Recently, I have enjoyed reading manga analysis by Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito. Although his comics are very scary and disgusting, and the story is also absurd and heavy, the meaning is profound. The basic characteristic is to exaggerate the diseases that everyone can get to the extreme. Junji Ito's manga often confronts humanity and satirizes reality. I'm going to tell you a few stories today that I think are profound. (Because the manga itself is so heavy, I can't even read it.) In order to take care of everyone's psychological endurance, I'll pick a normal picture and send it. ）
1. Human head balloons
Junji Ito's masterpiece, the balloon with a human head floating over the venue of the Tokyo Olympics, was made based on this.
The story is about a female star who hanged herself because of relationship problems, and many fanatical fans followed. After that, the female star turned into a human head balloon and hanged her boyfriend. Then, a lot of balloons appeared in the sky. At first, it was sparse, and then it almost obscured the sky. Each person has a corresponding balloon that will find the host and then strangle the host with a rope loop. The human head balloon cannot be broken, otherwise the body will die. The only way to save your life is to stay home and close your doors and windows.
The heroine's father wanted to go to work, thinking that it would be okay to cover his neck with his arms, but he was taken away. The younger brother wanted to go out to find food and used an umbrella to deal with balloons, but he was also taken away. A few days later, the mother broke down and walked out of the door on her own initiative, being taken away by a balloon.
The whole family is left with the heroine herself, and the heroine stays alone in the house and doesn't dare to go out. A month later, there was not much left at home, but the heroine didn't dare to go out, and going out was a dead end. The human head balloon kept luring her out of the window, but she was unmoved. In the end, the human head balloon used her brother's voice to seduce the heroine, and the heroine couldn't help but open the window, but she was also taken away. People in the city are like the heroine's family, they are hanged when they go out, and they are starved to death if they don't go out. The whole city was plunged into a gloomy panic.
What I didn't know before was that there was a follow-up to this story. After a few months, the balloon faded away. Scientists removed the balloons hanging from the wires and examined them, and found that they were made of nylon, and it is unknown who made them. However, when they touched their skin, they found that it had become a very smooth nylon material. It turns out that from the beginning, we were all balloons.
Meaning: The human head balloon is a metaphor for the spiritual world of man, which is erratic, magnified, and empty, just like a balloon. If the spirit is empty, then the flesh is just a marionette bound by the spirit.
2. Horror layer
One day, the eldest daughter drove her mother and younger daughter to sweep the grave of her dead father. There was a car accident on the road, and half of the youngest daughter's face was scraped off by a billboard. But a new face appeared under half of the youngest daughter's face. When I went to the hospital for examination, I learned that the youngest daughter was a "heavy person" formed by layers of skin. This structure resembles growth rings and onions. When the youngest daughter was a child, her body was still wrapped in layers of skin.
The mother refused the doctor's request to hospitalize her little daughter for observation and took her home. It turned out that since she learned that her daughter was still wrapped in layers of skin when she was a child, she wanted to peel off her daughter's skin and peel her two-year-old daughter out. She is a very controlling person, and she can't bear that her daughter has grown up and has her own opinions, and she no longer listens to her in everything. She wants her obedient daughter back when she was two years old.
So at night, the mother and the eldest daughter skinned the younger daughter layer by layer, despite the fact that she had fainted from the pain. But the final result was a big disappointment for my mother. The little daughter's head is indeed a two-year-old child's, but her body has been pulled to the point of being inhuman, and she has become a monster.
A mother doesn't want a daughter like that. She thinks she's cursed too. So he peeled off his face and wanted to return to the age of 38 to have a little daughter again. But she was not cursed, and after peeling off her face, it was normal flesh and blood, and her mother broke down and screamed.
At last. The mother's face was wrapped in thick gauze, and she completely fell into autism, staying at home all day and not going out. The younger daughter became a monster who could not take care of herself, and they could only be taken care of by the eldest daughter. Many years later, the youngest daughter began to relayer again, but this time her appearance is far from before.
Moral of ridicule: satirizes some parents who are extremely controlling. What they like is not children at all, but children who meet their requirements. They control everything for their children, they don't want their children to get out of their control, and they want to change their children with their own will, and the result is that even if they go back to the past, they are not the same as before.
