Bio House

nathandouglasdavis Jan 31, 2022

4

Looking at Junji Ito's timeline of releases, it seems like this oneshot was one of feir earliest published stories. And you can definitely tell from the less refined artwork. There are some pretty nice individual details in some of the background items, clothing, hair, and whatnot. But overall, things look simplistic and ugly. The outlines are choppy. The mountains in the distance are just monochromatic shades. The faces feel squished and awkwardly placed on the heads. The blood splattering and spurting looks alright though, I guess. The story does a bit of foreshadowing with the opening lines, but at the same does a bit of obfuscation as to the nature of what's actually going on, setting itself up for a small plot twist (once it's revealed that these lines aren't Kubota's). The broadstrokes plotline is that Kubota joins feir boss for a dinner at the boss's house where they eat odd things like insects and lizards, but the boss ends up getting weird (and even psychotic) when Kubota declines eating a dish that was just a bit too weird for fem.  Honestly, this felt more like an absurdist, dark comedy than a horror. Like, those blood spurts aren't really scary, but they are (slightly) funny. But I think the main emotion Junji Ito was trying to evoke was squeamishness at the sight/thought of insects and blood.