SMASHED - JUNJI ITO

A Halloween miracle. I was able to get my hands on both of the Ito short story collections during October. Ito is a horror master, this collection does nothing to change that. It’s very similar to SHIVER, its a collection of a dozen or so stories that all last about 20 or so pages. The art is immaculate. The splash panels (not sure what the Manga term for this) are among the scariest, grossest, and coolest I’ve ever seen. The concepts of the stories are likewise brilliant and amazing. We get an evil tree, a man who replaces his circulatory system with a colony of vampire bats, evil mirrors/gazes, evil books, evil tickle-ghosts, it really has it all. Unlike SHIVER, this collection contains 3 stories that feature the same events and characters (plus a cameo from SHIVER). While this story is still good and scary, it was my least favorite part of the book. I like the quick in-and-out of the unconnected short story format. Having a story that retells and doubles back and asks you to remember stuff from 50 pages previous fucks with the flow of the story and the vibe I tap into reading it. However, let me not shit too much on this. It’s a classic, SHIVER is a classic. The sentence, “Try not to be noticed when you eat the secret nectar, otherwise you’ll get smashed,” is immortal. Ito is the master. Manga nerds, what else is this good and this scary. 13 scary trees.