3. Dissolve the beauty
At the beginning of the story, the heroine's classmates, who hadn't seen her for two years, suddenly contacted the heroine and said that she wanted to introduce her boyfriend. When the classmate came with her boyfriend, the heroine found that the originally beautiful classmate had become extremely ugly, and she was almost unrecognizable. But her boyfriend kept praising her for being beautiful.
The female owner doesn't understand what's going on.,But since then, the male owner has dumped his classmates and been with the female owner.。 The classmates were angry and turned into stalkers, harassing them all day long, but they disappeared soon after, and it was said that they committed suicide. There is no light bulb, and the male and female protagonists are in full swing. The male protagonist praises the female protagonist for her beauty every day, and the words are not the same, and the female protagonist is praised to the fullest.
However, within a few days, the heroine found that she had dark circles under her eyes. After a few more days, the heroine found that her face was oily and had acne. But as soon as the male protagonist comforted her, she was immediately relieved. In this way, her boyfriend kept praising her, but she became more and more ugly. Every time she doubts her looks, her boyfriend tells her that it is her own delusion. The heroine sometimes looks at her photos for comparison, and still feels that she is different from before. However, when I thought of my boyfriend praising myself for being beautiful, I felt that I was thinking too much.
Gradually, the heroine completely lost her judgment, and she could only see her original self in the mirror. In fact, the heroine's appearance is becoming more and more abstract. Her parents advised her to go to the doctor, and she was afraid that she was suffering from some strange disease. But the heroine felt inexplicable, obviously she looked no different from before.
Later, the heroine was already three points like a human and seven points like a ghost, and passers-by saw her retreat one after another, shouting "monster, monster". But she didn't think there was anything wrong with her. Until one day, the heroine met her boyfriend's sister, and she said: "You're already like this, and you don't even know it." My brother looks like he's praising you, but he's actually praising you according to the image of the devil in his head. The face of the person he praised will slowly turn into a demon, and then dissolve. And you, now terminally ill. ”
Hearing this, the heroine was taken aback, she didn't believe that her boyfriend would lie to herself. At this time, her boyfriend came, he drove away his sister, and said to the heroine: "My sister has a brain problem, what she said is nonsense, don't believe it." The heroine asked, "You tell me the truth, how is my face now?" The boyfriend said, "Your beauty has surpassed human cognition, it is the beauty of the universe." ”
As soon as the words fell, the heroine's face melted like ice cream. A few days later, the boyfriend disappeared and was said to have changed schools again. At this time, the heroine has become a monster in the eyes of people.
Moral : Although the story is absurd and bizarre, there are many people like the heroine in reality. They do not have a correct self-awareness, rely on the evaluation of others to know themselves, and live in the mouths of others. Such a person is easily confused, led astray by others, manipulated by others, and in the end, it is himself who suffers.
4. Thin life
The setting of this story is the opposite of the previous one, the previous one is that the beautiful woman is getting uglier and uglier, and this one is the ugly girl getting more and more beautiful.
There are three ugliest girls in a certain class in a certain high school, known as the "three ugly". But after a summer vacation, the first place in the three ugly turned out to be a beautiful girl. The classmates talked a lot, and they all suspected that she had plastic surgery. Later, the classmates found that she was getting more and more beautiful, but she showed a kind of morbid beauty like Lin Daiyu. She was visibly emaciated and emaciated. Finally died suddenly during a physical education class, and the cause of death was heart palsy.
After that, the second place in the three ugly also slowly became beautiful, and since she became beautiful, she has received a lot of love letters from boys. Her classmates have also become very attentive to her. These are things she couldn't have imagined when she was an ugly girl. The girls found that as long as they touched the bodies of their classmates who became beautiful, they would become beautiful themselves. I rushed to the two girls and took the opportunity to touch them. In this way, the other girls in the class became more and more beautiful, but they all showed a morbid beauty.
There is only the third uglily, watching the stars hold the moon after the two girls become beautiful, there is no wave in my heart, I never move forward, and I don't envy. Because she saw that there must be something strange in this, and she couldn't be fooled. As a result, the girls in the class are becoming more and more beautiful day by day, but their health is getting worse. Many of my classmates have taken sick leave and stopped coming to class. This strange phenomenon spread throughout the school, and the girls became beautiful and then their health deteriorated. The major hospitals are crowded with beautiful women who come to see the doctor, and the doctors are helpless about their illness.
