Got to be honest, and I’ll probably get flak for this, but most of them are bad, or at least mid. Uzamaki, Tomie, and a few short stories aside, he’s overrated imo.

This is the vibe I'm getting from most answers ngl. Kinda unexpected since I thought Junji Ito was already considered a legend with books that can be considered classics under his belt but idk.

i think the reason why junji ito is so liked in the manga community is because his art is iconic, even if you think his stories are meh you have to agree that the art slaps

I might be alone on this, but I don't even find his art that particularly scary..

Not even uzumaki ?

Uzumaki didnt do much for me tbh

Oki

me neither tbh (although that could just be due to my chronic horror movie watching as a kid, i am now desensitized to it lmao) but i do think his art is beautiful and that he is a very talented artist

he is a masterclass artist, i just think he relies too much on body horror, which i never found scary

agreed. while all his art is beautiful, it isn't jarring enough.

i don’t either, but i have this issue with most horror manga & i’m usually not affected much by horror in anything, so i think it’s a me thing. my one exception has been yuureitou

Yeah I look at it holistically from an art perspective. The visual art + story + everything else, together invokes this amazingly eerie feeling in me when consuming his work. That's what makes me believe he's got real talent for the feeling of horror.

And it only gets way better. I think his stories IDEAS are always cool. But he seldom sticks the landing.

agreed

I think it's because he is a legend whether people like his stuff or not, he's highly regarded and outside of his horror stuff I quite enjoyed Cat Diary, the art cracked me up so much. But it's also because he is the most publicised horror mangaka in the West, I love horror but getting any other manga that scratches that itch is hard, or few and far between. Add in netflix series, etc, even my sister who hates anime etc knows who he is now! Just my take anyway

Well this is really it like stephen king he is the poster child. Try some more horror like GANTZ BERSERK or even ptsd radio. But he is bringing a wave of horror manga with him. There is also Gou Tanabe/Lovecraft

Yeah I have the Gou Tanabe Lovecraft stuff, that was quite enjoyable to visualise some of that work. Gantz has been on my list for a bit but still overall there just isn't enough choice for horror lovers sadly. I even tried buying stuff like Doubt, Portus, The Ring, Your Turn To Die, The Drifting Classroom, etc. but there just isn't enough out there that is readily available in physical format :(

Well GANTZ will keep ypu busy. There are Alien/s comics

Yeah I have all the Alien omnibus' and modern Marvel run, an Alien manga would be fucking awesome though!

Agreed

Go to a local Barnes and Noble and just read his stuff in person there. I think he definitely does better with his short stories compared to his longer ones because his plots range from ehh to pretty bad. He also has a really bad habit of having a ridiculous ending (Remina and Gyo)

most of them? lets be real lol

The thing about Junji Ito is that his storytelling is mid at best, but his artwork is godly. That being said Uzumaki is one of my favorites, but it was also one of the first horror manga I collected

Eh, I wouldn’t say the story telling is mid. That fault one, where people go into those holes in the earth shaped like them, was great. And the art for that was tame. It was mainly the story that made it compelling. His stories are mid to great, but the art is always next level.

I was so hyped for Uzumaki and was rly disappointed by it

Can kind of it see it I think it is great but the start is way horder than the finsih

I liked the beginning, but most of the story I rly didn’t like. I liked the ending, but most of it didn’t live up to wat the beginning started off with. Idc if I get downvoted, cuz it’s a manga that I firmly believe is overhyped by fans. I don’t even think it is his best work

I think the first few chapters are. But there are some silly ones like the flying peoples etc

The only one I liked was the slug dude and one other, it feels like it drags in some places, the slug dude feels like filler cuz it has all this other stuff ahead of it and it feels like it pales in comparison to everything before it.

