Reviews

Apr 4, 2014
Preliminary (16/72 chp)
Fuan no Tane is a bit different to the other horror manga I've read. It's still a collection of short stories, like most of them, but it doesn't feel as oriented towards the consumption of individual chapters. The individual parts may not amount to much, some being around 3 pages long, and very occasionally some of them seemed genuinely nonsensical, but the collection is greater than the some of it parts.

In compilation the stories all contribute to a sense of mounting tension to a degree far exceeding any similar works I've read. It feels strange to talk about pacing in regards to segments so short, but by the end of each chapter I had been elevated to a state of unease I'm not accustomed to when reading horror manga.

Unfortunately, there are weaker aspects. Regularly, a brooding and ominous mood will be established in a tiny amount of pages, before this is ruined by the appearance of the supposed source of horror - an obligatory generic monster. It's a cliche to claim what you can't see is more important than what you can - but it rings true in this case. They range from spirits to disfigured humans but by and large all the supernatural entities depicted fall flat. Nakayama Masaaki is not Junji Ito.

But if his monsters aren't quite up to scratch, Nakayama Masaaki seems to have had a decent go at emulating Ito's tendency to bail at the end of his stories. The difference is though, that rather than heading into the tales in Fuan no Tane with the investment necessitated by Ito's more conventional "short story" format, you're well aware after two or three chapters that you're not so much getting a horror story as a quick look through a grimy window on a horrible street.

After binging on horror manga, Fuan no Tane was very much a refreshing read and I'd fully recommend it to anyone with an interest in the genre - or anyone who is bored by what could been seen as homogeneity. It spins its stories in a different way, and in doing so, evokes a quite profound atmosphere of dread and foreboding throughout.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice Nice0
Love it Love it0
Funny Funny0
Show all
It’s time to ditch the text file.
Keep track of your anime easily by creating your own list.
Sign Up Login