Venus in the Blind Spot by Junji Ito Review

Viz Media’s blurb for Venus in the Blind Spot is really weird: it claims this is a “best of” collection of Junji Ito’s stories but, as far as I can tell, only one - maybe two - stories have previously appeared in print before: The Enigma of Amigara Fault and The Sad Tale of the Principal Post possibly both appeared in Dissolving Classroom. So this is a “best of” collection that features almost all-new stories!? The blurb also mentions special colour pages and illustrations from Ito’s latest book, No Longer Human, and it doesn’t. Also, it would’ve been good if the contents page listed in which collections the stories previously appeared, like most “best of” collections do, but seeing as this appears to be nearly all-new material then I can see why it didn’t!

Of the stories collected here - Billions Alone, The Human Chair, An Unearthly Love, Venus in the Blind Spot, The Licking Woman, Master Umezz and Me, How Love Came to Professor Kirida, The Enigma of Amigara Fault, The Sad Tale of the Principal Post, and Keepsake - none were very good.

So here’s the thing with Ito: like HP Lovecraft, Ito is great at producing haunting images of primal horror but, also like Lovecraft, he’s very clumsy, almost amateurish, in incorporating these images into traditional stories. What you’re left with is some genuinely disturbing visions of horror scattered amidst numerous quite dull, predictable and almost laughably goofy stories.

Take The Human Chair, one of two Ito adaptations of the Japanese writer Edogawa Ranpo (real name Taro Hirai - Edogawa Ranpo is the Japanification of “Edgar Allan Poe”): it’s creepy that a guy would sew himself into a chair to be sat on by a female writer for hours a day, but the design of the chair, when the back of it was peeled away, showed tiny shelves for cans of food and waste! It’s too silly.

And it’s like that throughout: like the hundreds of naked corpses sewn together in Billions Alone, the giant phallic-like tongue bouncing around the street in The Licking Woman, the man who just happens to find himself trapped under a supporting beam in The Sad Tale of the Principal Post - they’re just too daffy to take seriously. Ito’s stories seem to operate in their own kind of dream/nightmare logic that defies convincing storytelling. These things just are - don’t question them!

Which sounds like hack storytelling, and you could argue that too, but that’s what I like best about Ito: the visions/scenarios themselves are the point - everything else is window-dressing. Also, regardless of his plodding, predictable and absurd storytelling, you’ll never read any horror stories like Junji Ito’s - the stuff in them are unique and the man himself is a true original. And the accompanying art is always fantastic. Though his character designs are constantly recycled, and repetitive for that, the moments when the terror is revealed are almost always chilling to look at, which is great because that’s when they count the most.

If you’ve read Junji Ito’s previous short horror collections, Venus in the Blind Spot is more of the same - no worse, no better. So if you’re a fan, you’ll love this, and if you’re not, this one won’t convince you otherwise. Even though I didn’t think much of this one, I remain into Ito for the art and the quirky, fresh ideas behind the horror stories. Just ignore the bizarre blurb - this is basically a new Ito collection.