VERDICT A suspenseful horror tale balanced by the pull of the plot and push of disturbing images. I'm joined by a dear friend for Read More's first ever manga review Junji Ito delivers solid gross-out weird and wild fun in his classic. The illustrations are paradoxically understated, appropriately disgusting, and achieve the right balance of abhorrence and desire to know what happens. Ito masterfully builds suspense through his strategic use of shadowing, unidirectional line, hatching, and action panels featuring “sound” as the only text.

Although classified as horror, this work has an underlying social commentary that is likely to be the subject of spirited discourse among mature readers. A strange, legged fish appears on the scene.so begins Tadashi and Kaoris spiral into the horror (and stench) of the sea. This invasive species causes irreparable damage and destruction through the emission of an airborne pathogen (that brings the people of Japan to the brink of extinction). These repulsive creatures multiply and skitter all over Japan like an invasive cockroach species, causing panic and delivering the death foreshadowed with the arrival of the odor. The figurative and literal demise of the romantic relationship between main characters Tadashi and Kaori begins with the arrival of an odor referred to as the “stench of death” a repugnant smell eclipsed only by the arrival of grotesque, multilegged fish. Add a mysterious, sickening, and inescapable stench to the mix, and a frayed relationship completely unravels. Gr 10 Up-A near-death encounter and temperamental mate are enough to strain even the most solid of couples.

Gyo, Vol. 1 by Junji Ito