Line #134 Creator/JunjiIto


1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/junji_ito.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:220:[[MundaneMadeAwesome Behold, the face of terror.]]]]
3	%%
4	''The Creator/DavidCronenberg of {{manga}}.''
5
6	Junji Ito (born July 31, 1963) is one of the top mangakas in the horror genre, his most popular works being ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'', ''Manga/{{Tomie}}'', ''Manga/{{Gyo}}'' and ''Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault''. He also writes several individual short stories and a few short series, and despite his varied works, a few recurring characters pop up from time to time within these. Such characters include Souichi, a spiteful young boy with supernatural powers; Oshikiri, a boy who has several run-ins with parallel dimensions and other hauntings; and Fuchi, a fashion model whose behavior is even more monstrous than her physiology.
7
8	Ito used to work as a dental technician until the early 1990s, which probably explains a couple of things about his work.
9
10	His ''Tomie'' series have been adapted into a series of movies and TV specials, eventually followed by a movie adaptation of ''Uzumaki'', and ''Gyo'' has received an anime adaptation. Later, a number of his short stories were adapted in the anime ''Junji Ito Collection'' by Creator/StudioDEEN in 2018.
11
12	In 2022, Creator/{{Netflix}} announced they were creating an anime series adapting several of his stories.
13
14	'''Note''': Since many of Ito's works have not received official English translations, some stories are referred to with varying translated titles. On these works' pages, stories which have received official translations are listed with those titles.
15
16	----
17	[[folder: Works]]
18
19	[[index]]
20	[[AC:Long Series]]
21	* ''{{Manga/Tomie}}''
22	* ''{{Manga/Uzumaki}}''
23	* ''Manga/{{Gyo}}''
24	** "Manga/TheSadTaleOfThePrincipalPost" (bonus short story printed with ''Gyo'')
25	** "Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault" (bonus short story printed with ''Gyo'')
26
27	[[AC: Short Series]]
28	* ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'' (serial included in the ''Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection'')
29	* ''Manga/MimisTalesOfTerror'' (adapted from the book by Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichiro Nakayama)
30	* ''Manga/{{Remina}}''
31	* ''Manga/JunjiItosCatDiaryYonAndMu'' (autobiographical/slice-of-life, but with his usual horrific twist)
32	* ''Manga/BlackParadox''
33	* ''Manga/DissolvingClassroom''
34	* ''{{Manga/Sensor}}'' (initially published as ''Travelogue of the Succubus'')
35
36	[[AC: Anthology Collections]]
37	* ''Manga/JunjiItoKyoufuMangaCollection'' (16 volumes, original source for many of his stories and includes several sub-series)
38	* ''Museum of Terror'' (Alternate publication for the works featured in the ''Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga collection'')
39	* ''[[Manga/VoicesInTheDark Voices in the Dark, New Voices in the Dark]]''
40	* ''Manga/FragmentsOfHorror''
41	* ''Shiver'' (reprinted, author-selected stories, with the inclusion of original bonus story "Fashion Model: Cursed Frame")
42	* ''Frankenstein'' (reprints the titular story and also collects the Oshikiri series)
43	* ''Smashed'' (compiles all stories but "Greased" from the ''Voices in the Dark'' collections)
44	* ''Venus in the Blind Spot'' (compiles various stories, as well as the bonus stories previously included with ''Gyo'')
45	* ''Lovesickness'' (collects the ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'' series and other stories)
46	* ''Deserter'' (collects the titular story and several one-shot stories from Ito's earlier work)
47	* ''Manga/TheLiminalZone'' (collects four stories Ito wrote for the manga app LINE Manga in 2021)
48	* ''Tombs'' (collects various one-shot stories)
49	* ''Literature/{{Stitches}}'' (collection of {{short stor\|y}}ies by Hirokatsu Kihara with illustrations by Ito, plus a manga adaptation of another of Kihara's stories)
50	[[/index]]
51
52	[[AC: Miscellaneous]]
53	* Various unattached one-shot stories and bonus stories included with longer series
54	* Licensed artwork for a number of other creator's works, including ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', ''Franchise/DuelMasters'', and ''Film/PansLabyrinth''.
55	* ''VideoGame/SilentHills'' (was to be the main art director before its cancellation)
56	* A manga adaptation of ''Literature/NoLongerHuman''
57	* ''Junji Ito's Twisted Visions'' (author-compiled art book featuring old covers, manga pages, and miscellaneous pieces of Ito's work)
58	[[/folder]]
59	----
60	!!Tropes commonly found in his works (and tropes specific to his miscellaneous works):
61
62	* AbhorrentAdmirer: A few of these. Kari in "Groaning Drain Pipes", [[DirtyOldWoman the monstrous neighbor Ms. Numage]] in "The Window Next Door", and Fuchi in "Fashion Model" are all examples. Manami Kino in "Wooden Spirit" is this to a ''house''.
63	* AbnormalLimbRotationRange: Something like this may be possible for the monstrous hikers in "Mountain of the Gods", as we see one pressed against a tent- face on the bottom, hands at standing level.
64	* ActionSurvivor: The default for any heroic character who survives more than one chapter.
65	* AdaptationalDyeJob: Oshikiri in the colored manga images is dark blond, or a light brown, while in the anime he's a brunette.
66	* AdaptationDistillation: Some of his longer works in the anime are streamlined to only include the main plot of the story or outright truncated so they don't take up an entire episode.
67	* AdaptationExpansion:
68	** The anime does this to some of his works. For example, the manga version of "Further Tales of Oshikiri" ends with Mio asking Oshikiri if they'll ever return home; the anime has [[spoiler:''another Oshikiri'' sneak up behind them]] as she says this.
69	** The television special version of "Long Dream" also does this, in part due to the story's short length; in addition to covering the entirety of the original plot, the special adds additional plot elements, and continues beyond the ending into a second act that presents a second course of events with an entirely new conclusion.
70	** The Netflix adaptation of "Whispering Woman" not only adds a scene of [[spoiler:Aga's dead body]], but also details [[spoiler:ghost]] Mitsu's final whisper to Mayumi in the story in a SuddenSoundtrackStop cut back to her right after.
71	--->'''Mitsu:''' [[spoiler:[-I will always be at your side, Mayumi.-]]]
72	* AerithAndBob: Since most of Ito's characters' names are the expected Japanese, in the few times English names like Paula, Marie, and Amy pop up, it's rather noticeable.
