Reviews

Junji Ito's phenomenal highly-detailed artwork of sickening and disturbing imagery is once again at play here in Gyo. However, this story feels more like an homage to campy B-movies than his typical fare, and fails to really deliver enough scares. Scenes are often more ridiculously goofy than scary, and it's only really in the final act where the chills briefly start. Even then, nothing about Gyo is "traditionally scary," and more relies on Ito's body horror tropes than past stories that couple this body horror with psychological themes & twisted characters. The story is often hard to follow and the characters are highly unlikeable (especially Kaori, perhaps intentionally), so really Gyo's only saving grace is the art. The Viz collection I read this from also contained The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which was genuinely horrifying - it's a shame it had to come at the end of such a stinker of a book (no pun intended).

If you're looking for some B-movie-level schlock in manga form, then this is right up your alley, but when I'm looking to read Ito's work, I want to be legitimately spooked, and Gyo is not it.