Junji Ito never fails to produce chilling, suspenseful scenes that keep you turning pages just to discover the next twist. Like much of Ito’s work, the art does most of the heavy lifting in these tales. Eventually, the story shifts to the urban legend of a strange, beautiful boy at the crossroads.

Suicide features heavily in this volume lovelorn girls are driven to drastic measures by a force beyond their control. Past secrets reveal that something sinister is going on and people begin to meet unfortunate ends. This tale twists into something far more complicated than it originally appears. While this feels like a harmless pastime, it quickly dissolves into a story of fate and obsession. When someone approaches, they ask the stranger to tell their fortune, often asking a question about their future love life or present situation. The popular ritual involves a person standing on a street corner on a foggy day. Reunited with old friends–and an old crush–he discovers the town’s peculiar obsession with fortune-telling. When teenager Ryusuke and his family move back to Nazumi, the small town where he grew up, he finds that the past has been waiting for him in unexpected ways. In many ways, they feel as if they belong in another era which, for some, may contribute to their overall otherworldliness as much as the tales themselves. Most of these stories were originally published in the late 90s and early 2000s and they reflect that period, catering to the rise in urban legend horror (and serving as a precursor to today’s Creepypasta) like The Ring (1998) and The Grudge (2004). įortunately, Ito’s work can be read in any order, letting you dive right into the stories. Lovesickness is the latest volume of Ito’s short stories to be translated into English from VIZ Media, following other collections of his short work–including Venus in the Blind Spot, Shiver, and Smashed. The rest is a collection of shorter tales that share some of the twisted horrors takes Ito is known for.īest known for his horror classic Uzumaki (about a town that falls victim to a mysterious spiral) and Tomie (a collection of loosely connected stories about the titular character, a beautiful and otherworldly girl who brings ruin to everyone who meets her), Junji Ito is a Master of Modern Horror. The latter focuses on a few smaller, more contained tales. The first half collects the titular horror serial “Lovesickness,” a story about a foggy town obsessed with fortune-telling.

The collection is divided into two sections. In this story collection, translating several of his classic tales, Lovesickness explores love, dysfunctional families, and cosmic horror with a splash of black humor and haunting visuals. There’s no denying the power of Junji Ito’s ability to terrify and entertain global audiences.

Lovesickness ito