73	* AlienAbduction: Subverted in the story "Venus in the Blind Spot". A woman named Mariko, who is obsessed with [=UFO=]s and aliens, is the target of the affections of several young men. However, she turns invisible whenever they approach her, which together with gaps of missing time convinces them that they have been abducted by aliens. [[spoiler:The truth is more mundane, but no less disturbing: Mariko's father, hoping to dissuade the attention of her would-be suitors, had them kidnapped and implanted with a special chip in their brains that blocks her from their view when they get close to her.]]
74	* AlwaysAChildToParent: The main conflict in "Layers of Fear" is about a woman desperate to have her daughter be a baby again and discovering means that she thinks will allow that to come true. The story is a deconstruction of this trope: The mother clearly loves the ''idea'' of her young daughter more than the real thing.
75	* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Many of his stories are fairly timeless, with any specific technology or fashion trends that would otherwise date them being absent, or so generic they can't be tied to a time period.
76	* AndIMustScream: Many of his endings count as this.
77	** Also a man in "Long Dream" who experiences dreams that feel as if they last far longer than the time he spends sleeping. Eventually he has nightmares that seem to last for years.
78	* AntiMagic: The psychic sisters in "Ghosts of Prime Time" can't make the protagonist laugh with their psychic powers possibly because of him being psychic himself as he can see ghosts. [[spoiler:They try to kill him after he learns their secret, he survives but his best friend does not.]]
79	* AssholeVictim:
80	** Pretty much every character in "Smashed", save for Ogi, who obtained the honey as a gift and had presumably been consuming it for years before the other characters interfered.
81	** The Earthbound in the one-shot of the same name are revealed to be [[spoiler:trapped by guilt over crimes they committed]].
82	* AstralProjection:
83	** Possible subversion in "Death Row Doorbell". The "ghost" of a criminal sentenced to death visits the home of his only living victims every night, begging for forgiveness, and the older brother who survived smashes the figure into gory mush every time. [[spoiler:On the night the criminal's sentence is carried out, the "ghost" stops appearing.]]
84	** The tree in "Smashed" either teleports or projects its branches to attack whoever it catches eating the honey made from its nectar.
85	** "Ghosts of Prime Time" centers on an unfunny stand-up duo becoming famous by [[spoiler:astrally projecting to tickle the audience and make them all laugh hysterically. They also tickle the protagonist's friend to death because the protagonist could see spirits and figured out their secret.]]
86	** A Paradoxical Night stone in ''Black Paradox'' will unleash [[spoiler:the soul it contains]] if hit hard enough.
87	* AuthorAppeal: Unnatural beauty, disgusting tongues, and unusual hair play several roles in his work, and Ito really likes themes of obsession and compulsion, with the two corruptions of human behavior appearing in most of his stories. "Magami Nanakuse" seems to examine this latter fascination of his on a meta level with the titular obsessive and compulsive author character.
88	* BadassBystander: In "Hanging Blimp", when the titular monstrosities attack one man [[HopeSpot grabs a crossbow and shoots one of them, killing it instantly]]. [[spoiler:Unfortunately. It also kills the girl it's linked to, with her head deflating in the same fashion]].
89	* BeautyEqualsGoodness: You can usually get a good idea of who's going to be a nice person/protagonist just by looking at them. However, it is also equally obvious what the character is like if their "beauty" goes a tad over the top.
90	** If a character's role in the story shifts at all, there's usually a corresponding shift in appearance. In "Secret of the Haunted Mansion", [[spoiler:Koichi appears to de-age (facially, at least) several decades after regaining his sanity and breaking free from Souchi's control.]]
91	** Inverted in "Dying Young". [[spoiler:Girls catch a disease which makes them extraordinarily pretty, but kills them soon after. A rumor is then spread that killing another girl on a certain date will stave off death, driving the surviving girls into a mania, desperate to stay alive. The idea is wholly unfounded and doesn't work, and the only sympathetic character is a cartoonishly ugly girl who has been spared the disease.]]
92	** Subverted in "Billions Alone" (the short story at the end of ''Manga/{{Remina}}''), where [[spoiler:the protagonist's crush was revealed to have stitched her parents together. Whether she became afflicted with the sewing madness by her loneliness and despair, or was one of the parties responsible for the incidents, is left unanswered.]]
93	** Averted in "Ice Cream Bus": The bus looks normal and the driver is handsome, but [[spoiler:children are slowly turned into ice cream after they ride the bus]].
94	** Inverted in "Memories": [[spoiler:The protagonist has lost her memories of her childhood. Although beautiful, she has just one memory of herself with a hideous/deformed face, and is terrified of returning to that state. She eventually learns that her memory is of her twin sister, whom she murdered out of terror of becoming ugly like her sister.]]
95	** Manga/{{Tomie}} is perhaps one of the biggest subversions of this trope. She is unbelievably beautiful and desirable but also vain, cold, cruel, selfish, chaotic, and enjoys tormenting people by making them become obsessed with her and then cruelly rejecting them. One chapter even pairs a group of Tomies against a sympathetic ugly man, with a deformed Tomie getting his sympathy before finishing her regeneration into a beauty and abandoning him.
96	** The Strange Hikizuri Siblings [[spoiler:subvert this. Narumi is set up as an innocent girl being put upon by her fiendish and bizarre siblings, and is pretty... but she turns out to be selfish, spiteful, manipulative, and incapable of really caring about others. The ''actual'' good one of the family is Hitoshi, who is corpse-like, with sunken, bag-plagued eyes, a slouch, and a drawn face with an overly long chin, resembling a somewhat more normal version of his older brother Kazuya. He does turn into a cute kid for about a panel when we first find this out, but after that he's right back to being just mildly less unsettling than most of his siblings.]]
97	** Averted with "The Back Alley" as it turns out that [[spoiler:the normally/mildly attractively drawn Shinobu is the one responsible for the murders in the titular alley]].
98	** Played with in "Junji Ito's Snow White". This trope applies between Snow White and the queen, but ''not'' between the queen and everyone else: Snow White is totally innocent, and regarded as [[InformedAttractiveness more beautiful]] than the queen; At the same time, the [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen queen]] is more beautiful than everybody who isn't Snow White, despite being an absolutely horrible person.
99	** In ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'', the frighteningly influential Pretty Boy of the town crossroads is called that for a reason, but he does no good for anybody.
