18 Inexplicably Horrifying Junji Ito’s Lovecraftian Monsters And Stories – Analyzed And Explored

No one is more well-known in the world of horror manga than Junji Ito. Since his debut in the late 1980s, he has amassed a considerable following base. Some of his most famous writings have been adapted into live-action films or dramas over the years. Junji Ito was born in 1963 in the Gifu prefecture and began writing comics in 1987.

His debut manga contribution earned him an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize, and that was just the start. One of his earlier works was “Tomie,” a manga story about a supernatural girl/entity named Tomie that was adequately disturbing. Ito is the author of a number of well-known works, including “Gyo,” “Uzumaki,” “Cat Diary: Yon and Muu,” and others. A number of his short stories have appeared in anthologies. “Fragments of Horror,” which was translated by Viz in the United States, is one such anthology. For example, “Tomie” and “Uzumaki” have been adapted into films and television shows.

Junji Ito enjoys employing his own set of gimmicks and clichés. Apart from the obvious ones like body horror, grossness, and incomprehensible supernatural power, Ito uses a range of other techniques to convey his fear. Others are more overt, while others are more subtle. A combination of body horror, unsettling locations, and an overall sense of dread keeps the audience on edge. He is a true maestro of horror, and today we will take a look at some of his most weird and terrifying creations. Fasten your seatbelts because you are in for a wild journey.

Fuchi – Fashion Model [ Episode 2 Part 1]

Fuchi is a cannibalistic monster, serial killer, and professional model that appears as the main adversary in two of Junji Ito’s manga stories, “Rumors” and “Fashion Model”. She also has a little part in the film “Voices in The Dark”. Fuchi is incredibly slim, but she is also extremely tall and large in size. She has a bony face with frighteningly pointed features, and her lips remain slightly clenched even when she speaks, concealing the razor-sharp fangs in her mouth. She usually dresses normally, but in “Rumors”, she wore a bikini when attacking people in the swamp.

She, like many of Ito’s characters, exudes an uncanny air, and when she attacks, she is unmistakably vicious, remorseless, and monstrous. She doesn’t think twice about stalking and devouring her prey and also seems to enjoy playing with her victims.

Her most memorable appearance was in “Fashion Model”. Fuchi’s employment as a professional model is somewhat vague; it is entirely possible that she is performing an illusion or mind-bending trick, or that her “unique” appearance has gained her a reputation in the fashion world resulting in more gigs.

In “Fashion Model”, she obtains a role in Iwasaki’s short film, after which she goes on a rampage in the location where they were filming, killing many crew members who were Iwasaki’s friends, as well as murdering and eating the indie film’s lead actress. She is a merciless killer with a fondness for individuals who like or appreciate her appearance and will go to any length to be with them. Definitely, a terrifying monster that I will stay far far away from.

Hellish Doll [ Episode 1 Part 2]

The novel that the Hellish Doll is seen in “Frankenstein”, Junji Ito’s adaptation of the Mary Shelly novel. In this novel, children have begun to succumb to an early onset of “doll’s disease,” which leads them to gradually transform into doll-like constructs incapable of movement or speech.

When a young girl named Maria succumbs to the illness, her parents try to console themselves by reminding themselves that she will always look like a beautiful doll and will be with them forever. They don’t understand why the parents of the other sick victims abandon their children. However, when Maria continues to degrade and change, including the growth of tentacles and horribly extended limbs, her parents are compelled to put her to rest.

This version of little Maria is known as the ‘Hellish Doll’, as she grows and mutates into a hideous creature that definitely puts Annabelle to shame. Her burial is also not an easy job as her parents have to deal with their daughter who is no longer human and has instead turned into a tentacled monster that they could not fathom. She transforms from a doll into an inhuman entity, looking like a terrifying mix of centipede, tree roots, and teeth with bright blue eyes that follow you wherever you go. Positively horrifying and nightmare fuel, that is exactly what one would expect from the scary genius of Junji Ito.