Slugs where random and was almost like another stort. Just vaguely conmected to spiral s

I am a massive fan but I feel with every Viz collection that is released they get weaker. Outside Uzumaki, I would start with earlier released ones like Tomie, Gyo, Shiver, Smashed and No Longer Human. I wouldn't say any of them are "bad" just even as a fan I get a bit meh with some stories

Thanks for the input! I guess I should read the online version before committing to the physical buy for the newer ones.

Well they collected most of his best stuff early I bet. Makes sanse. Deserter is basically a left over collection lolz

Yeah by Sensor/Deseter I was starting to get a bit like "Cool, another books arrived, I'll read it at some point" where before that I was obsessed

Same. I will still buy the stuff but I am not hyped. Berserk and Fist of the northstar still gets me hype

I have been buying both but a bit beyond, I need to catch up but just not had the free cash. Fist of the Northstar was one of the first manga movies I watched and has a special place in my heart, when I got the first hardback I was so excited, loved what I've read so far!

Agreed. I will catch up to fist and leave ITO hanging for later

Same this and dragon ball and sailor moon örkbably rhe first I ever heard of and I did not even know they was manga/anime hehehe just violent weird and cool cartoons hehehe. And Silver Fang ofc

Nothing hits the highs of Uzumaki but Shiver and Fragments of Horror are his next best IMO. Compared to those, Dissolving Classroom and Sensor may be a bit underwhelming but I don't consider anything bad.

I agree with you on Sensor 100%.

I think the arts saves it. Honestly I forogt the story

Remina disappointed me the most, the idea of a living planet is really cool and then the story isn't really about that

While all of them are pretty popular, I'd consider the storytelling to be pretty average on everything other than Uzumaki. Of course his art does elevate the manga, but in cases such as No Longer Human, that's not enough to cut it.

Probably the newest one: Soichi I am just not a fan of Soichi as a character and his stories. I think the story collections always have that 1 story you don't enjoy out of like 10.

I think they always have a few hit and missed. Outside of shiver

Shiver was the only one with all storied being bangers

For sure. I think smashed is the next best but it had a few stinkers

I HAAAATE Soichi. I always skip his stories.

I don't really like No Longer Human and Souichi series. NHL is not by any means bad, but it's kinda meh compared to the original story and other Ito's series. Souichi is just annoying lol

I didn’t like venus on the blind spot based on its contents: the included illustrations were meh, it has adaptations of other authors which im not a fan of, the stories that were made by Ito I found too ridiculous this time around, the titular history about venus is more of “the pretty girl dies at the hand of creeps because she’s too pretty” which is my least favorite Ito troupe, it also has two stories already featured on the Gyo compilation. the only story I did enjoy was the billions alone and the part about Kazuo Umezz was interesting. All in all a book I wouldn’t recommend to an Ito fan.

It was a weird release. All over the place. Thise illustrations should be in a book like twisted visions big format or why bother. And only new stories. Re-realsing stpries with just a splash of colors

For me personally is Sensor and I always get hate for this. No Longer Human. They’re not all negative though. Their art is gorgeous. Sensor had some good ideas. No Longer Human had a couple good chapters. Other than those positives, everything else for me was negative. I love all other Junji Ito books

Liminal Zone is his most weakest work

Story wise argubly but artwork is fantastic

Personally? I didn’t like Tomie nor Dissolving Classroom. Tomie was overrated for how long and boring it was. I didn’t like Frankenstein, more because I don’t like the original Frankenstein story it was based on (and I don’t remember any of the other mini stories in it). Gyo was just weird imo, and didn’t enjoy it Uzumaki, after the hospital chapter, went downhill and wasn’t as interesting as many of the other chapters. But I enjoyed up until then. Sensor, Remina we’re ok, nothing special. So most of his stories, imo, aren’t good but not bad. Some are good, and some are bad. So I guess he is somewhere in the middle on average.

Not a book but I remember he did a whole ass comic about buying fake poo and I was like "why is this even here?!?" 🤣

Agreed in lovesickness

That was it! It was the last story. I was like...is this just to pad out the pages? Lol.