100	* BedtimeBrainwashing: Featured in "The Gift-Bearer" and "The Town Without Streets".
101	* BitchInSheepsClothing: [[spoiler:Misaki]] in "I Don't Want to Be a Ghost", [[spoiler:Shinobu]] in "Back Alley", [[spoiler:Shuichi]] in "Honered Ancestors", and [[spoiler:Satoko]] in "Tomie: Adopted Daughter" to name but a few. Tomie very often starts out as one of these.
102	* BittersweetEnding: If you're lucky.
103	** ''Lovesickness''. [[spoiler:Ryuusuke ultimately dies without protecting those he cares about or stopping the Intersection Pretty Boy, but the ending implies that he's actually become the Pretty Boy's [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]] who can oppose him on his own level.]]
104	** "Red Turtleneck". [[spoiler:Tomio manages to break the curse and save himself from dying by supernatural decapitation, but it leaves him traumatized by the whole experience and unwilling to let go of his head.]]
105	** "Back Alley". [[spoiler:Shinobu kills Ishida but becomes trapped in the alley and is left helpless as the ghosts of her victims come out for revenge.]]
106	** "Marionette Mansion". [[spoiler:Haruhiko saves his sister and destroys Jean-Pierre but his girlfriend is killed and it's revealed that Yukihiko and his family have become marionettes.]]
107	** "A Father's Love". [[spoiler:Tsukasa is able to save Miho and her mother from Todo, who subsequently has a HeelRealization and commits suicide. Despite this, Miho's two brothers are still dead, and Todo's death is treated with a degree of sadness after we learn that his actions were due to his [[FreudianExcuse own crappy childhood]].]]
108	** In "Shiver", [[spoiler:Yuji witnesses Hideo succumb to the curse of the jade statue, being warned by him that the doctor is really a servant of the curse. Hideo's body is later found with the statue missing, but Rina seems to be finally free from the curse with her body apparenly back to normal.]]
109	* BlackComedy:
110	** Creepy as they are, his stories often venture into this territory by virtue of their sheer over-the-top nature (for example: The entire premise of "Smashed" is about a tree that can literally squash you flat from across the globe). See also: ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'''s human jack-in-the-box and the continuing misadventures of [[TheChewToy Souichi Tsujii]].
111	** "Ghost Heights Management Association" is this, being a slice-of-life apartment community story featuring ghoulish residents and their supernatural problems, while the new guy, a normal human assigned the role of manager, tries to get his work done in peace.
112	* BodyHorror: His work essentially runs on this trope.
113	** In "The Hell of the Doll Funeral", children are dollifying, which is exactly what it sounds like. And that's ''before'' things go FromBadToWorse.
114	** To say nothing of "Flesh-Colored Horror"...when we see what Chikara's mother's idea of "beauty" is.
115	** ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}.'' It brings a whole new meaning to "downward spiral."
116	** "Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault" has this occurring to the people who get stuck in the holes on the fault.
117	** ''Manga/{{Tomie}}'' runs on this. [[spoiler:When you dismember her, each part becomes a new Tomie. You get to watch her body slowly re-form over the course of weeks. Also, the only way to kill Tomie is to burn her entirely. Any parts left are ''still alive'' and capable of speech!]]
118	** In "The Rib Woman", [[spoiler:the titular character is an unstable patient whose repeated rib-removal surgeries left her with a mass of wires in her chest, and then, ''later patients' removed ribs'', replacing those she had lost.]]
119	** In "Children of the Earth", some kids are found buried to their waists in the soil after going missing. [[spoiler:When their parents try to pull them out, they discover that their bodies ''don't end'', before what seem to be the children get sucked into the ground completely and disappear.]]
120	** "Layers of Fear" has a girl who, by means of a curse, is not structured like a normal human, but is composed of layers of her past selves, new ones growing over the older ones. When she has an accident and this is discovered, her overbearing mother goes too far and tries to peel off the layers to restore her to her two-year-old self. [[spoiler:Yeah, it turns out that growing changes your proportions, [[WhamShot messing up the structure of past layers]], and when she regrows them, [[NothingIsScarier one can only imagine from the shadowed back view how horrific she looks.]]]]
121	* CameBackWrong:
122	** [[spoiler:Souichi's grandfather]] in "Coffin", as he is now a reanimated corpse who [[spoiler:Souichi torments by making him repeatedly build coffins]].
123	** [[spoiler:Shibayama]] in "The Supernatural Transfer Student".
124	** Technically, Reimi in "Layers of Fear", both mentally and physically, and in regards to both an attempt at de-aging her and in her recovery from that incident, as both are failures to return her to a desired prior state. [[spoiler:Both turn out badly because her unusual layered structure doesn't disregard the proportional factors of growing up, getting an unexpectedly twisted body when trying to peel off layers to de-age her. However, she comes back wrong in regards to being an adult again, too, as she has to live with that altered structure as a new base for growing layers again, while now stuck with the younger mind of her two-year-old self.]]
125	* CantGetAwayWithNuthin:
126	** "Floaters" features little fuzzballs in the air which repeat recent conversations in their vicinity, making it impossible for some characters' unsavory choices and thoughts to be secrets.
127	** Characters cheating on their wives/girlfriends will suffer horrific consequences as a result, such as Shigeru in "Anything But a Ghost" and Tomio in "Red Turtleneck".
128	* CassandraTruth: Frequently, the horror will go unnoticed by all but the protagonist, leaving their claims doubted. However, the protagonist is usually proven right once things go far enough for the others to notice, though this is often when it's too late to do anything about it.
129	* CentralTheme: Compulsion and obsession. More specifically how these forces can drive even the most rational people into madness.
130	* ChildMage: Souichi, specializing in black magic and voodoo.
131	* CosmicHorrorStory: His stories hardly ever have a corporeal villain or a clear explanation for why horrible things are happening to people; instead, the source of everyone's misfortunes will be some unknowable, untouchable, faceless force like the spiral in ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'' or the titular [[Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault enigmatic fault at Amigara]]. If there ''is'' a clear antagonist (''Manga/{{Tomie}}'', for example), said antagonist will not be given a detailed backstory or motivation.
132	* CreepyCemetery: This setting is sometimes featured, and played for additional horror in context-- Japan rarely practices burial, so the notion of whole corpses interred in the ground is seen as very bizarre and disgusting. That's not to say graveyards can't be found in Japan (as the graves usually house urns instead), and Ito uses the columnar style of Japanese headstones to great effect, emphasising the eerie and unsettling nature of a crowded space full of perfectly carved stones, somehow both ordered and disordered at the same time.