Cannibal Boy – Haunted House

Junji Ito wrote and illustrated the short story “Secret of the Haunted Mansion.” It’s the fourth installment of “Voices in the Dark”. The plot revolves around two buddies who enter the eponymous haunted house while interacting with its landlord. In a town, a haunted house attraction debuts. Despite the fact that it is originally suspected of being a ruse, everyone who visits is afraid. The police are also brought in to investigate. Kouichi and Satoshi, two young boys, try to sneak into the mansion at night but are apprehended by the proprietor. He admires their bravery and lets them explore the house for free.

It turns out that the proprietor is hiding a dark secret; that is the existence of his cannibalistic monstrous son. He moves from town to town with his haunted attraction in tow to escape his demonic wife and feed his cannibal son. The man had also managed to enslave his entire family into becoming live attractions within the haunted house, but our focus is the cannibal boy here.

The boy is small in stature but has large eyes which look ravenous and hungry for blood. He also has a large, outstretched mouth that is lined with razor-sharp teeth. All this little boy speaks about is how hungry he is for tender human flesh. The protagonists encounter him inside the very end of the haunted house, munching on the arm of a dead policeman. One of the friends is caught by him and succumbs to the cannibalistic nature of the boy. The sight of the boy will scare you to no end. Think twice before you enter a haunted house, you never know what is fake and what is real.

Window Monster – Window Next Door [ Episode 6 Part 1]

People love looking outside their windows, enjoying the scenery and a breath of fresh air but what if you looked outside and saw something horrifying? Would you dare to look out in the dark? Hiroshi Sakaguchi and his family move into a new house in Junji Ito’s story “The Neighbor’s Window”.

He’s interested in the house next door, which has only one window. They discover that the inhabitant, a middle-aged woman, is never seen, although neighbors have reported seeing a person at the window at night. When Hiroshi goes to bed, he hears a voice calling his name and sees a woman with a terrible, corpse-like visage and clawed, bony hands inviting him to visit her. This terrifies him and yet, he can’t believe his eyes.

Hiroshi dismisses it as a dream, but the next night, he hears the voice again, this time upset because he did not visit. When he looks outside the window, he sees a woman attempting to get to his room with a laundry line pole. Hiroshi knocks the pole down and hurries into his parents’ room, crying out for rescue.

No one apart from Hiroshi can see her which makes matters worse, as she keeps trying to reach him. In fact, her window stretches all the way to his and the story ends with a cliffhanger as Hiroshi’s fate at the hands of the terrifying woman in the window remains unknown. This monster is a classic example of Junji Ito’s ability to make any situation uncanny and eerie, which draws the audience in and creeps them out. This one will undoubtedly make you draw your curtains at night lest you spot a window monster.

Tomie Mutation – Tomie

Tomie is probably one of Ito’s most well-known horror creations. Junji Ito established Tomie as a multimedia franchise. Tomie Kawakami was a regular, gorgeous adolescent until she was brutally murdered and dismembered on campus. She became substantially less normal after she returned to class a week later, looking unscathed.

Her snobbish demeanor and devious techniques of stealing lads away from their partners earned her no friends, and when she was inadvertently killed by two men fighting for her, the entire class agreed to cut up her remains and remove the evidence that she had ever returned. Yet, time and again, Tomie reappeared, and more and more copies of Tomie reappeared as well.

If Tomie wasn’t convincing a man to go after and kill one of her doubles, her attraction was so strong that the man would try to murder Tomie to prevent anyone else from having her beauty. Tomie, despite their love, has no feelings for any of them; she just cares about herself.

Tomie can rebuild herself completely from the slightest piece of herself, from a severed limb to even her hair or blood. Tomie may even absorb someone who has a piece of her tied to them, gradually taking them over until they are also Tomie. Radiation accelerates the process, and fire may be the only thing that can completely destroy a Tomie, though this has never been demonstrated clearly.

Even when not hurt, a malignant Tomie will occasionally sprout out of another, causing both Tomie’s to persuade bystanders to murder the other. Tomie, in addition to her healing abilities, has the capacity to force people to obsess over her and obey any command she issues, including murder. The experiment begins when a doctor decides to put Tomie’s regenerative abilities to the test. The outcome is a massive amorphous blob with more than ten heads, rearranged limbs, and a terrifying sectional larvae-like tail that resembles a deformed insectoid.

