet and you never know what to expect next.
Like Ito's story "Uzumaki"--which I'm guessing is the most widely known in the English-speaking world of Ito's works--"Lovesickness" anchors its many-faceted story by returning frequently to the story of a young couple who seem braver and better than the other characters, and who give hope, to the reader, that maybe not all is lost. It's a lovely human way to tell a supernatural story even if you know from the beginning that, being a horror manga, the heroes are also doomed in the end.
No review would be complete without mentioning the art--so effective and evocative here, as always, with Ito's style, where panels of inchoate lines representing fog and shadow add beats and suspense between the action and dialogue, in such a perfectly paced way. I also love the artfully big letters of sound-words, sprawled across a given panel, for the way they add an onomatopoeic representation of very creepy noises in your mind's ear, as you read along. It's a wonderful and unique reading experience. Many thanks to VIZ media for giving me an early look of this latest Ito collection....more
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