Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection

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A stunned Midori stumbles out and he gives chase, only to find her with her throat cut in a suicide attempt. At school, Ryuusuke is told by a friend that another girl killed herself over intersection fortune telling and that the school she was from is not allowing students to play it any longer. Reishi, confused, says that she thought he was ending his relationship with Midori, but he tells her that he still won't go out with her. The art has so much depth and he is able to transition to just bonkers intense horrifying scenes and concepts after filling you with dread (see Alexander's excellent review for examples of the art). Over the course of the story, Midori is disturbed by the way Ryuusuke treats her, as she loves him, but has no idea why he's so cold to her.

His longest work, the three-volume Uzumaki, is about a town's obsession with spirals: people become variously fascinated with, terrified of, and consumed by the countless occurrences of the spiral in nature. He runs into the bloody living corpse of Reishi, who screams for Ryuusuke (who she believes is the Intersection Bishounen). Two standalone stories, ‘The Mansion of Phantom Pain’ and ‘The Rib Woman’, are the high point of the book. The imagery or the stories are never scary though - Ito’s horror is so absurdly over the top that it’s too silly to take seriously. Unfortunately he runs into his rabid and mad lovestruck fans once again, who are noticeably thinner.It also does a wonderful job of bringing together seemingly unrelated phenomena in dramatic, terrifying style.

Despite it being more moody noir and less outright horror than Ito's other collections, Lovesickness is one of my favorites, especially the collection of stories about the "Intersection Bishounen". I liked it, and the illustrations are, of course, great, but it’s not satisfying, nor is it the author’s most innovative work.I really like the story "The Mansion of Phantom Pain", there is hardly anything gross in the story but the plot and the plot twists work out so well!