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. If there is one Junji Ito manga that best encapsulates his Lovecraftian inspiration, it’s this one. Lovecraft understood just how vast and unknowable the spaces above and below us are.

Dazai's stand-in, Yozo Oba, seems to suffer from trauma and impostor syndrome due to childhood molestation and daddy issues. To compensate he becomes a class clown and womanizer in attempts fit in with other people -- from whom he feels separate and whom he hates and fears. He carves his way through the lives of others leaving suicide and murder in his wake, periodically attempting suicide himself. He alternates between living off a family allowance, being a kept man, and a life of poverty as a struggling manga artist and aspiring painter. He dabbles in Marxism and relationships but tends to betray everyone, really only committing to alcohol and drugs.At first, people think it’s a performance piece, but then it gently turns from strange to frightening. This is not a pleasant story. It is about heartbreak and depression, sexual abuse and addiction, and a whole range of topics that are more raw and human and, sometimes, more grotesque than the terrors conjured by horror fiction.

When Dazai took his own life, he left behind a baby daughter, Yūko Tsushima and she grew up to be a famed author in her own right, having penned novels such as Territory of Light and Woman Running in the Mountains.Crazily enough I was slightly looking forward to “The Human Crazy University”. From what had been shown through promotional material this would be a fun, absurdist comedy told through a 1960s, minimalist animation style about a death row inmate surviving his death sentence and recovering his memories. And it is that… minus the comedy… and the absurdity… and any reason to continue watching it….

When asked why, most of them plead, in a pathetic mumble, for the enquirer to leave them alone. But a charity has also been set up to provide them with comfort, food, and water; all of which the “earthbound” (or simply “bound”) choose to ignore. This town is affected by a curse involving the symbol of a spiral. It’s a story that plays on the impact that symbols have in both modern and ancient societies, especially in Japan. the Professor halfway through the first episode feels very underwhelmingly sane for a character with a mad scientist vibe. After a conversation with a GR friend, I decided to read this Junji Ito's adaptation, though I really am not a fan of Dazai Osamu's writing! When the titular fashion model turns up to a day of filming, our protagonist is immediately frightened.It’s an ordinary tale; the kind of thing that has happened to many of us (when I lived in Shanghai, my partner one day brought home two tiny terrapins she had rescued. Suddenly, they were our responsibility).

Apparently the original web manga was published on youtube (the manga panels and a voiceover) and that doesn´t surprise me because this show feels more like a youtuber project than a TV anime. Another reason that Junji Ito’s Cat Diary is so unique is that it is one of the most unique uses of Ito’s own imagination and approach to horror art. The depths of the ocean, the endless reaches of space, and even our planet’s remote and mysterious past.This is a Junji Ito manga that so vividly pays homage to the Lovecraft school of horror: this impossible, unknowable thing that renders innocent people insane and, even, dead.