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Fragments of Horror is a volume that collects eight short horror comics by Junji Ito. These stories are about a futon that makes you go crazy, a woman who falls in love with a house, has sex with it, makes it come to life and lose all its value, a witch who collects heads, a family who creates real projections of their dead loved ones, a girl who’s obsessed with getting dissected, an angelic/demonic time travelling black bird woman, a writer obsessed with tics and a woman who gets abused in her personal life and gets a chance to live through the a girl she instructs who’s unable to make any decisions for herself.
All of these stories are very bizarre, each in a different way. While all eight of them are very unique, some main themes and ideas seem to appear in this collection. Some of these are infidelity, trauma, the fear of losing the ones close to us and the need to have some sense of control in our lives. All these themes and ideas appear in some of the stories, but there seem to be two main things that Junji Ito is interested it. Said things are obsession and the horror of beautiful women. About obsession, in most of the comics in this collection the characters seem to be controlled by an obsession which ultimately destroys them. That can be something as simple as a house or a futon and as absurd as tics or dissection. Obsession is something that destroys people and there’s no one who presents that in a better way than Junji Ito. A bit more weird is the constant appearance in these comics of terrifying beautiful women. It’s very interesting to see how Junji Ito makes so many of the stories’ “villains” beautiful women. These characters usually manipulate the people around them and ultimately destroy them. Beauty is something mesmerizing that makes people focus on it and forget about the person’s character and motives. That makes it easier for someone beautiful to manipulate others. This is a very interesting idea that I spent a lot of time thinking about after reading this comic and it’s amazing how well Junji Ito presents it.
The comics aren’t really scary (at least for me), but they are creepy and they do have some disturbing images. Their main positive aspect tho is how many layers they have. Junji Ito’s comics can be read as simple horror stories, but if you dig deeper you’ll find many philosophical ideas, hidden meanings and concepts. My favorite story from the entire collection is “Gentle Goodbye”, which follows a girl who has lost her mother and lives only with her father. She’s having constant nightmares that her father will die that continue to torture her for many years. The girl eventually marries a young guy. The guy’s family has a weird tradition to prey very hard in the funerals of their relatives and bring them back as projections that “live” for about twenty years. Eventually, after about ten years, the girl finds out that she’s a projection as well and she leaves her husband to go live with her father. This story is a great example of Junji Ito’s love with obsessions. All the characters are in one way or another obsessed with death. The family makes the projections in order to make death easier for them and have some extra years to be able to let go of their loved ones, but eventually it becomes apparent (to the reader) that the projections do quite the opposite, because the members of the family get more attached to their dead relatives and then it’s even harder for them to let them go. That creates a very unhealthy obsession with death and dead people which consumes their (almost) every thought. The girl on the other hand is obsessed with death in a different way. Her obsession is created because of trauma and she’s terrified that her father will die and she’ll be left alone. This is a more natural and healthy obsession which ultimately seems to actually have some positive impact on her.
The artwork in every story is simply amazing. Junji Ito’s artwork is very detailed and while it’s (at some extend) classic manga artwork, it’s quite realistic. Also, the perspective of each panel is very interesting and helps the story a lot. That being said, what Junji Ito truly excels at is monsters and kinda psychedelic scenes, like the double page spread from Futon. These two pages are really beautiful and they made me fall I love with Ito’s artwork.
Overall, this is an amazing comic collection with great writing and fantastic artwork. It can be read simply as a fun collection of stories or as something deeper than that and it’s always very enjoyable.
10/10
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