The Scarecrow – Scarecrows [Episode 11 Part 2]

Junji Ito wrote the short story “Scarecrows”. It is the second chapter of “The Face Burglar”, Volume 4 of Junji Ito’s Horror World collection. A tiny village’s residents discover a peculiar phenomenon in their cemetery: when a scarecrow is erected near a tomb, it eventually takes on the appearance of the person buried there.

But is it true that only appearances are carried down…? As it turned out, that was not the case. It started with the death of young girl named Yuki, and her father placed a scarecrow on her grave to ward away pests and other pesky people, especially her boyfriend, Toshio. However, what was a simple scarecrow soon turned out to be much scarier.

The scarecrow gained the features of Yuki and almost became life-like and it would remain that way as long as the scarecrow remained at the grave. Seeing this, the other townspeople also began to do the same, so that they could see and talk to their loved ones after they passed away. It turns out that these scarecrows also tried to fulfill people’s wishes from beyond the grave.

Yuki wanted to marry Toshio and her spirit brought him to the cemetery. When he was too scared of her scarecrow-human appearance, he was killed by her. They say not to mess with the dead and allow them to move on and this story does a fantastic job of portraying it. The scarecrows were quite horrifying to look at along with being extremely creepy because they assumed the features of the dead along with their feelings, wishes, and spirits.

The Conjoined Women – The Town Without Streets

This horrifying creation appears in “The Town Without Streets” by Junji Ito. Ito horrifies readers in “The Town Without Streets” by introducing The Conjoined Women, a highly unpleasant creature that appears as numerous hospital patients joined by a mouthful of disgusting eel-like tentacles with spiky edges, meant to impale victims. The creature is a sentient, hive-minded beast, linked by a network of nerve fibers that it utilizes to kill and drain the blood of victims. If one of the strange white-eyed female patients’ nerves are severed, she will die. This carries on the trope of the tentacled monster but in Ito’s own style.

Slug Girl [ Episode 3 Part 2]

A classic Junji Ito body horror, the creature featured in this story will definitely give you the creeps. The story centers around a young girl called Yuuko, who slowly becomes reclusive and stops coming to school. Her friend Rie goes to check on her, only to see that her house has become infested with slugs, something that Yuuko has been afraid of since she was a child. Rie found her sitting in her bedroom, wearing a face mask and refusing to let anyone look inside her mouth.

The next day, Rie arrived to discover Yuuko’s mother in a state of fear, and Yuuko’s tongue had changed into a slug. Rie fled the house and never returned. She mentions however hearing about Yuuko and her parents’ efforts to get rid of it. They attempted to remove her tongue, but it grew back. Filling her mouth with salt to get rid of it simply resulted in her spitting it out. Yuuko grew severely ill as a result of her inability to eat, and her parents decide to bury her in a salt bathtub.

She did not reappear from the salt tub as was expected, and her parents reached in to grab her, but they could only retrieve her clothes from the tub. Yuuko appeared to have vanished. They discovered her head in the tub with her body shriveled to a teeny-tiny size due to the salt. However, the slug that was present was seen creeping away from Yuuko’s mouth still alive, her head attached almost like a snail’s shell. This visual will creep you out and you will never look at snails or slugs the same way again.

The Dreamer – The Long Dream [Episode 2 Part 2]

Long Dream is one of Ito’s most well-known short stories, and it was adapted into a live-action television film in 2000, as well as an animated rendition in the second episode of the 2018 anime “Junji Ito Collection”.

In the story, a girl named Mami is in the hospital awaiting brain surgery. She claims that she has been visited by the embodiment of death and that she will die shortly. She begs Dr. Kuroda to save her, but Kuroda believes that she is hallucinating. Tetsuro Mukoda, another of her patients, paid her a visit.

Mukoda suffers from horrifying nightmares that, despite lasting only one night, last a year or more in his dreams. The physicians have no idea what to do with him, yet his dreams grow one year longer each night. Over time, incidents that occurred yesterday seem like they have occurred fifty years ago or more. He begins to speak as if he were from a different century. He also ages to the appearance of a very elderly man, making him the creepy dreamer.

