Ito Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection: Chidamagi

nathandouglasdavis Jul 30, 2022

3

Of these seven stories, my favorite would have to be the one about the monks and the maze ("Taegatai Meiro"), but even that one's only deserving of a 4/10 in my opinion. These are just very mediocre stories all around, with a few being downright bad. There were several instances where I found the author's narrative choices to be a bit confusing. Like, where it felt like the author was on the cusp of adding some depth to the story or world-building, but ultimately didn't. Instead, the stories rely primarily on gory imagery and strangities to hook the readers. The first five of these stories each deal with some version of the undead--vampires, mummies, soul-infused corpses, ghosts, and the drowned. Several of the stories include the idea of people being overcome with singular thoughts or obsessions, which then often plays into another recurring idea of people being conked out mentally and not thinking much of anything. These stories are still relatively early on in Junji Ito's career, so the artwork in general isn't all that great. There's still a lot of shoddiness mixed in with better drawn stuff. * * * For reference and further reading, here are links to my reviews on each individual oneshot within this compilation: Chidamagi Taegatai Meiro Re-animator no Ken Isho Hashi Akuma no Ronri Aibeya