Ito fills the page with speed lines and images of blood-splattered women taking revenge on the man that preyed on their weakness at a difficult times in their lives.
Speaking of walking corpses, Junji Ito ramps up the level of danger as well as mystery in the later chapters by seeding in situations where Ryusuke thinks he’s the beautiful boy at the crossroads. There is definitely an air of death around Ryusuke throughout “Lovesickness”, and he is pale and withdrawn even if he never becomes like the walking corpses who haunt his town. This reminds Ryusuke of an incident in the past when he brushed off Midori’s aunt when she wanted her fortuned told, which led to her committing suicide as well as the death of her unborn child.
It’s also a great visual metaphor for the secrets surrounding Ryusuke and the “beautiful boy at the crossroads” that is telling girls to end their lives because they will never be loved. Ito creates tension through wind-swept lines of fog that obscure the people that Ryusuke, Midori, and other supporting characters run into. “Lovesickness” is a true masterpiece in atmosphere and escalation. However, “Lovesickness” isn’t a relationship drama or a cute romance, but a visual striking and horrifying story that takes “falling in love will kill you” to its literal extent. The protagonist, Ryusuke, is thrust into this world as his family returns to the town he lived in as a kid, and he rekindles relationships with some of his childhood friends, including his crush Midori and another girl Suzue. Basically, you can’t cross the street without a girl covering her face and asking you if she’ll find love or if the cute boy at school likes her. Ito dips into every day problems like wanting to be loved or desired, family conflict, and even being stuck a job that literally takes over your life and turns them up to eleven with imagery that will scar your psyche.Ī big chunk of this story collection is the Junji Ito horror serial, “Lovesickness”, which is about a foggy town obsessed with fortune telling at crossroads. And that continues to be the case in his new collection Lovesickness, which features the titular story as well as two “Strange Hizikuri Siblings stories and three unrelated horror yarns. Junji Ito is probably my favorite manga creator, and he is a master of finding terror in the everyday escalating normal situations into something resembling cosmic horror.
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