Mukoda then records his longest dream yet. His body shatters into a pile of crystals when dawn breaks, having become too old to keep up with his dreams. Kuroda investigates the crystals but finds no connection to Mukoda’s condition. Mami starts having “long dreams” like Mukoda, and when questioned, Kuroda admits that he gave her portions of Mukoda’s remains. He reasoned that because she fears death and consequently emptiness, entering a condition of endless dreaming would allow her spirit to live forever. In the end he becomes obsessed with his “study,” and believes that one day, all of humanity will want to enter the never-ending dream.

Puzzling Disease – Shivers [Episode 4 Part 1]

In the story “Shivers”, a young kid named Yuuji and his friend Hideo look through a diary written by Yuuji’s grandfather. After purchasing a jade insect statue discovered in Java by an old comrade, he had a chill and was visited by a strange doctor who administered an injection. Holes began to appear in his skin, and draughts entered through them. Then, in swarms, insects crawled out of the openings.

He dubbed it the “curse of the jade statue” and flung it into a nearby garden. He also suspected the doctor who had come to see him of attempting to take the jade. This same disease seems to plague Yuuji’s neighbor, a young girl called Rina. However, it turned out that after reading the story, Hideo had gone to look for a Jade statue which resulted in him also contracting the illness.

Hideo, now entirely hollowed out with holes, breaks into Yuuji’s chamber that night. He went looking for the jade statue in the bushes outside Rina’s house on the day they discovered the diary. He gambled on the curse since he knew that the jade had to be expensive; however, the holes in his flesh began to appear.

He realized that he was now possessed by the statue and is unable to hurl it away, despite numerous attempts. He claims that the doctor is the curse’s “messenger,” appearing anywhere the jade goes. The doctor emerges out of nowhere, and Hideo flees screaming. It was in fact the same doctor that had treated his grandfather and Rina next door, making the story of the Jade statue very real. You never know when a treasure is actually a curse.

Strange Tradition – Gentle Goodbye [Episode 6 Part 2]

Imagine a world where after a dear one dies, you could simply recreate their image in a life-like manner that would sustain itself for a couple of decades before disappearing so as to give the rest of the family members more time to deal with the suddenness of death? Well, this concept is exactly what Ito explores in his story “Gentle Goodbye”. The story revolves around a girl called Riko who keeps dreaming about the passing of her father. She gets married to a man called Makoto.

When Makoto’s grandfather passes away and the mourners leave, Makoto’s father leads the family in a ceremony to focus on the possibility of the deceased reappearing. Everyone does so, and Grandpa reappears soon after, despite the fact that he was burned. Makoto subsequently tells Riko that his family has always done this and that these dead individuals are “after-images” – illusions produced from the living’s memories. They only stay for around twenty years before disappearing forever, but this is generally enough time to ease the family’s sadness.

The story ends with a shocking twist where it turns out that Makoto himself was an afterimage. These illusions were actually very much sentient and not aware of the fact that they had died, continuing to live life as usual. Turns out that the day before their wedding, he was murdered by a car running him over. With the exception of his dad, Makoto’s relatives took pity on him and consented to build an after-image of her. Thus, they continued this strange tradition as it required a lot of people to manifest this after-image that was living and breathing with no realization of their passing.

Blood Drinking Monster – Blood-Bubble Bushes [Episode 9 Part 2]

This take on the traditional vampire appears in the short story “Blood Bubble Bushes” by Junji Ito. It features two youngsters, Ansai and Kana, and a vampire who is desperate for blood. The story begins with Ansai and Kana crashing their car into someone, causing blood to splatter everywhere. While looking for help, they are attacked by many young boys who have razor-sharp teeth. It is while fleeing from them that they encounter the terrible vampire who at first seems like a helpful and kind man. He takes them in and tells them a story of how his girlfriend killed herself and from her throat grew a tree whose fruits drained her blood. However, turns out that it was all a lie.

Ansai awakens in the middle of the night to find the man consuming Kana’s blood. Ansai notices the blood trail that brought him to the house and recalls that he never found out where it led. He follows it to a door in the home, which leads to a yard full of trees bearing blood-filled fruits. The man had converted all of the villagers into trees, and his story about his lover was a lie.