133	* CreepyChild: Often featured, with the most frequent case being Souichi, who unnerves and repulses everyone around him with his disturbing appearance and mannerisms and a penchant for petty cruelty.
134	* CuteMonsterGirl: "Cute" isn't exactly the right word, and they don't stay good-looking for long if they might qualify, but...
135	** One that you could say is cute is the younger daughter from "Layers of Fear", especially her [[spoiler:two-year-old layer's face...if not the rest of it]].
136	** The Female Wretch from ''Frankenstein'' is rather-good looking for being made of stolen parts but even she still looks rather off, owing to the new creature using [[spoiler:Justine Moritz's head, provided by the monster]].
137	* DaddysGirl: Riko in "Gentle Goodbye" is probably the best example. Miho in "Heart of a Father" is one until her father starts turning against her. Also Mizusu from "Approval", [[spoiler:whose father lies and uses a man for years just to be able to see her spirit.]]
138	* DarkerAndEdgier:
139	** His adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo's "The Human Chair", which is about an author reading a letter that gradually reveals that the man who wrote it is a stalker who's been concealing himself inside of her sofa. In the original story, the twist is that [[spoiler:there never was a man in the sofa and it's a story he's written for her to critique]]. In Ito's version? Nope, he's really in there. [[spoiler:The ending shows that he has a descendant that plans on doing the same thing to another female author]]
140	** His adaptation of ''Literature/NoLongerHuman'' incorporates straightforward horror elements that weren't present in the original novel and features an ending that's even darker than the original.
141	* DeadAllAlong: A twist that features in "Deserter", "Gentle Goodbye", and "Mold".
142	* DeathByIrony: "Fashion Model: Cursed Frame" features a model with the eccentricity of being very uncomfortable when any part of her body is cut out of frame in her photographs. When she accidentally crosses another model who happens to be our dear friend Fuchi, [[spoiler:she is found lying dead in a tape square on the ground, with the parts that fell outside the frame having been torn off by Fuchi's teeth before going missing.]]
143	* DestinationHostUnreachable: In "The Return", a dying woman swears she will come back to her lover. After her death, he begins to sense her presence, and ultimately she does come back...[[spoiler:riding with a meteorite, charred to the bone by the impact, with only her engagement ring identifying her. How she got into space to begin with is left a mystery, and of course, the reunion is rendered null by the means of her return.]]
144	* {{Determinator}}: Saiko in "The Town Without Streets" and Tomou in "Red String" don't let the horror get in their way.
145	* DiabolusExNihilo: Few of the horrific beings who show up in Ito's works have known backstories or match any creatures from myth or legend... which [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools makes them all the more TERRIFYING]]. Compare a horror story where the villain is a vampire: [[OurVampiresAreDifferent the tension only lasts until the characters deduce which of the stock vampiric weaknesses apply in this 'verse]]. But if the villain's [[Manga/{{Remina}} a planet-eating abomination from the another dimension]]? A [[Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault cliffside full of people-shaped holes]]? ''[[Manga/{{Uzumaki}} The very concept of the spiral shape itself]]?''
146	* TheDogBitesBack:
147	** A rather literal case of a cat biting back. Souichi curses the family cat, Collon, and lives to regret it.
148	** Chikara from "Flesh-Colored Horror" gets back at [[spoiler:his psycho mom by dissolving her removed skin (which she wears like a suit) with acid and then tearing apart her leg muscles, dooming her to eventually mummify]].
149	** In one of the "Strange Hikizuri Siblings" stories, the badly abused and mistreated Hitoshi manages to get back at his siblings [[spoiler:by summoning the terrifying ectoplasmic form of their father from his mouth. He's completely oblivious.]]
150	* DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: Consistently averted across his works, with obsessive, predatory and abusive behavior from both men and women often featuring yet being constantly portrayed as a serious problem on both ends.
151	* DownerEnding: It's very rare for Ito's stories to have anything resembling a purely happy ending.
152	* DreamingOfTimesGoneBy: Although the character might not be "dreaming" per se, visions of the past are a recurring form of exposition in Ito's works:
153	** In "Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault", everyone who has a hole for them has a dream in which [[spoiler:the famed holes are shown to have been used as a way of punishing unforgivable crimes in pre-history]], including the main character. While it's never outright confirmed if this is how the titular fault came to be in the first place, it's definitely possible,[[note]]Though it's a bit difficult without [[HandWave hand waving]] to explain away why Jomon era people knew how to perfectly carve tunnels in the shape of people that would live thousands of years after them[[/note]] since [[spoiler:the people of Prehistoric Japan are known to have practised stone carving and sculpture for many thousands of years.]]
154	** ''In the Valley of Mirrors'': Replacing the shattered mirrors in the titular valley gives the main character a vision of the past and how they shattered to begin with.
155	* DrivenToSuicide:
156	** ''Lovesickness'' is based around girls being compelled to commit suicide after getting advice from a mysterious boy at intersections.
157	** The premise of ''Black Paradox'' is strange events happening after four people meet over the internet to arrange a group suicide.
158	** Horribly subverted in "Hanging Blimp", where the apparent suicides early in the story are revealed to have been caused by something much more surreal and terrifying. [[spoiler:What's really causing the deaths are giant flying balloon-like heads with nooses hanging from them, bent on hanging their facial matches.]]
159	** Other examples include [[spoiler:Yuina]] in "Anything But a Ghost", [[spoiler:Masao]] in "Floaters", [[spoiler:Furukawa]] in "A Deserter in the House", [[spoiler:the two sons and the father]] in "Heart of a Father", and both Morimoto and [[spoiler:the protagonist]] in "The Devil's Logic". In one story, a woman who adopts Tomie kills herself, as well.
160	* EarWorm: A particularly malevolent version serves as the supernatural menace of the day in "Splendid Shadow Song".
161	* TheEeyore: Piitan in ''Black Paradox'' (and subsequently [[spoiler:the Piitan robot, even more so than the original.]])
162	* EldritchAbomination: When the abominations aren't {{humanoid\|Abomination}}, anyway.
163	* EldritchLocation:
164	** The house in "Wooden Spirit" becomes impossibly warped and mutated after a woman's love for it goes a little too far.
