by Jaime Grijalba.
(Japan, 70 min)
For those who read manga, even the name of Junji Ito may not be the most known or talked about in the inner circles of the hell known as the otaku fanbase. It is asumed that most of the guys and girls who read manga are just generic fans of it and don’t go beyond the themes and genres that the establishment has put for people, such as the ‘fighting’ mangas like Naruto, or sport issues that keep coming years after years. Not even with the surge of asian horror films of the 00′s the manga horror genre got a leap, as the figure of Junji Ito still remains underground for the main common occidental folk who is into the reading and collecting of the mangaka. But there is a group of people that are in the know, still quite a large number, but still not the majority, for those that the name of Ito is similar to dread and total fear, unmistakeable and dreadful fear, one that crawls under your skin, disgusts you and at the same time keeps hitting way too close to home in many of the themes it relies on, beyond the things that scare, as weird and strange as they are, they keep being way too close and harmful for anyone that has taken some time to read something from the master of the horror manga, something like Uzumaki, Tomie or… Gyo.
Now, of course, most (but not every single one) of the mangas that are drawn and published end up with some deal to turn them into anime, the way that the animated series, movies or videos are called when they are made in Japan. It is more uncommon for mangas to become live-action ventures, but it has happened before, and as we are talking about Junji Ito and adaptations of his manga work, most (if not all of them) have been transitions into live-action fare, being the most known the movie ‘Uzumaki’ (2000), based on his manga about a town and their people, gradually obsessing with spirals, or even the neverending ‘Tomie’ live-action series of films, about an inmortal woman that causes men to become violent just to be with her (even killing her in the process, but she always comes back), that just got their last installment last year with ‘Tomie: Anrimiteddo’ (2011). So this particular film, ‘Gyo’ (2012), is more like an oddity than the usual for any adaptation of Junji Ito’s work, or for any horror manga work. While I am not here to talk about the comparisons between the manga and the OVA we are discussing here (that would be something for another kind pass from Bob Clark to do some kind of ‘Comics on Page and Screen’ thing comparing both, and that’s besides that I haven’t finished the manga yet… not that is long, but it is extremely scary), I think it is important to look at the context, and you’ll maybe understand why this works better in animation than anything.
Three girls have just graduated and they are celebrating with a trip to a seaside community, where the air is fresh, the shopping is great and the people are nice, this is Okinawa. One of the three girls is constantly getting in touch with his boyfriend, Tadashi, who is in Tokyo, working with his uncle on many scientific investigations, they are gonna get married very soon. The other two girls couldn’t be more stock (but fun at the same time): a fat girl who can’t stop eating and doesn’t have any luck with the boys, and a really outgoing and easy slut-like girl (who we see having sex with two guys at the same time, later into the film). The trouble starts when the girls start to smell something fishy in the air, a stench like the one of rotting corpses starts to invade everywhere they are, and when they get home after a day out, the beach house they are staying at (owned by Tadashi’s family) is filled with the stench of rotting flesh, and when they clear it out (opening all windows and doors) they find the source, a small creature that runs around and hides from them, but in one moment they catch it behind a cupboard and what they see is something they don’t expect: a fish with legs. The fish itself is dead, but the legs, mechanical legs, still move, crawling in the empty space, twitching, bleeding… those dead eyes fixed on the nothingness… they quickly put the thing inside a garbage bag and put it outside, because of the stench it still hard. But this isn’t over, when the next day the stench still fills the place, the bag where the dead walking fish is was filled with the gas that the thing is putting out, and a giant shark with huge mechanical legs starts roaming the house.
The sight of the fish and other sea creatures coming out of the ocean of Japan, crawling into the streets with their mechanical legs is one of the most horrifying sights I’ve ever seen performed into animation. I mean, seeing a dead shark moving its jaws and growling like a lion as it walks towards you destroying the scenery is really a challenge not to at least squirm at. This is one scary and disgusting anime, specially when we are talking about the stench itself and its effect on all living creatures: imagine that every one of the fishes, sharks, or anything smells like rotting corpses, and their legs can pierce your skin and meat, infecting you with the bacteria that has made these animals like that, and it turns humans into… the most underscribable thing I’ve ever seen, a bloated corpse filled with gas with tubes going in the mouth and ass, filling with the gas the mechanism under them, that moves around with its eyes wide open, with the muffled sound of gas filling its insides. The movie itself is filled with even more disgusting and sickening imagery and scenes that would make anyone with weak stomach to just return it all in a few moments. The art of the movie and the animation is top notch and maybe that’s one of the reasons why the film itself is just so effective in its realism, I mean, if this ever was going to happen (and the explanation at the end is just way too fantastic for it to ever be true) this is what would happen, that is what it would look like: deserted cities filled with gas, soldiers shooting human beings, the sight of the crawling fish as a sea of life and death at the same time, you can almost smell the rotting flesh, the death in all of them and the sickness that spreads around. This is a full recommendation from me, but beware… you may get sick.
