But that’s it, after the initial beach chapters, the manga starts showing it’s terribleness.
Unlike most of Ito’s manga, Gyo, doesn’t have that creepy atmosphere always looming in the background, normally represented by the visuals, be it the dreadful backgrounds or the sheer expression of terror on the character’s faces. One of my main gripes with this manga is that it focuses too much on the premise, dead sea creatures with legs and walking among earth are scary at first, but a strong premise isn’t nearly enough to hold an entire manga on it’s own, it needs more than that to keep the reader engaged and entertained.
Gyo is a gore fest, it’s obviously trying it’s hardest to shock you and show off the nastiest images possible, but it doesn’t do that very well. Drawings of gore aren’t that disgusting, specially when it’s so ridiculous and over the top.
The “story”, if you can call it that, is simple and very cliché, another “save your girlfriend, save the world” kinda story, where the main character gets involved in all this and has to save his love, eventually discovering what really happened and the truth to these horrible creatures, despite being a completely average person. To make matters worse, he’s nothing new and hardly developed, if at all. it’s also incredibly hard to feel anything for the girlfriend when she’s just a damsel in distress.
The explanation of the mystery and events tries to be very scientific and realistic, but fails miserably, in actuality it is terribly lazy and weak, with a bunch of science mumbo-jumbo sprinkled in the middle.
Junji Ito wasn’t at his best when writing this, at least his other most popular work, Uzumaki, being as average as it was, had a stronger premise and also was an enjoyable, interesting read, the characters were realistic and had amusing reactions to their world and what was happening, you won’t find anything like that here.
Most manga by Ito has interesting visuals and presents something new and scary every chapter, a smart move by the author. It’s hard to be sacred by something you are familiar with. By keeping it fresh and introducing new horrors, he keeps that feeling of uneasiness and dread, the feeling of not knowing what’s to come. This is evident in that most of his work are one-shots or very short manga in general. Gyo, however, barely introduces new horrors or monsters at all, it escalates things, sure, but you can only be so terrorized by a shark with legs after you’ve seen it many times.
It’s become clear that Ito wanted to creep you out with the “monsters” on this manga, and that’s fine, but on this work, were the monsters are almost all fish, they get old fast, losing the impact along with it.
It’s easy to get a shark, put some legs on it and call it a monster.
The best I can say about it is, besides the beautiful art, that the ending doesn’t have any sequel-bait and just ends things quickly.
Don’t read this.
If you are interested in Junji Ito’s works, go read Uzumaki, Junji Ito’s Horror Collection or, better yet, The Enigma on Amigara’s Fault, a short tale on the end of this book, great fun and by far the best thing to come out of Gyo.
Follow me at mangapan.tumblr.com for more reviews