165	** In "Ryokan", the hot spring inside the inn [[spoiler:seems to be a literal portal to Hell]].
166	* EnfantTerrible: Evil children abound, even more so than just your standard CreepyChild.
167	* EvilAllAlong: In ''Billions Alone'' large groups of people start disappearing in the blink of an eye and reappearing several days later dead and tied together with fishing line. [[spoiler:At the end, a girl the protagonist is attracted to turns out to be one of the killers, though it's unclear if she's working with other people.]]
168	* EvilIsPetty: Souichi, to a truly breathtaking degree. He will take any slight, no matter how small, as an excuse to torment and annoy the person who dealt it, sometimes to the point of causing them significant harm. At one point, he tries to kill his cousin for "stealing" his birthday.
169	* EvilIsNotAToy: What many folks learn when they try to bend the various malignant forces in the stories to their own purposes. In [[TheChewToy Souichi]]'s case, ''[[TooDumbToLive repeatedly]]''.
170	* FanDisservice: If there's nudity or skimpy clothing in his works, ''don't'' expect it to be played for titillation.
171	* FlatEarthAtheist:
172	** The protagonist of "Ghost Heights Management Association" is in an apartment complex full of monsters and the undead, but takes nearly until the end of the one-shot to realize it, even though it's obvious by the second page. Why? He doesn't believe in ghosts.
173	** In "Billions Alone" people start disappearing and, days later, reappearing murdered with their corpses tied together by fishing wire. Despite the bizarre nature and the fact that ''hundreds of people are taken at once disappearing in an instant'', the government for the most part insists that the killings are simply the work of a deranged group of serial killers. [[spoiler:The ending implies that they are right.]]
174	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
175	** In "The Rib Woman", the doctor who offers rib-removal cosmetic surgery mentions that the psychological well-being of patients is important, since unstable patients can take badly to the surgeries. Later, we see the case that likely prompted that speech.
176	** The dialogue in the car ride at the beginning of "Layers of Fear" hints at the bizarre physical and psychological aspects of the sisters' unusual conditions. Later, the MRI image of Reimi's structure [[spoiler:shows how stretched and distorted the inner layers' necks have become -- a subtle touch that the reader is likely to overlook the first time around, but one that indicates the flaw in Reimi's mother's plan long before the grotesque {{Reveal}}.]]
177	* FormulaBreakingEpisode:
178	** "Bullied" has no overtly supernatural elements, no gore or deaths, and very few outright NightmareFace moments. It's more or less grounded in reality in comparison to most of his stories, but that doesn't make its ending [[AbusiveParent any less disturbing]].
179	** His cat diary counts too, of course, as it's an autobiographical tale of his two cats, just told in his usual style.
180	** "Gentle Goodbye" isn't a horror story, has no antagonistic force or anything wrong and only has two NightmareFace panels before the character in question returns to being normal and harmless.
181	* FracturedFairyTale: "Junji Ito's Snow White". Let's just say that Ito somehow managed to turn a classic, child-friendly fairy tale into an all-out horror story. [[{{Disneyfication}} Then again, the story wasn't all that innocent in its early days, either.]]
182	* GeniusLoci:
183	** Ito writes about a few of these, including the [[spoiler:Spiral City under Kurozu-cho]] in ''{{Manga/Uzumaki}}'' and the titular town in "The Bloody Story of Shirosuna", [[spoiler:which has a subterranean heart pumping blood for all of its residents]].
184	** The tree in "Smashed" also counts.
185	* GlassCannon: The [[SurrealHorror utterly bizarre]] balloon monsters from "Hanging Blimp" are exactly as durable as you'd expect from a balloon, so not at all durable. [[spoiler: But if one of them is killed the person it's linked to dies as well.]]
186	* TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry:
187	** In "The Will", the two sisters get along horribly due to what one sees as preferential treatment to the other.
188	** Subverted in "Layers of Fear". While Narumi resents the amount of doting attention her sister Reimi has received all her life, she is well aware that it's all her mother's fault, and she bears no grudge against Reimi, showing love and concern for her throughout the story.
189	* GrossoutShow: Things get nasty in Ito's artwork, and often in familiarly disgusting ways.
190	* {{Hellgate}}:
191	** In "Ryokan", an inn turns into one when the proprietor digs too far for a hot spring.
192	** The titular planet in ''Remina'' also apparently emerged from one, first presented as a wormhole in space.
193	* {{Hikikomori}}: The main character in "Billions Alone", and Tomio in "Futon".
194	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: While the supernatural evils in his stories are often invincible, his nasty human characters are usually undone by their own actions.
195	* HumanoidAbomination: His smaller-scale horrors tend to be these.
196	* IdiotPlot[[invoked]]: He frequently does this intentionally, and plays it for horror. The people in his works quite often do not act, by any stretch of the imagination, like real people, and this quite frequently seals their doom and ruins any chances they might have to escape their gruesome fate. Sometimes their {{Weirdness Censor}}s go into total overdrive and cause TheCassandra to remain the Cassandra to people who have previously been direct witnesses to as many as ''[[Manga/{{Uzumaki}} three separate instances of the supernatural craziness he regularly warns people about]]'', and other times [[Manga/{{Remina}} they turn a young lady into an overnight celebrity over something as trivial as having a celestial body named after them]], and then, when that celestial body turns out to be a world-devouring EldritchAbomination, proceed to attempt to kill that woman [[InsaneTrollLogic in the insane belief that because it was named after her, killing her will somehow stop it]].
197	* ILoveTheDead: "Keepsake" is a story about a man whose dead ex-wife gives birth postmortem, with his new wife and former mistress refusing to care for the baby. As the child grows up, he turns out to be rather terrifying and it happens that the man apparently had sex with his wife upon request ''after'' she died, conceiving with a corpse. In the end, his second wife also dies and the frightening child's nurse becomes his third wife, while a baby wails from the new grave...
198	* ImAHumanitarian:
199	** [[spoiler:Souichi]]'s potential son, as well as [[spoiler:the mother of that son]], who eats someone in almost every story she's in.
200	** All the customers at the restaurant for a time in "Greased", [[spoiler:after Yui and her father kill her brother]].
201	** A weird subversion in "I Don't Want to Be a Ghost". Misaki doesn't eat people... [[spoiler:she eats ghosts. And ''they bleed''.]]
202	** Fuchi is a petty monster-woman who resorts to eating when people bother her.