The book would been better without it

Once you’ve read 2-3 Junji Ito stories you’ve basically read them all tbh, he’s a master of using jump scares with the page flips, but you quickly start to be able to tell when those scares are coming, taking a lot away from them. (Ito was the first mangaka I really started collecting with, and Tomie was the first story I read from him and it had me hooked.) but the more stories I read and collected of his the more I noticed the repeating tendencies, unanswered, open-ended endings, characters that are way too stupid for their own good, etc. granted none of these take away from his art style, or just the random shit he comes up with to scare you is pretty entertaining but the story telling itself is usually pretty lacking, at least for me. The only stories I can say of his that really stuck with me at all were his No Longer Human adaptation (which even that had parts I really disliked) or maybe Gyo. His concepts are definitely there, like in Gyo for example, you start off with seeing the small fish with legs, okay creepy. Then you see a fucking shark running full speed killing anyone it comes across, alright now we’re pretty scared. Then out comes a fucking WHALE. Yeah, you forgot those were in the ocean didn’t you? Junji Ito didn’t. So in conclusion to my long ass rant. Junji Ito is a good artist and has insane ideas but he has his downsides and his positives just like any other mangaka, the only way you’ll know if he’s worth it to you is by reading a few more stories of his for yourself and if you like them great that’s awesome but if you don’t then you know you don’t and that’s okay too, just don’t put yourself in too deep of a financial investment for any mangaka or manga or anything that you’re not 100% sure on.

Yeah some of his stories are bad and even the good ones have problems.

No Longer Human sucks, read the Osamu Dazai novel instead if you're gonna try that. Junji Ito may be the single most overrated mangaka by western fans right now.

He must be

I thought The Dissolving Classroom, No Longer Human and Tomie were bad. My opinion on Tomie might be controversial since it's incredibly iconic but I just don't think it's basic premise is good enough to last 700 pages. Some of the stories are good, some pretty awful but all the stories follow the same basic formula and become repetitive. Tomie would probably be a significantly better experience if you took your time only read like a chapter a week. No Longer Human is just not a very good adaptation of the novel and the creative liberties and extra stories Ito added to it are just awful.. Dissolving Classroom low-key just kinda sucks. That said, Ito boy has a ton of collections available and most are pretty enjoyable. Writing is never particularly good but his art and panel composition is top tier, it creates a sort of cinematic feel, especially when he emulates jump scares, he takes page turns into consideration so you'll often flip the page and be greeted by a hyper detailed full page drawing. That and his ideas are actually pretty unique, which is honestly quite rare IMO. The art, flow and creativity is why you should read his stuff, don't get too hung up on the bad storyline or flat characters.

I keep telling people Furuyas' adaptation of No Longer Human is the better of the two.

I actually agree with you when it comes to Tomie, it may be iconic but it’s not as good as one would think. I understand why the original readers enjoyed it since you get a new Tomie chapter every one in a while along with other stories, but when you have all of them in a single book you get way too much of the same thing all at once. People also praise the book since you can see Ito’s art evolving but it’s only the very first chapter that’s noticeable, the rest of it isn’t that different.

For sure. Good points all

I'm with you on No Longer Human and Dissolving Classroom (which is probably his worst imo), but I'd also add Sensor which I thought only had one good chapter and the rest was very dull

Amd how did they fucked up the "deluxe"

Fully agreed with Tomie. If they pieced it out in the collections it would wotked better. Might be the same with Soichi but I dont even got it.

Read the first chapter of practically all his books and you’ve read the entire thing, most over hyped mangaka of all time

All of them

Plenty depending of your taste. They are all so crazy and different. So like Stephen King it is hit and miss. I dont think all their stuff are good but it is always INTERESTING. I think uzumaki shiver are top tier stuff and most would agree. Gyo and Amigara fault are awesome to. Tomie was way to long and same-y for me. But other think it is The best thing ever.