No Longer Human Complete Edition (Manga)

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Apparently Dazai’s style was autobiographical fiction and I’ve never read the original book (nor ever will) so I can’t say how much of this is directly taken from the book or whether Ito added in biographical elements from Dazai’s life. But the book opens with an alcoholic writer and his young girlfriend committing suicide by drowning, which is really how Dazai died. Well and to tell the truth, I started getting myself into all this contemporary Japanese literature stuff after reading the Bungo Stray Dogs manga series. LOL Fashion Model is the story that gave us one of Ito’s most iconic characters. When you Google Junji Ito, certain images take the centre stage: Tomie’s face, the Uzumaki spirals, and the fashion model: a predatory, monstrous looking woman with sharp teeth, long fingers, piercing eyes, and a hungry stare.

Sensor makes strong use of the twisted images and body horror that Junji Ito is best known for, but it does so sparingly. The phenomenon spreads slowly, and people begin to wonder if it’s contagious. There is no rhyme or reason for why people would begin acting this way. Until, of course, there is.Even the Junji Ito manga that doesn’t fit neatly into the horror genre still has elements of the uncanny and the unsettling in its illustration. As a brief member of the Japanese Communist Party, Dazai could be seen as the anti-Mishima. His legacy as a wartime writer and post-war author is legendary, and No Longer Human is often touted as his masterpiece. It didn’t help that almost nothing that happened was remotely interesting. In addition to being tedious, some episodes were simply baffling. Like when Oba, as a defence mechanism, becomes the class clown, purposely making an ass of himself for the amusement of his classmates. But the grotesque friend Takeichi says that he knows Oba is making a fool of himself on purpose, which is apparently a terrible secret that sends Oba on a mental spiral where he contemplates murdering Takeichi to protect this “secret” - what?!? Yeah, he’s being an ass on purpose - so what?! Maybe it’s a cultural thing or has something to do with the era but I totally failed to grasp the significance of this. Pesadilla existencial donde el descenso a los infiernos de un autor, está directamente contrapuesto con la propia ansiedad de tener que vivir el día a día cuando realmente apenas es capaz de luchar contra la oscuridad que envuelve su vida. Junji Ito capta a la perfección la esencia de Osamu Dazai.

This is another Ito short story that’s found in the Shivercollection. It’s also one of the very best Junji Ito manga to showcase his incredible approach to body horror. Every once in a blue moon, there are shows that more than just the typical copy-paste blurb that you see in the current seasonal landscape, takes you to a deeper dive of something that is truly original and stands out on its own. While the most recent case example is last year's Odd Taxi being seemingly an unkempt story about a walrus driving a taxi with the detective mystery plot of twists and turns hiding from within and awaiting its chance to demystify and satiate the audience at every corner. And this Fall, other than the return of Pop Team Epic renewed for Season 2,Junji Ito has created quite the impressive and haunting visual feat with his massive manga adaptation of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai’s fairly autobiographical novel about the dark impulses that lurk within us. Known for his horror manga-ka artwork,Junji Ito is the perfect artist to helm such a work of darkly introspective intensity, transforming Dazai’s prose of searing anxiety into visceral, surreal and hallucinogenic visual storytelling. At over 600pgs long, this is quite the dense and emotionally arresting work but Ito’s signature art and the seamless storytelling propel the book along as you feel yourself pulled deeper into the unraveling mind of Oba Yozo, the fictional narrator of Dazai’s story who draws much inspiration from the author himself. While Ito has taken a few liberties with the plot, this manga adaptation remains largely faithful to Dazai’s original and explores darkness, guilt and self-degradation in a viscerally chilling new angle through Ito’s incredible artwork.