Overall, Uzumaki is Ito’s greatest manga, but if you want to sharpen his entire career down to a thirty page highlight, this is it. A really effective and sharp story body horror and claustrophobia. A landslide reveals human-shaped holes in a mountain, which some people try to enter. “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” – chilling story that makes my skin try to crawl off my skeleton, even now. It would be a good introduction to his work. It’s a Tomie story with less gore, reprising Ito’s usual themes of madness, desire, female beauty, and perception. “Venus in the Blind Spot” – a sweet, weird story about a girl who vanishes from your visual field when she gets close. Spot the panel that inspired The Human Centipede. You’ll think of COVID19, of course, but the corpses-stitched-together visual could be an equally good comment on social media, which erupted like a cancer years after the story’s release. People are forced into isolation by a sinister force that kills them when they gather together. “Billions Alone” – 2004 Junji Ito stares into a crystal ball and perfectly predicts the world of 2022. It’s not clear why these particular stories were chosen, or why others (such as “Mystery Pavilion”, “Phantom Mansion”, etc) were missed.

The rest is previously uncollected material. Three are adaptations of prose works from Edogawa Rampo and Robert Hitchens. It’s the same basic idea as Metallica’s Garage Days Re-Revisited – odds and ends that don’t fit anywhere. Four stories are bonuses from Gyo, Remina, and Black Paradox. It’s an English release of The Best of Junji Ito, which was collected in 2019 by Shogakukan Big Comics Special. A collection of shorts from everyone’s favorite dentist, Junji Ito.

Venus in the blind spot by junji ito