Horror manga has taken off in a big way, and the man at the forefront of this trend has been Junji Ito. It's been too long since we've covered one of his books on this site, so let's take a look at one of his latest tales.
SENSOR (Muma no Kikou), by Junji Ito. First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2021.
PLOT:
Kyoko Bakuya was simply hiking around the volcanic Mount Sengoku when it happened. The skies were filled with strange golden hairs, which led her to a village who saw them as a blessing from a martyr. Kyoko survives an eruption from the nearby mountain, which left her with gleaming golden hair and powerful psychic abilities. She soon becomes the target of nosy reporters, curious scientists, and wanna-be cult leaders, all of whom want Kyoko for their own purposes.
STORY:
Sensor was a fascinating journey of the manga. What at first seems like yet another short story collection slowly and steadily snowballs into a tale of cosmic horror that is both surprisingly cohesive and absolutely bonkers (as any good Ito manga should be).
These stories incorporate all sorts of odd little ideas and concepts: volcanic hair, New Age cults, the persecution of Christians in historical Japan, hypnosis, and other such things. I have to give Ito credit for being able to tie such disparate concepts into a single story, although I'm sure a lot of it has to do with his usual, breathless pacing.
In his afterword, Ito confesses that initially meant for Kyoko to be the narrator of the story, but that after her transformation she became a character that needed to be unknowable and on the run. Thus he created the reporter Watari, who is far more of a blank slate but serves the purpose suitably in a way that calls back to one of Ito's biggest influences: H.P. Lovecraft. That's rather fitting, considering that the source of the horror itself is itself truly cosmic: the incredible, unbearable expanse of time and space itself.
That being said, this does share some common themes with some of Ito's other works. You've got remote cursed villages, crazed mobs, an innocent young woman who becomes the uncomfortable, obsessive focus of increasingly unhinged men, body horror. There's even a weird side story where Watari gets a creepy stalker lady who stalks him in part through streetlight mirrors, which feels like something of a retread of a story from the Lovesickness collection. Yet it all manages to come together in a sort of time loop that wraps things up with something I've never seen before in a Junji Ito manga: a hopeful ending.
ART:
It's art is as good-looking and distinct as ever, although like his more modern works there's a cleanness to his linework that betrays the fact that these days he draws most of his work digitally. It's not a bad thing, but I feel like there's a certain dank moodiness that was lost in the process. Still, he more than makes up for that with the imagery on display. A man's face distorts into a wave of neurons. A mountain village is draped in golden hairs, like giant haystacks. A dark cloud hangs over Mount Sengoku, with folds like a brain. Unearthly bugs squash into vaguely human shapes. All of this contrasts with Kyoko's striking, sensual looks. It's all beautiful, strange, and haunting.
RATING:
This book was published by Viz. It is currently in print.
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