First published in 2021, The Liminal Zone is a horror anthology by Junji Ito collecting four stories he wrote for the LINE manga app. The anthology has a strong theme of mental illness with every story involving people with horrifying mental states in some form. The stories in question are:
- "Weeping Woman Way": After a routine train stop, a man encounters a funeral where a hired "weeping woman" is mourning. After leaving, the man sees that his fiancée has started crying nonstop.
- "Madonna": A young woman starts attending what seems at first to be a normal Christian school... only to learn that the principal's wife believes that she is the Virgin Mary reborn.
- "Slumber": A horrible murder happens near a man's apartment, and the man remembers having committed it despite having no desire to do so. He begins to wonder if he has an evil split personality.
- "The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara": A man goes into the woods in an attempt to find a convenient place to commit suicide rather than die in pain from a terminal illness. However, he comes across a mysterious trail of bleached trees and, since he is going to die anyway, decides to follow it to find its source.
Tropes in The Liminal Zone include:
- Anime Catholicism: A deliberately warped case of Christianity is going on in the academy in "Madonna", where they worship the Virgin Mary above all others and the headmaster has come to believe every pretty woman he sees is Mary incarnate, tossing aside his previous flings when they become old and bitter. The headmistress also has the Biblical power to transmute people's physical matter into salt, though it's never explained why, because she is certainly not Mary.
- The Bad Guy Wins:
- In "Weeping Woman Way", the Weeping Women manage to force the narrator's girlfriend to join them so she can keep the dead at peace.
- Zig-Zagged in "Slumber". While the killer is hanged for his crimes he manages to turn the protagonist into a mental clone of himself, implying his crimes will continue from beyond the grave.
- Bait-and-Switch: After remembering committing a horrible crime and finding evidence of it in his apartment, Takuya starts to wonder if he has an evil alternate personality. He does not and is completely innocent. The real killer (who has the power to force people to have his memories) is trying to gaslight him into believing he's guilty so he'll turn himself in and the killer can get away as everyone will think the murderer has already been caught.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: At the end of "Madonna" Misuzu has Maria cornered but instead of using her power to instantly turn Maria to salt, she stops to taunt her about it. Maria panics and tries to flee but in doing so knocks over a cross which falls on Misuzu very narrowly stopping her from turning her to salt.
- Bittersweet Ending: In practically the weirdest way possible, in "The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara" Taniguchi and his girlfriend become hopelessly addicted to the Spirit Flow and decide to live in the Cave of the Dragon's Mouth forever as they slowly mutate into more streamlined forms. However, the last several panels imply they are actually far happier now, getting to live in ecstasy riding the flow every night, not to mention being immortal.
- "Madonna" just barely qualifies as well, as the narrator survives but everyone else does not.
- The Chosen One: Once they see Mako crying uncontrollably, the Weeping Women see her as the second coming of their patron god, Lady Orui. In the end, Mako becomes the new Lady Orui.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Weeping Women in "Weeping Woman Way" are undoubtedly creepy as hell and seemingly cause Mako to cry uncontrollably, but all they truly want to do is bring peace to the dead with the power of their tears, making it hard to really call them evil.
- Death by Despair: In "Weeping Woman Way", poor Mako dies of exhaustion from crying too much. And her corpse continues to cry.
- Depraved Homosexual: Allegorically implied in "The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara". As a sign of how seriously far gone Taniguchi is to the spirit flow, he and his male friend have become naked, vain, slender, feminine creatures who crawl on top of each other and speak almost lip-to-lip while staring into each other's eyes and mocking Taniguchi's girlfriend who still sees things normally.
- Easy Road to Hell: Downplayed. In "Weeping Woman Way", it's shown that everyone who dies experiences the fundamental sadness of the world causing their spirits to be wracked by horrible grief, but they can eventually come to peace by the power of the Weeping Women who cry on their behalf.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Madonna", Misuzu is killed when the cross she strung her stepson she murdered on falls on her and pierces her body.
- Humanoid Abomination: In "The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara", Taniguchi gradually becomes one of these through the properties of the spirit flow, becoming perfectly smooth and weirdly proportioned, not to mention addicted to riding the flow and immortal. And in the cave their are people who are even further transformed into shapes more akin to flatworms.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: The killer in "Slumber" sings "Rock-a-Bye Baby" while murdering his victims and at his own execution.
- Ocular Gushers: Taken to a very disturbing level in "Weeping Woman Way", where some of the crying is intense enough to nearly flood a room.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: In "Madonna" the narrator survives but everyone else at the school is turned to salt.
- Squishy Wizard: Despite her terrible power, Misuzu in "Madonna" is no harder to injure than a normal woman.
- Taken for Granite: Misuzu in "Madonna" can turn people to salt by looking at them. She uses this power to murder everyone at the school except Maria who manages to accidentally kill her just in time.