As a vampire, he needed the fruit to keep his blood supply going. However, now that all of the people had turned into mummies, he was hunting for a new sacrifice. The veins suck the vitality out of the person once the trees begin to develop. The only way to avoid this fate is to consume their own blood bubbles, but doing so transforms the person into a vampire. Quite terrifying, isn’t it?

Hanging Balloons

“The Face Burglar”, volume 4 of the Horror World of Junji Ito Collection, contains the sixth chapter, “The Hanging Balloons”. Every living individual in the story has a dangling balloon that reflects their own face. These balloons are linked to lengthy ropes that are used to track down and murder the person they resemble. If a human kills one of the flying balloons, they die horrifyingly and hideously. Ito took inspiration for “The Hanging Balloons” from a childhood dream, according to grapee.jp. The dangerous creatures from the title story are made up of severed heads that float around like balloons and terrorize their real-life counterparts.

In the story, Terumi Fujino committed suicide by hanging herself with a noose from a telephone wire. It was after this incident that huge flying balloon heads began appearing all over Tokyo. However, they were not harmless and instead were constantly trying to trick people into hanging themselves or killing them. Terumi’s best friend, Kazuko, finds herself in a fix as people all around her begin getting killed and taken away by these hanging balloon heads. Soon, everyone was caught by the balloons, and their bodies hung in the sky, including Kazuko’s mother, who had gone to look for Yousuke.

Kazuko is imprisoned inside the house by herself but at the end of the story, it is implied that she was also killed by the hanging balloon that had her face. This one is quite horrifying and the imagery will give you chills. Often, nothing is scarier than an innocent thing like a balloon being mutated into a floating killing machine.

The Licking Woman

In the short story of the same name, the licking woman is the main antagonist. The story begins with a man named Tsuyoshi walking to his fiancée Miku’s house, when he is attacked by a mysterious woman who licks his face and hand. He becomes unwell, collapses, and dies, as does Miku’s dog, which licked the woman’s spit off Tsuyoshi’s skin. Tests reveal that they have a biotoxin in their blood. Soon after, another guy is assassinated by the woman, who has a massive, extended, infected tongue. People are being cautioned to remain watchful and she is soon caught and sent to jail.

Many years later, Miku is in a pub where he meets Nagaoka. When they start conversing, they realize that they were both victims of the licking woman. Miku swears to kill the woman when she learns that she was released. Nagaoka advises that Miku coat her skin in lethal potassium cyanide, which she can procure from the laboratory where she works, and then have the woman lick it, poisoning herself. Miku pursues her and the woman collapses and dies after licking the cyanide, but not before reaching inside her mouth and literally ripping off her own tongue. It dives into Miku’s throat and nearly chokes her before falling to the ground. Miku, on the other hand, begins to suspect that Nagaoka is the Licking Woman and that she has used Miku for a malevolent purpose. Miku eventually starts seeing a new boyfriend and puts her past behind her. When they kiss, however, they are attacked by the woman’s massive tongue and found dead, poisoned by potassium cyanide. Eyewitness tales of a massive tongue bouncing around at the scene are ignored by police. Be careful when you kiss your Tinder date eh?

The Human Chair

“The Human Chair” is a horrifying story about how a carpenter used to build armchairs with space for himself to fit in inside the chair itself. The fear that Ito plays on in this story is the apprehension of someone breaching your personal space. Everyone in their home has a favorite chair. Sure, we don’t mind if someone else sits on it, but we’d prefer to be the ones sitting on it. It’s our own chair. This is where we feel most at ease. At the same time, it is also where we are most vulnerable.

This carpenter was apparently living in the chair. There was food and water available for him, as well as a chamber pot for when he needed to relieve himself. He likely only left the chair at night to change the pot. When the spouse beats the chair, he displays a frighteningly stoic reaction to pain. This man, whoever he is, was so enamored with her (add more context) that he couldn’t leave her side while she was writing. Another revelation that happens in the course of the story is that the woman went insane and decided to live in the chair with the chairman.

