Favorite Horror Manga
 

As Halloween is just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to talk about our favorite horror manga.

The three volumes of Museum of Horror is fantastic. It is the orirginal Tomie stories (1&2) and then some short stories by Junji Ito (3). This is must read stuff. Really creepy.

Kazuo Umezu is a real eccentric, and I like the Scary Book series and The Drifting Classroom. Both are a lot of "kids in peril" stories which make them that much more evil and wrong and awesome.

Hideshi Hino (my avatar) did the terrific Lullabies from Hell and the Hino Horror series which has a ton of truly messed up stories drawn in an almost cute way. This stuff will give you bad dreams.

What other good stuff is out there?

Parasyte is what got me hooked on manga when it was originally released in Mixxzine. Saw John Carpenter's movie "The Thing" later and saw many similarites. No need for me to go into details here as it's on MMM's blogspot, I'd only add the comment that it starts good and just gets better as it goes along.

Uzumaki is another of my favourites, when you watch Japanese horror like 'The Grudge' it's like wait for the monster to appear and then you die, with Uzumaki strange things are going on, and it has an affect on the main characters, you see their mental and physical health begin to suffer, their grip on reality weakening, it's a lot more disturbing than just having them drop dead.

MoT was excelent, and extremley messed up. Its one of the best manga I have ever read (where does Junji Ito come up with this stuff?)

The driffting classroom wasnt that frightening to me, but still very interesting, and a great literary work. Although I'm not that far into the sereise, so maybe it gets more desturbing?

Hideshi Hino is crazy :P I havent read Lullabies from hell yet but it looks good. As for Hino Horror, some of the stories were very desturbing, and some I just laughed at (but I think he was trying to be funny with those ones) Hideshi Hino is also a great creator of Japanese horror, but be warned his films are extremley graphic.


As for my personal favorite, I would have to say either Uzumaki or Tomie (collected in MoT) Uzumaki is just insane, and easily the most creative and original peice of horror litereture there is. As great as Tomie volume 1-2 are they dont really compete with Uzumaki, but Tomie volume 3-4 are just sick, and wrong, and deffinatly live up to the standards Junji Ito fans have for him. Gyo is almost just too weird to take seriously, but if your a Junji Ito fan, it should still go into your collection.

BTW theres a new Kazuo Umezu book coming out in english this month. I think its called Reptilia...
I think it will come out about a week after haloween.

I wasn't originally a great fan of Tomie as I didn't think it was as good as Uzumaki. However, as I've stuck with it and read it a few times it's really grown on me.

I think Museum Of Terror volume 3 is probably the best one to start with out of the series (which is a compilation of short stories). I used to think manga had to be hundreds of pages long to build up story and character. Junjo Ito then does a story in 20 pages and it's amazing how much is packed into it.

Really? Volume 3 wasnt my favorite. A few of the storys were excelent, but most of them were just boring and predictable. Unfortunatly it was the longest one that was the worst. Also, some of them just didnt go anywhere...

I really liked Tomie volume 1, but only a few chapters were up to Uzumaki standards, but with Tomie volume 2, it was all amazing! It was mostly the art in volume 2 that I liked better, its reall interesting how much he improves over time.

I think Tomie as a concept is just as interesting and inigmatic as the abstract concept of spirals, because she is a really abstract character herself. Does she want to be killed? What are her motives? What about her makes guys want to kill her? What IS she? Where is she from??? Its all really strange, and interesting...

The only thing I didnt like, is in some ways I think she is a metaphor for woman, and how they act. Which I think is a little sexist...

I don't really see horror mangas, but the closest I can get to a horror manga is Hellsing. The books are so cool!!

I liked the first volume of Parasyte. Alive is another new horror title...though it leans toward Death Note in some ways (which isn't a bad thing!)

I also really like MPD-Psycho. It's real mental stuff.

I wasnt extremley impressed with MPD Phsycho volume 1 (although the flower pot woman were kinda freaky) and for some reason I cant get ahold of volume 2...

Hellsing is way cool! Its just so crazy and off the wall...

I haven't read that many horror manga, but mine is Living Corpse. One of Hideshi Hino's manga.
Another one of my favorites is Cain Saga(the prequel to Godchild).

I also love Junko Mizuno's artwork, but sadly I have never been able to read any of her manga...:(