203	** In "She is a Slow Walker" the protagonist [[spoiler:eats a ''zombie''. His girlfriend, in fact, whose motion was so slow he gave up trying to evade her and turned the tables, becoming a super-fast zombie afterward.]]
204	* ImHavingSoulPains: The horrific entity in "Phantom Pain" is ''literal'' phantom pain that likes to latch onto people.
205	* ItCameFromTheSink: In "The Groaning Drain", sisters Reina and Shinri and their cleaning-obsessed mother are at first only mildly annoyed when their drains start to clog. Reina is more concerned that her AbhorrentAdmirer Kari now knows where she lives (thanks to Shinri leading him to their house so their mother could insult him). Then the drains begin to leak a foul smell, and their pipes begin to moan. Shinri becomes convinced that Kari is causing the trouble, having crawled into their pipes to stalk them. Reina tells her that's ridiculous, as their pipes aren't more than a few centimeters wide, but [[spoiler:it turns out Shinri is right, Kari ''is'' in their pipes, having crushed his bones and deformed his skull to crawl into their drains]]. When Reina forces Shinri's hand into the shower drain to prove that there's nothing in there, [[spoiler:Shinri is dragged into the pipes inch by inch as a shell-shocked Reina watches in disbelief]].
206	* JumpScare: Ito executes a manga equivalent of this in a technique that has been referred to as the "page-turn". Basically, this refers to his practice of devoting his most detailed and terrifying "reveal" images to large panels and full-page spreads after the turn of a calmer page. The effect is that it shocks the reader turning the page with sudden, unforgiving horrific imagery.
207	* KarmicMisfire: At the end of ''Venus in the Blind Spot'', [[spoiler:Mariko is murdered by a mob of men who were operated on by her father. Their inability to see her up close thanks to the operation her father performed on all of them caused them to think she is an alien]]. The actual culprit is [[LaserGuidedKarma emotionally destroyed]] as a result.
208	* LaserGuidedKarma:
209	** In "Town With No Streets", Jack the Ripper is [[spoiler:stabbed to death by the aunt of a girl he was trying to murder]].
210	** When his plans backfire, Souichi often gets delivered a particularly darkly comedic form of karma.
211	* LighterAndSofter:
212	** ''Manga/JunjiItosCatDiaryYonAndMu'' compared to the rest of his works.
213	** Pretty much all of the works involving Souichi and the Tsujii family after "Mystery of the Haunted Mansion". The first story portrayed Souichi as an outright murderer with his family as a group of emaciated slaves, while the subsequent stories are mostly [[BlackComedy Black Comedies]] where nobody really dies and Souichi is more of a quirky neighborhood menace than an outright villain. Ito strongly averts the KarmaHoudini status most of his antagonists have with Souichi--following "Mystery of the Haunted Mansion", almost all of Souichi's schemes end with them backfiring gruesomely (and amusingly) on Souichi.
214	** "Ghost Heights Management Association" also tends more toward black comedy, and the protagonist, Shougo Yanagida, seems pretty happy in the end. [[spoiler:Even if he does end up as an undead monster.]]
215	** "Scarecrows", at least compared to the rest of the stories in the anthology series. The scarecrows are just disturbing, not actively trying to kill someone. [[spoiler:The one person who dies had killed a child before the story started. Another man's fate is left ambiguous.]]
216	** Ito's work for the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' franchise is this for him, although it's considerably DarkerAndEdgier than most of the scenes depicted in other canonical works. The scenes don't feature as much overt creepiness or violence as most of the author's artwork, although the image of Gengar does include an attack on an apparently defenseless person, while the drawing of Banette has deeply disturbing implications when the Pokemon's canonical backstory is considered. The former is more of a mean-spirited prank, but given that Banette is [[spoiler:abandoned and vengeful]], the child in its panel is likely to be in more serious danger.
217	** It seems that he will usually have one story in every anthology book that focuses on drama and is more character-driven with a supernatural element as a plot device as opposed to the main story. "Gentle Goodbye", "Heart of A Father", "Approval", "The Giftbearer" are easily the most obvious examples while "Death Row Doorbell", "Long Dream" and "Memories" focus equally on both sides.
218	** ''Manga/BlackParadox'' still contains many BodyHorror and the story turned out to be a CosmicHorrorStory, but it notably is much lighter on the scare and more focused on plot and thriller elements. Some chapter notably downplay the horror elements to not slow down the pace of the plot.
219	** Then there's "Memories of Real Shit", which turns out to be [[spoiler:an outright comedy with no horror or supernatural elements whatsoever]].
220	* KarmaHoudini: While not completely universal in Ito's stories, the vast majority of Ito's horrors are untouchable, and the humanoid incarnations, promoters, and carriers of them often suffer no consequences for their actions.
221	** In ''Ghosts of Prime Time'', while the psychic sister's attempt to [[spoiler:kill the narrator]] fails, he can't do anything to stop them in turn and their plan to wind up on prime time goes off perfectly.
222	* MeaningfulName: Like many other manga authors, Ito does this with many of his characters.
223	* MedicalHorror: Occasionally features in his work.
224	** Two chapters of ''Uzumaki'' focus on a maternity ward being horribly twisted after spiraling mosquitoes bite pregnant patients.
225	** "The Conversation Room" sees opposing sides of a car crash ending up in a hospital ward with unusual patients who share dreams and do not eat.
226	** "The Rib Woman" features ill-advised plastic surgery procedures as the cause for its horrors.
227	** "Dissection-chan" features a woman obsessed with being cut open, leaving a nasty surprise once she gets her wish at her autopsy.
228	** "Long Dream" revolves around a man who has checked himself into a hospital due to the increasingly long dreams he's been experiencing and the effects they're having on him.
229	* MistakenForDisease: In "Shiver," characters suffer inexplicable chills that are initially misdiagnosed as mundane illness. However, it turns out this is actually a precursor to ''holes'' opening up across the skin of the victims; contrary to the suspicions of the doctors, is not a disease, but the result of a cursed jade statuette passed from victim to victim.
230	* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily:
231	** Fuchi in "Fashion Model". Binzo Tsujii, her possible future son with Souichi, has even more of them.
232	** "Layers of Fear" has this for Reimi and Narumi, but not played for a threat. [[spoiler:Each row of teeth belonged to a past "layer" of the daughters, who are by curse structured like nesting dolls whose past selves are grown over by new layers of their bodies.]]
