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A Junji Ito manga is always a very unique experience. The Japanese mangaka is known for his talents and abilities for horror stories, which is something that has allowed him to build a very successful career. However, he has made so many different horror manga that is hard to know where to start with his work.
Therefore, here are, in no particular order, the five Junji Ito manga every horror fan should read. These choices take into account the quality of the writing, the art, and the premise of the story.
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for Junji Ito manga.
Uzumaki and 4 more Junji Ito manga everyone should read
1. Uzumaki
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When it comes to Junji Ito manga, Uzumaki is his most known work. There is good reason for that: it fully shows his capacity for writing compelling characters and lots of great horror, which is on total display here.
This series is a collection of short stories that cover the cosmic horror befalling the city of Kurouzu-cho. It is one of Ito's artistic peaks, showing the hopelessness of the story, and done in a way that feels eerie and emotional as the reader doesn't want things to end the way they do.
Uzumaki is arguably Junji Ito's best moment as a mangaka and always deserves a lot of attention.
2. Tomie
Tomie was a very important collection of stories for Junji Ito: it established him as a household name in the mid-80s and it also showed how capable he is of writing horror stories. In that regard, it can be argued that this series is one of the most important in his career.
The titular protagonist of the collection, Tomie, is a succubus and each story is centered around a character that runs into her and ends up suffering a horrible punishment. The Tomie series serves to show Ito's capacity to combine urban settings with very disturbing horror, making it one of the most important pieces in his career.
3. Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel is a legendary classic of the art form and it paved the way for a lot of different horror tropes, so when Junji Ito decided to do a manga adaptation of such an important piece of Literature, there was room for a lot of expectations. And it has to be said that the author succeeded in that regard.
Every Junji Ito manga has a lot of horror, a lot of cosmic tropes, and a knack for combining these elements with the urban side of things, but the interesting thing about this manga is that it pushes the mangaka out of his comfort zone.
This Frankenstein series takes Ito out of his usual tropes and has to combine his classic traits as an author with the original basis of the story.
One of Ito's most unique projects and one that deserves a lot more attention.
4. Gyo
By the time of the early 2000s, a Junji Ito manga was already a cause for celebration and a bit of fear. The author had made a name for himself because of the Uzumaki series, so by the time he announced the Gyo series of short stories in 2001, there was a lot of room for excitement about what this author could do.
The premise of the series is quite simple: a group of fishermen want to capture a giant fish but the latter also happens to have legs. So, having found out that it isn't a regular fish, things begin to turn a lot darker and weirder for these fishermen in typical Junji Ito fashion.
This has become of the most successful, popular, and disturbing works in the mangaka's career, which is why it is often recommended to new readers.
5. Remina
There is no secret that H.P. Lovecraft was a massive influence in every Junji Ito manga out there. Both authors are very interested in exploring the depths of horror and how monsters can come from realities far too different from humanity's. In that regard, Remina might be the series where the Lovecraft influence is most notorious in Ito's work.
The story is centered around a doctor that discovers that a planet is heading towards Earth and is named Remina after said doctor's daughter. However, as the story progresses, it is revealed that the planet in question is a living organism, much to the horror and dismay of the people in the story.
Final thoughts
Every Junji Ito manga is a unique experience and the author has cemented himself as the king of horror in the industry. His minimalistic art, his attention to detail when it matters, his great grasp on storytelling, and his virtues for horror have made him one of the most prominent manga authors in recent decades, which is why his work deserves all the attention it can get.