A descendent of theirs continues to be in the chair business and offers women, especially writers, the same treatment of giving them a chair comfortable enough with a man inside it for optimal flow of thoughts. Would you ever try this out if you had writer’s block? Count me out but how about you?

Gyo

Given that galeophobia, which is the fear of sharks, is one of the most common fears throughout human history, Ito’s creation of “The Walking Shark in Gyo” is the stuff of nightmares. The murderous Great White Shark can walk on four legs and follow its human victims on land and in water.

The merciless killing machine and unstoppable alpha predator walks on four artificial spiderlike legs, fusing the scary iconography of an ancient sea creature with that of an unusual arachnoid, which terrifies readers to no end. Junji Ito drew Gyo. The inspiration, in his words, came from Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws”, in which Spielberg expertly portrayed the essence of horror in the shape of a man-eating shark. Ito reasoned that it would be even more exciting to capture that terror in a man-eating shark that can fare on land as well as sea.

Tadashi and Kaori are a couple fighting to survive against a mysterious horde of undead fish with metal legs propelled by an odor known as the “death stench.” “Gyo” begins with a fishing crew bringing up a bunch of strange-looking fish in the boat’s net. When they examine the strange creatures, they see that the bizarre fish appear to have legs. The fish then scurry away, diving back into the ocean. These fish are discovered by Kaori and Tadashi and soon, many of these legged marine creatures including the titular walking shark start coming onto the land.

The fish was created as a result of the Japanese Army’s World War II research into a virus that causes its host to emit a lethal and disgusting smell, in a desperate attempt to shift the course of the war. The virus was then pumped into a host, causing the host to release the gas that powers the machine’s movement via pneumatics; walking machines were designed to transport the hosts further, allowing them to reach and sicken enemy forces. However, enemy planes sunk the ship carrying the prototypes for the walking machines, causing them to wreak havoc on the marine population and finally invade cities like Tokyo.

Glyceride

This story will make you quite nauseous so I recommend you steel your nerves for this one. The villain is none other than oil and grease which turns humans into monsters. The plot revolves around a young girl called Yui and her family who run a barbecue restaurant and also live above it. Their entire building is covered with oil and grease and this starts affecting Yui and her brother.

Her brother starts developing acne and a bad temper. He guzzles oil like it was water. One day, he throws a fit of rage, essentially going mad, as he pops his acne and rains down pus on Yui. Their father is forced to stop him and ends up killing him. To hide his crime, he chops up his son and serves the human meat in the restaurant which becomes a massive hit amongst the people who have no idea that they are eating human flesh.

However, the meat runs out and Yui’s father turns his eyes on her, as she develops acne and a temper just like her elder brother. He tries forcing her to drink oil but she locks herself in her room. She later finds her father drinking the oil instead and he cuts off his own leg to serve to the customers because they only wanted that kind of meat. At the end of the story, Yui’s body reaches a 100% oil saturation, showing how the oil and grease had practically mutated them because as she watched her father sever his own leg, she noticed that there was no blood flowing from the wound, instead, all there was, was oil. You might not want to reach for that greasy piece of pizza for the next couple of days.

Army of One – Sewn Corpses

“Army of One”, one of Junji Ito’s most renowned one-shot stories, is universally lauded by readers and is sometimes referred to as Ito’s magnum opus – even going so far as to declare the short manga better than its parent manga, “Hellstar Remina”. In this one, mysterious bodies of people who have died or disappeared start showing up, sewn together. Not only that, people also start disappearing in large numbers and later showing up with their corpses sewn in the same manner. What is really scary about “Army of One” is that no one knows who runs the organization or where it is based. Even when it gets labeled as a terrorist organization, the police and army seem unable to track them down. They recruit people by air-dropping pamphlets that ask people to join them in their cause.

The only explanation that we could find is that these pamphlets and the mass hysteria caused by the killings only propelled more and more people to go crazy, as they became mandated to stay indoors and avoid social gatherings in fear of getting killed and sewn up. These people further carried on the murders, making it so extreme that it required the attention of the Japanese Army. And to think we lived through the age of social isolation.

With this, we come to the end of our list. Do you like horror manga? What are some of your favorites?