233	* MouthFullOfSmokes: One of the residents in "Ghost Heights Management Association" has a mouth crammed with cigarettes, and the smoke billows out through holes in his body. After a brief conflict, he resolves to stop.
234	* NewTransferStudent: The title character of "The Supernatural Transfer Student" is one, and Yuuma in ''Dissolving Classroom'' spends the first chapter as one.
235	* NightmareFace: Unsurprisingly, this is very common in his stories.
236	* NoEnding: "The City With No Streets" (aka "Town Without Streets") ends with absolutely no explanation of ''anything'' that happened in the story. [[TropesAreTools Believe it or not]], this [[NothingIsScarier actually makes it better]].
237	* NothingIsScarier: PlayedWith. Junji Ito seems to enjoy depicting extreme BodyHorror in excessive detail, but he rarely actually explains why these things are happening, which leaves the events more confusing and disturbing. The monsters usually just appear, without any clear indication as to what they are or their origins.
238	** "The Seashore" from ''Mimi's Ghost Stories'', however, has a straight example. The photographs taken at the story's haunted beach are deeply disturbing, but some (depicting a waitress) are so frightening that the man who develops them destroys them immediately, leaving the reader to only imagine what they must have depicted.
239	* OneSteveLimit: Significant characters in his longer works or recurring characters tend to have unique names out of all of his stories, but in his one-shots, the same names tend to pop up again from time to time.
240	* OnlyOneName: In none of her appearances is Fuchi ever declared with an honorific or a second name, so its unclear status seems to be a case of this.
241	* OnlySaneMan: A few of these, including Tsukiko in volume one of ''Tomie'' (and Yasuko in ''Tomie: Again''). Koichi or Michina usually take the role in Souichi stories.
242	* OnlySixFaces: Particularly noticeable in his short stories. The character designs used for Kirie and Shuichi from ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'' appear all over the place with different hairstyles. Less savory characters tend to have more unique facial designs.
243	* OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding: There are some horrifying exceptions, but in many of Ito's stories the protagonist at least survives whatever horror they encountered. One example is ''Death Row Doorbell'' in which the narrator is unharmed but [[spoiler:her entire family dies]].
244	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}''[[note]]Features crazed hematophagy brought on by spiraling mosquitoes[[/note]], "Bio House"[[note]]Loosely explained consumption of blood from extreme eating[[/note]], "Blood-Sucking Darkness"[[note]]Bats ''feeding'' blood to a human[[/note]] and "Blood-Bubble Bushes"[[note]]The bite makes your blood move into a biological tree on your body, forcing you to eat the fruit but become a vampire[[/note]] all have different takes on vampirism. "The Bloody Story of Shirosuna" features a particularly unusual example in the form of a vampiric GeniusLoci.
245	* OurZombiesAreDifferent: [[ConversationalTroping Discussed before becoming a plot point]] in "She is a Slow Walker", specifically on whether Romero-style slow zombies are scarier than zombies that can run.
246	* OverlyLongTongue: A recurring feature of various characters in his works--and never a good sign. The monster in "The Licking Woman", one of his one-shots, ''is'' an Overly-Long Tongue.
247	* PageTurnSurprise: Ito is infamously fond of this technique. Often a panel at the end of a page would focus on a character's reaction to build anticipation before the next page reveals some horrific creature or situation.
248	* PerspectiveFlip: The original "The Human Chair" story was an old story by Edogawa Rampo told from the person inside the chair. Ito's version flips the perspective to the person who sits on the chair.
249	* PlanetEater: ''Remina'' is centered around one named after its discoverer's daughter.
250	* PosthumousNarration: Averted. Reflective narrators are either at the brink of destruction or...some other state of existence when they recount their stories.
251	* PrehensileHair: Twice subverted, with the the hair having a mind of own.
252	** In ''Uzumaki'', the spiral latches onto hair and mesmerizes onlookers with its spiral patterns, draining the life of the affected to maintain its hypnotic swirls, and the hair is capable of fighting as well.
253	** In "The Long Hair in the Attic", a girl's hair is the only thing controlling itself, and it doesn't take kindly to being cut.
254	* PrettyBoy: ''Lovesickness'' invokes this, as it has two characters referred to as "bishounen" by others: the Intersection's Pretty Boy and [[spoiler:Ryuusuke, who becomes the "White-Clothed Pretty Boy"]].
255	* RiddleForTheAges: In ''The Sad Tale of the Principal Post'' it is never even hinted how the father ended up under the titular post and his only response when asked how it that it is a long story. The story itself lampshades how no one will ever find out.
256	* RuleOfScary: Applied liberally, in [[NightmareFetishist much the same way]] as other writers would use the RuleOfCool.
257	* ScaryStitches: "Billions Alone" is about mass murders that result in the stitching-together of the victims' corpses. These also feature on Souichi's cloth mannequins which he uses to replace people, on the monsters in his take on ''Frankenstein'', and are the initial form of the main threat in "Red String."
258	* ScaryTeeth:
259	** A great deal of Ito's monsters have them. [[spoiler:And not where you'd expect.]]
260	** {{Invoked\|Trope}} by Souichi, who often arranges his usual mouthful of nails so they look like they’ve completely replaced his teeth.
261	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: More of Ito's protagonists do this than many horror characters. It's essentially Saiko's M.O. in "The Town Without Streets".
262	* SecretSquatter: This is what happens in "The Human Chair".
263	* SelfDeprecation: Ito occasionally appears in the afterwords of manga volumes, looking just as creepy and unhealthy as any of the deranged humans in his work.
264	* SelfParody: Ito actually managed to draw a ''[[Manga/JunjiItosCatDiaryYonAndMu pet diary]]'' once (twice if you include the short Dog Diary he would later go on to write). Needless to say, his fiancee wasn't amused when ''she'' became the equivalent of his signature scary woman with ProphetEyes.
265	* ShadowDiscretionShot: The final page in "Layers of Fear" [[spoiler:set several years in the future, where the main protagonist relates that her sister Reimi has begun to regain the layers that were torn off by her mother. However, the natural alteration of her older layers have given her a different base for growing than she had originally, and the audience only gets a shadowed back shot of Reimi's [[BodyHorror disturbingly elongated and textured body]]]].