This is from a manga I’ve wanted to read in full for a long time, something that I’ve never been able to track down in stores, at least not both volumes. It’s something that I was first made aware of simply as an internet meme, the walking shark, and it’s tempting to read it online somewhere as furtherence of that kind of Chan-board experience. But even just from the cursory glances I’ve been able to give it on computers or in book-stores, where I spare myself from too-long looks lest I spoil myself for a complete read one day, there’s something rather magnetic in the sheer awe you find in the surreal imagery– awe in the traditional, frightening sense. Yet somehow I never find myself really “scared” by manga or comics in general as I am with cinema or television, because comics are so divorcd from temporal experience– you can freeze on an image for however long you like, and grow accustomed to it, rather than being at the mercy of time’s forward momentum. As such, Ito’s work feels more absurdist on the page, in an almost amusing sense, even if the level of detail doesn’t fail to instill one with anything less than absolute dread.
This is a story I feel obliged to wait until I experience in its original form before I try it out as a film, but you can bet your bottom yen that I’ll be doing that as soon as possible, thanks to this piece. I’m especially interested to see how the black-and-white imagery transitions to color, where you lose a little of the natural verisimilitude manga can have at its best moments, a kind of pen-and-ink docurealism. Ito, man– he’s somebody to get into, as long as you’re not afraid of being lost for good.
internet, always spoiling stuff.
This sounds awesome, and that top picture is both terrifying and oddly, kind of funny. Reminds me of the old John Belushi skit: LANDSHARK!!!
“The sight of the fish and other sea creatures coming out of the ocean of Japan, crawling into the streets with their mechanical legs is one of the most horrifying sights I’ve ever seen performed into animation. I mean, seeing a dead shark moving its jaws and growling like a lion as it walks towards you destroying the scenery is really a challenge not to at least squirm at. This is one scary and disgusting anime, specially when we are talking about the stench itself and its effect on all living creatures: imagine that every one of the fishes, sharks, or anything smells like rotting corpses, and their legs can pierce your skin and meat, infecting you with the bacteria that has made these animals like that, and it turns humans into…”
Well that is a very descriptive and graphic passage, but most intriguing when you add in the follow-up assessment attesting to the film’s stark realism. Your mastery of this stuff is clear, and that second screen cap is something. Ha!
Interesting.
I thought the manga was far superior to the OVA. Junji Itoh is a brilliant artist, but his style doesn’t adapt well to moving pictures. I noticed that the animators sometime tried to ape Itoh’s signature “lines around the eyes” style, but it didn’t look as good on the screen.
I can’t say that i liked the CG. The shark looked out of place in the environments, and the first thought i had when i saw it was “Huh, couldn’t they afford a higher resolution texture on that thing?”
I might be a bit biased, though, considering that i thought Gyo was one of Itoh’s weaker works. It feels like he had a competition with himself to show more and more gross images, without thinking of the story. Uzumaki is his best manga, i think.
Hmm, this turned out to be a short essay. Speaking of which, your piece could have done with some editing, some passages used too many unnecessary words, which made it hard to follow.
Ok, first, I haven’t finished the manga, and I’m here dwelving critically into the anime and not the mange, so no comparisons are in store as of now (maybe in the future), so I don’t care, I look at what I see and saw goodness.
The CGI shark is good for other reasons besides its fake-ness, it is good for what it represents in the story and the moment itself.
Uzumaki is greatness, but again, I haven’t read Gyo yet.
And how do You care about the unnecessary words, is like complaining that Ito has too many eyeshade for all his characters, that’s my style man, if you don’t like it, sod off.
You’re free to your opinion on Ito and the film, Incognito, but let’s leave the editorial comments to yourself, next time.
Don’t worry, i got the picture. You won’t see me here again.
Oh, and here is a review by Daniel Lau, who translated a couple of Junji-Itoh stories:
http://www.daniel-lau.com/?p=1448#more-1448
when a fan manga-anime translator is seen as a valuable person in the world of criticism and not just a fanboy who jerks off too much, I’ll kill myself.
heh, reminds me a little of the Kojima critics who got mad about “The Twin Snakes” because of the new, more accurate script for the English dub, replacing the one done by the guy who did the same for the Sega-CD “Snatcher” and “Symphony of the Night”. I’ll take a more faithful translation over somebody’s embelishments (though, to be fair, the opening scene of SotN is priceless, just for the camp).
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