Used Record or Second-Hand Record (from House of the Marionettes, あやつりの屋敷 Ayatsuri no Yashiki), a story about people fighting over the ownership of a record that has a singer's singing as they died recorded on it.

It considers a real-life issue – in this case a kind of body dysmorphia – and plays with it in a terrifying manner.There are nine stories presented across its four hundred pages, eight of which span Itō's long career in manga, and one of which is totally new (circa 2015). The result is often very funny -- the first popping of one of the balloons plays out as a masterfully paced sight gag -- but also genuinely unsettling from the sense of biological necessity driving these infernal dirigibles; it's a potent enough sensation (similar to that of Itō's beloved short "The Enigma of Amigara Fault") that you don't notice until late in the game that it's essentially a zombie story underneath. A recent earthquake has shifted the earth and raised a long strip of rock at the base of a mountain. Apart from the ghastly, convincingly-drawn deaths, the book projects an effective atmosphere of creeping fear as the town's inhabitants become less and less human, and more and more bizarre things begin to happen. These are the volumes upon which Viz Media bases their English releases ( Junji Ito Story Collections).

Eventually, unable to cope with her coy flirtation and their desire to possess Tomie completely, they are inevitably compelled to kill her — only to discover that, regardless of the method they chose to dispose of her body, her body will always regenerate. In fact, most readers have stated that Victor himself being an absolutely played straight mad scientist is probably more faithful than many of the adaptations that came after the book. The author commentary after each story was super interesting in seeing how Junji Ito finds and grows his concepts.His horror stories, both short and long, are all written and drawn with a surreal, off-kilter, otherworldly eeriness. She can seduce nearly any man, and drive them to murder as well, even though the victim is often Tomie herself.

The Face Burglar is a doppleganger-focused tale, with a student being able to assume people's faces unconsciously. In the moments where nothing supernatural has yet happened, a shiver of discomfort can be felt when looking at the eyes of Ito’s protagonists. Love as Scripted, meanwhile, focuses on a man who breaks up with his girlfriends via videotapes, and his current girlfriend killing him when she discovers this. Yet despite their visibility, Itō's small works have been slow to arrive in formal translated publication, perhaps because the extent of their piracy has made them a dicey investment for publishers; the big shōnen titles will sell regardless of scans, since that pump is already primed, but 20-year-old horror shorts are a different thing. That Itō illustrates this power with farcical la la las and dabba dabba daaa dabba daaas emitting from word balloons seems less a failure of concept than simple humility to me.In his episode, Itō describes his work in terms of stewardship of horror manga traditions, drawn from the likes of Hino, Shin'ichi Koga, and his idol, Kazuo Umezu; Itō's goal is to create images that nobody has seen before, and bring them to life. Fears of the ocean and creatures from its depths have been profiled in fiction many times, from giant squids to shark attacks, and even the absurdity of shark tornadoes. While his art is praised most often for its body horror quality, Hanging Blimp is what most expertly shows off his plotting and the strength of his mental forge.

His drawings are fairly realistic with simple clean character designs, but when he adds texture or renders a “shock panel,” his art gets significantly darker, more detailed, and quite vivid.

During the same period, publisher 'Shogakukan' released a series based on 'Uzumaki,' published in three volumes. Then there's Weeping Woman Way, revolving around women weeping for each other's souls after death to keep the dead at peace.