266	* ShotForShotRemake: ''Junji Ito Collection'' goes into this a little too much, and suffers due to the small budget. Some of it is that it recreates some stuff shot for shot, but doesn't take advantage of the medium and has either cheap or no animation at all, all while losing detail as if it were animated. Some of it ''is'' animated, but it suffers from missing smaller details Ito put into the original work to make it scarier, or just does a poor job making it work.
267	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Leans towards the cynical side, as one might expect from a horror writer, with most stories ending with the protagonist dead/transformed/insane/[[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]. That being said, he's not without idealism, and some stories do end with bittersweet/[[RayOfHopeEnding ray of hope]] endings, and even a straight Earn Your Happy Ending if you are '''EXTREMELY''' lucky. And for all the horrible things that happen to his protagonists, he is completely against the idea of nihilism and your actions being useless, as Manga/''{{Remina}}''[='=]s aesop is essentially ''no matter how bleak things seem to be, so long as you are still alive there is hope for the future''
268	* StalkerWithACrush: "The Human Chair" shows how far someone will go to be ''close'' to their object of desire.
269	* StarCrossedLovers: Featured in one chapter of ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'' and in the short story "In Mirror Valley".
270	* TheStarsAreGoingOut: ''Manga/{{Remina}}'' is about a planet doing this.
271	* StatuesqueStunner: Subverted with Fuchi. While she's a professional model and around seven to eight feet tall at the least (the Souichi stories show her even larger), she's no beauty.
272	* SurrealHorror: A lot of the stories are weird first and scary second:
273	** ''Manga/{{Gyo}}'' starts with an utterly ludicrous premise that wouldn't feel out of place in a Dr. Seuss book (an invasion of fish on stilts!) and takes it [[FromBadToWorse to extremes.]]
274	** ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'': [[GothSpirals Spiral shapes]] [[SinisterGeometry destroy the world]]. Sort of.
275	** ''Manga/{{Remina}}:'' Scientists discover a new, free-floating planet! And guess what? It's ''huge.'' And ''[[GeniusLoci alive]].'' And [[CosmicHorrorStory hungry]]...
276	* TakenForGranite:
277	** In "Tombs", the residents [[spoiler:transform into gravestones when they die]]. But when [[spoiler:the process is disturbed by moving the dead from the exact location of their death, they transform irregularly into hideous corpses riddled with jagged stone growths]].
278	** Invoked in "The Earthbound", in which living people attach themselves to a certain spot, totally unmoving, [[spoiler:bound in place by guilt for crimes]]. Eventually, they harden to the point of being able to break like stone.
279	** In ''Madonna'' [[spoiler:Misuzu can turn people to salt as a reference to Lot's wife in the Bible.]]
280	* TooDumbToLive: Most of the characters his stories center around could easily avoid all the suffering and tragedy they endure if they only used a little bit of common sense.
281	* TookALevelInBadass: Souichi is a spoiled, sadistic kid with awesome paranormal powers, usually employed to be little more than a pest and a nuisance with delusions of grandeur, always caught and punished by his family. However, in time [[spoiler:with his powers increasing, he becomes a sharply dressed businessman, the owner of an haunted mansion where he enacts his revenge over his cursed parents and siblings and keeps his cannibalistic son with a demoness]]. He's not actually any better at avoiding gruesome and humiliating consequences for forgetting that EvilIsNotAToy, though -- we're actually introduced to this version of Souichi ''before'' the child version, and those two stories kick off his long tradition of gruesome and humiliating defeats. [[spoiler:However, it turns out to be Souichi's dream as a child, and is yet another blow to him since it causes him to oversleep and miss out on playing outside.]]
282	* TownWithADarkSecret: A favorite setting for Junji Ito. Outside of the town of Kurozu-cho featured in ''{{Manga/Uzumaki}}'', there's also the titular small town from "The Bloody Story of Shirosuna" and the community from "The Town Without Streets", among others.
283	* WeaponWieldsYou: This is what the titular sword in "The Reanimator's Sword" does. The first thing it makes it new owner do is kill its old owner, which results in everyone it had previously reanimated dying again.
284	* WhamShot: Ito is an absolute master of these. Very often they're the final - and most memorable, iconic, and grotesque - image of the story.
285	* WorldOfSymbolism: His surreal horror can actually be seen as a vehicle for commentary and meaning. In particular, a lot of Ito's stories can be read as criticism of Japanese societal norms. For example, ''Gyo'' is about the atrocities of World War II (such as the human experimentation in Unit 731) that Japan has yet to apologize for, and ''Remina'' is about Japan's dangerously exploitative pop-idol culture.
286	* WriterOnBoard: The protagonist of "Ghost Heights Management Association" is a horror mangaka beleaguered by the stress of his work intersecting with his other duties and [[SarcasmMode definitely isn't]] a means for Ito to rant about his own job. Ito himself has also been a member of a town council, [[WriteWhatYouKnow so that most definitely plays into it]].
287	* WrongGenreSavvy: The mother in "Layers of Fear" discovers that [[spoiler:though it worked on the head, peeling off her daughter's nested layers does not exactly restore her perfectly to her two-year-body. So she decides "that one's ruined" and plans to take advantage of the family curse that caused it, peeling off her own layers to the age she gave birth to her daughter so she can have her again and be a mother of a needy baby once more. Insanity of the idea aside, the problem turns out to be that [[TearOffYourFace she didn't have the curse]].]]
288	* YankTheDogsChain: If any chapter featuring Souichi seems to end with him happy and successful, it's the first part of a story that eventually ends badly for him--not that the reader usually ends up feeling any sympathy, though.
289	* {{Youkai}}: Not as often as you might think, since he rarely uses existing monster concepts in his stories. There are exceptions, though--for example, the title character of "Blackbird" may be a {{Tengu}}, and the monster in "The Licking Woman" seems to be based on an obscure Youkai called the Name-onna.
290	* YouAreWorthHell:
291	** In "Where the Sandman Lives", Mari stays with her boyfriend, even risking destruction by his supernatural problem to do so.
292	** Through all the events of ''Uzumaki'', not once do Kirie and Shuichi question their love for one another, or consider abandoning each other. Shuichi even decided to stay in the town just to be with Kirie, despite knowing something was wrong since the very beginning.
293	* ZombieApocalypse:
294	** The setting of "She is a Slow Walker".
295	** ''Gyo'' arguably counts too, as the monsters are [[spoiler:dead fish that have been animated by spider-like robotic mechanisms]].

Context Creator / JunjiIto