As these girls died one after another, rumors appeared, saying that the girls infected with this beauty disease would become more and more beautiful, but their bodies deteriorated and they would die soon. At this time, the mood of those beautiful girls changed from excitement to panic. They sighed and cried every day, fearing that one day they too would die.
After a while, another rumor appeared that as long as you kill a healthy girl on the third Friday of every month, you can save your life. So the girls fell into madness and went to kill their classmates in order to save their lives. The school was in chaos and panic.
In the end, most of the girls either died of illness or were killed, and only a few people who were as transparent as the third ugly girl survived, and they became the real winners.
Implication: It satirizes people's pathological pursuit of beauty, there is nothing wrong with pursuing beauty, but nothing can be done, in case it is too much, tragedy is coming. In fact, beauty and ugliness are not important, health is the most important, don't exchange health for beauty.
5, Whispering Female
The heroine is the eldest lady of a rich family, and she suffers from a very serious phobia of choice. She was so ill that she had almost lost the ability to act independently. Every day when she opens her eyes, someone has to give her instructions on her every move, and even if she is given instructions, the next question will follow. The father can only ask a nanny to take care of her 24 hours a day, because the heroine has no mother since she was a child, and the father must make his daughter feel warm.
However, several nannies were changed in a row, and none of them could adapt to such a high-intensity work and quit their jobs. One day, a woman named Mitsu came to apply for a job. After a day of trial, the father found that she was very patient and careful in her work, and his daughter was also very satisfied, so he left her behind.
Since then, from the moment the heroine gets up in the morning, Mitsu has begun to give her all kinds of instructions. It wasn't until the night when the heroine fell asleep that Mitsu dragged her tired body home. Such days lasted for a month, and Mitsu did not slack off in her work, and her instructions to the heroine were clear and specific, and she was very patient.
But the work was very tiring, working more than ten hours a day, and talking non-stop, Mitsu was already visibly haggard. And there are often bruises on her face and body, and when the heroine's father asks her, she avoids talking about it. She always refused to ask her to take a vacation, and rarely took a vacation.
In this way, Mitsu worked for another two months, and her work intensity was beyond the tolerance of normal people, and people became more haggard, following the heroine like a ghost. However, under Mitsu's care, the heroine's condition has improved greatly. Being able to go out shopping was not possible before. My father was very pleased with this and felt that Mitsu was the goddess of luck for their family.
However, Mitsu worked too hard, which also made his father suspicious. He asks a friend to investigate Mitsu's situation. A few days later, a friend told him, "Mitsu has a live-in boyfriend who is a gangster. He doesn't work all day, he is idle, he drinks all day, plays games, gambles, drinks when he loses a bet, and beats Mitsu when he gets drunk. This time, it was her boyfriend who took a fancy to the high salary of being a nanny here, so he forced Mitsu to work here. ”
After listening to the introduction, the heroine's father finally knew why Mitsu was working so hard, it turned out that she was trying to escape her boyfriend's domestic violence. My friend said we had to take care of it. But his father said, "If I had helped Mitsu get rid of her boyfriend, I am afraid she would not have worked as hard as she does now." It's better to maintain the status quo. ”
Two weeks later, Mitsu was beaten to death by her boyfriend at home. The boyfriend has fled, and the police are searching for him with all their might. The father was worried about whether his daughter's illness would recur after Mitsu was gone. But he found that his daughter had moved freely, but she had been talking to herself, as if Mitsu was still around.
A few days later, the father saw his daughter squatting in the garden and loosening the soil with a knife. While stabbing and muttering to himself: "Is it stabbed like this, is it stabbed like that?" A few days later, one night my daughter came back with a knife and covered in blood. He said to his father, "I killed that man, and Sister Mizu told me to kill him." Obviously, the heroine has been possessed by Mitsu, and Mitsu has avenged herself with the help of the heroine's body.
Implication: If a person has no opinions at all, then he is only a walking corpse in the world, and the day of being replaced by others is not far off.
That's all for the story I've told, and there are many more meaningful horror stories about Ito, so I'll keep the rest for you to read later.