Junji Ito

Junji Ito laments in his afterword that he is out of good ideas and these short stories are the dregs of unused topics jotted in a notebook when he was younger. Ironically, I like this book better than the last few of his I've read.

As always, Ito's stories are carried by the twisted art, but here the scripts actually try to carry their weight too. I do think there is a bingo square or drinking game to be made of how often Ito's hapless female protagonists are picked up and carried, but after show more ticking off that quirk a time or two, he does manage to insert one woman in the final story who isn't entirely passive, which was a welcome surprise.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Weeping Woman Way -- Madonna -- The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara -- Slumber -- Afterword show less

He doesnt care about endings - stories just stop.
He doesnt care about character development - most stories have the same several generic cliche chars with the same faces.
He doesnt care about realism - things are silly and characters often act silly. Explanations to mysterious events are scarce.

But it all doesnt matter. Junji concentrates on a cool scary disgusting idea, runs with it for a while until it has some steam and then just stops the story. Its as if youre reading a collection of show more pitches for stories. They are raw, undetailed, unfinished, just conveying the one main idea.
And it works. Love it. show less

Oddly, this is not the only manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai's novel. It is the only adaptation you will need, but it is not necessarily easier to read than the original. It is 600 pages of interrelated scenes, and masterful, atmospheric artwork, which require just as much concentration as any piece of Japanese literature. Junji Ito tackled heavy, mature themes for this one, and departed from his usual scare tactics to introduce us to the deep storytelling and psychological strain show more characteristic of the important novelist.

Far denser and more consistent than Ito's other long works (Tomie, Uzumaki, and Gyo) it resembles his adaptation of Frankenstein in some ways. It is of course dark and somber, creepy and lurid, demented and nightmarish. Only by reading thousands of pages of his work was I able to come to a decision on how I felt about Junji Ito's method. In short, I grew to love it over time. The subject matter of No Longer Human is some of the most difficult imaginable. We are faced with the demons of the human heart over and over, through the reprehensible actions of one of the least likable main characters of all time. I've read other Dazai works, and from what I can tell, his themes are not always quite this pessimistic. It is about the loss of what makes us human - our compassion for others. Only by subsuming the selfish urge to constantly fulfill our unreasonable desires can we become truly human. It takes effort to look past the horrid behavior of the characters and see the underlying message.

Using the text from the translation of the novel by Donald Richie, this is a fairly faithful adaptation. And a literary one. Junji Ito appears to have taken the subject seriously and set out to craft a nuanced, complex portrait of a man, surrounded by the mostly well-meaning women, through which he discovers the appetites and weaknesses in himself, that lead to his ruin. It is a painful story at times, but human weakness, death, anger and jealousy are all profoundly important aspects of our species. Dazai posits that humans cannot define themselves except in relation to other people. Many of his views might be considered old-fashioned today, but the deep understanding of some of the fundamental aspects of humanity can still be widely appreciated. This is not a work for children, and perhaps young adults will also have to struggle to detach themselves from the surface level lust, grit and angst of the graphic novel. Being an adult offers experience, in my opinion, which at least in my case, allows me to regard a work of art as a product of a life lived and transposed. It wasn't until I aged that I felt experience entering into art. Talent is one thing, experience is another. There is a wide range of experience here, even if the emotions verge on the animalistic. show less

Hands down, this book has to be the weirdest book I've read in a long time and also my favorite read so far this year. It follows a man named Yozo Oba from boyhood and into the first decades of adulthood. From childhood, he finds it difficult and stressful to interact with others. His father, a politician, has high expectations of his family, as does society. He also suffers sexual abuse by two of his household's staff members. To cope with the latter issue and to get out of being respected show more (thus freeing himself of expectations?), Yozo plays the role of the clown. A series of unnecessary tragedies follow this set up.

I usually wouldn't read an adaptation of something I haven't read. In this case, it was the only Junji Ito book I could get from the library immediately. And having never heard of the original, I felt it was unlikely I would read it any time soon. This made me want to read the original, so I'm glad I strayed from my usual course this time.

From what I can tell, this isn't a straight adaptation. For example, this manga version opens with someone (presumably Osamu Dazai, the author of the original) committing suicide the way he did in real life when he finished the novel. The novel has been seen as the author's suicide note, so that kind of deviation added something to the story that I think paid respects to the author as well. show less