The Liminal Zone by Junji Ito Review

(Duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh) You're travelling through another Junji Ito horror manga, a manga not only of panels and word balloons but of lunacy. A demented journey into an hysterical land whose boundaries are that of imagination and page counts. That's the creepy signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Liminal Zone!

Junji Ito’s back with a new collection of longish short horror manga, The Liminal Zone, and, while never boring, all four stories are kinda… stupid.

I mention some details of the stories below so I’ll say SPOILERS at the top - this is one for fans of Ito only, who’ll perhaps be more forgiving of his bonkers plotting and might even have developed a taste for it over the years.

Weeping Woman Way is about a town of women who can’t stop crying and take the main character’s girlfriend as their weeping leader… for reasons?

Madonna is about a corrupt Catholic school where the (of course, because it’s Catholic) pervy principal keeps taking wives to be his Mary Madonna. Again, y’know, for reasons.

The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara is about a suicidal couple who bathe in a river of souls (as you do) in the famous “Suicide Forest” at the base of Mount Fuji - which changes them in weird ways.

And finally Slumber is about a guy who thinks he might be a SECRET SERIAL KILLER. I know, I’m laughing too. And, no, there is no story here called “The Liminal Zone” or any mention of what that is. Brilliant.

The stories are all unpredictable but only because Ito doesn’t let things like explanations get in the way of telling his stories. So the people at the Catholic school are turning into salt because something like that happened in the Bible, and one of the women has superpowers, because why not? Who cares what the “spirit flow” is, it’s just there and doing stuff! How does the serial killer manage to transplant his memories to the innocent guy? Ahhh, come on, it’s just fun! Etc., etc.

Ito is surprisingly honest about how weakly his stories are constructed too. From his afterword: “Perhaps I’m tired after drawing manga for years on end. I’m out of good ideas. The stories in this book were created drawing on ideas that I’d left unused in an old notebook of possible topics.” He then goes on to describe “Madonna” as a “silly idea” and “The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara” as “too absurdly science fiction” and “deeply bizarre.” I concur.

Still, the stories are undeniably original and I was interested enough to see where they were headed - none of it made sense but it was imaginative and intermittently entertaining nonsense at least. And Ito’s art is the best it’s ever been - he’s a much better artist than he is a writer, and the serial killer’s face in Slumber is genuinely unsettling.

The Liminal Zone isn’t among Junji Ito’s better collections but I doubt that’ll stop his many fans from picking it up anyway. If you’re interested in this creator’s horror manga, I recommend checking out his better books like Shiver, Frankenstein, Gyo, and Uzumaki instead.