Ranked #1311

Lovesick Dead (Manga)

Ryuusuke is a teen who has just moved back to his old town because of his father's job. However, he is feeling very uneasy about this and for good reason. The town is often subjected to a thick fog and the residents, no matter what their ages are, all take part in a game known as 'intersection fortune telling'. The game involves the player popping out from hiding near an intersection upon encountering someone else and then asking whoever it is for advice on his/ her love life. This is risky to begin with. But the real trouble doesn't start until soon after Ryuusuke's reunited with some old friends. What follow are resurfaced buried memories and very many events which would easily convince almost anyone else to move away as soon and as far away as possible.

Lovesick Dead is a horror manga written and illustrated by Junji Ito. The story is much darker than it sounds so don't be fooled by my synopsis as I tried not to include even the slightest spoilers. There is plenty of creepy material although it is rarely, if ever, visually shocking in the way that Uzumaki and Gyo are. That isn't necessarily a fault, however. The story is well paced and kept me interested from start to finish. The main characters' lives are not delved into very much beyond what is necessary for readers to know(and in relation to the core mystery/phenomenon) but the characters themselves are decent when considering the length. The main character doesn't feel cliched or recycled and the minor characters have personalities as well. If I had to make one complaint it would be that I felt the ending was too sudden to even elicit a reaction from me. But it wasn't an outright bad ending at the very least.

Although I've only recently looked into his work, I think it's fair to say that if you are familiar with Junji Ito then you should expect refreshingly realistic artwork here as well. Not even the details which most artists neglect are forgotten as the subtlest facial expressions and physical reactions are easy to read when depicted on a character(an unfortunate rarity in animation in general). The characters change and, sometimes, distort physically in believable ways. There were moments where I was caught off guard by a frightening-looking character despite obvious foreshadowing on that very page. I loved how a simple close up to a character's eye(s) was often more intense than what actually provoked such fear in him or her. I wish more manga was illustrated this way.

I'm mostly writing this review because I enjoyed this story enough to feel that it really deserved at least one review on this site even if it would be difficult for me to sum up my thoughts on it(to be honest, I did have trouble writing this). Anyway, to put it simply, I have no overpowering reasons not to recommend this to anyone who either likes horror, supernatural, mystery & suspense, or all of the above. There is a little romance as well but I'm not sure if many people will find it romantic in the traditional sense.. read more