Hello everyone! I know it's been a bit since my last entry in this blog. Life happened (as it tends to do) but now I'm back, with the latest entry in Geek Girl Reads Manga!
When we last left off with Gyo, hundreds of legfish had come ashore in Okinawa, with no clear explanation of where they came from and why the mass migration. Now, a legshark that was seen at the end of the last chapter decides that Tadashi and Kaori look pretty damn tasty and comes into the house they're staying at to say hi. And by hi, I mean NOM NOM NOM.
Tadashi tells Kaori to escape out the window, which would be a fantastic idea if there weren't hundreds of legfish still teeming in the streets. Instead, she runs down the hallway, which somehow manages to be an even worse idea as the two of them are chase through the house by a shark.
Give yourself a moment to let that sink in.
Two teenagers.
Chased through their house.
By a shark.
SyFy would have a ball with this.
Meanwhile, out in the streets, the police are in kind of an odd place, as the legfish are attacking other people, and they can't seem to put the silly things down. They confirm the earlier assessment that they smell dead, meaning these things are zombie legfish. Two of the cops given any panel time at all are then taken out by a hammerhead legshark.
Japan: The quirky uncle of the horror world.
Meanwhile, Tadashi has managed to catch up with Kaori, who demands that he stop running and handle the legshark. Ummm, you mean the same legshark that you've been running from this entire time? Tadashi quite logically counters that he can't fight a shark, a statement that is only confirmed when Mr. Legshark comes busting through the door like Jaws and the Kool-Aid Man had a mutant child together.
Kaori screams and cowers like the potential horror victim she is, and Tadashi picks up a floor lamp or something with the apparent goal of hitting it in the nose until it goes away. Instead, it barrels right past both of them and out the window, where it discovers the ground does not, apparently, want to be friends with it.
Thus ends the brief rampage of Bruce the legshark. May he rest in stinky pieces.
Judging by the number of legfish running around Okinawa right now, I can only imagine that this is going to get worse for Our Intrepid Protagonists. I was gratified to see Tadashi briefly attempt to put it a fight, even if he was stupidly outmatched and nothing came of it. Hey, he tried. I'm just waiting for him to haul off and yell at Kaori for being such a load, though. She deserves it, and I'm starting ot hope that she gets eaten by a zombie legfish,
Next time: Chapter Five of Gyo, wherein I can only imagine the weirdness will continue.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Gyo: Volume 1, Chapter 3: Going Ashore
Welcome to Geek Girl Reads Manga! In today's post we continue with Gyo, as shit starts to get real.
When we last left Tadashi, his girlfriend was being a bitch and he was chasing fish with legs down to the beach. Well, as this chapter opens, we learn that his dreams of being able to name a new species of legfish might come true, as a whole bunch of them start coming ashore. He can't catch any of them, though--they move too fast for Our Intrepid Hero, so he does what any level-headed protagonist would do in this situation.
He calls the police.
Who don't believe him.
Because legfish.
Kaori is no help because she's still being a bitch and refuses to corroborate his story, so the local cops think that Tadashi is either some kind of nutbar or someone who mistook a cat or dog for a bunch of legfish. Kaori's excuse is that she still has a fever and he ran off after the legfish and abandoned her and oh my god just shut up already.
Turns out that Tadashi shouldn't have worried about collecting a legfish specimen, because a fishing boat just dredged up a whole mess of them in their net--fish of all kinds and even a squid with the weird spidery legs on them. Hilarity ensues on the fishing boat. Elsewhere, on the beach, one of the happy vacationers spots a fin sticking out of the water. He calls out a warning about the shark, and everyone stampedes out of the water. This includes the shark, who--you guessed it--comes motoring out on a big set of spidery legs.
Back to Tadashi and Kaori. Her fever has gone down and they seem to be having a heartfelt talk.
Who apologizes for the blowup from earlier? He does. Now, I'm not sure about how shit like this works in Japanese culture, but I'm sure nobody in this hemisphere would blame him for dropping her like a hot rock the second they got home from vacay because drama.
Aaaaanyway, he leans in to kiss her, and she starts bitching about a bad smell. He protests that he brushed his teeth and used mouthwash and everything, and this time she concedes that it's not him and that it's coming from outside. Tadashi looked outside and sees A bunch of legfish in the streets, most prominently Mr. Leggy Shark.
8-O
If it wasn't clear by the fact that Junji Ito is behind this, I would say now is the point where it's clear that shit is going to get a lot worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better because nothing good can come of having a freaking shark crawling around on land). I'm still wondering what the heck those leggy devices are that the fish seem to be attached to, and what the heck they're even for. Ito tends to be a bit light on explanations in some of his works, so I'm not expecting a whole lot here other than wall-to-wall creepage.
That's it for this post. If you like this blog, please subscribe so you can follow along as I delve deeper into the wonderful world of horror manga!
When we last left Tadashi, his girlfriend was being a bitch and he was chasing fish with legs down to the beach. Well, as this chapter opens, we learn that his dreams of being able to name a new species of legfish might come true, as a whole bunch of them start coming ashore. He can't catch any of them, though--they move too fast for Our Intrepid Hero, so he does what any level-headed protagonist would do in this situation.
He calls the police.
Who don't believe him.
Because legfish.
Kaori is no help because she's still being a bitch and refuses to corroborate his story, so the local cops think that Tadashi is either some kind of nutbar or someone who mistook a cat or dog for a bunch of legfish. Kaori's excuse is that she still has a fever and he ran off after the legfish and abandoned her and oh my god just shut up already.
Turns out that Tadashi shouldn't have worried about collecting a legfish specimen, because a fishing boat just dredged up a whole mess of them in their net--fish of all kinds and even a squid with the weird spidery legs on them. Hilarity ensues on the fishing boat. Elsewhere, on the beach, one of the happy vacationers spots a fin sticking out of the water. He calls out a warning about the shark, and everyone stampedes out of the water. This includes the shark, who--you guessed it--comes motoring out on a big set of spidery legs.
Back to Tadashi and Kaori. Her fever has gone down and they seem to be having a heartfelt talk.
Who apologizes for the blowup from earlier? He does. Now, I'm not sure about how shit like this works in Japanese culture, but I'm sure nobody in this hemisphere would blame him for dropping her like a hot rock the second they got home from vacay because drama.
Aaaaanyway, he leans in to kiss her, and she starts bitching about a bad smell. He protests that he brushed his teeth and used mouthwash and everything, and this time she concedes that it's not him and that it's coming from outside. Tadashi looked outside and sees A bunch of legfish in the streets, most prominently Mr. Leggy Shark.
8-O
If it wasn't clear by the fact that Junji Ito is behind this, I would say now is the point where it's clear that shit is going to get a lot worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better because nothing good can come of having a freaking shark crawling around on land). I'm still wondering what the heck those leggy devices are that the fish seem to be attached to, and what the heck they're even for. Ito tends to be a bit light on explanations in some of his works, so I'm not expecting a whole lot here other than wall-to-wall creepage.
That's it for this post. If you like this blog, please subscribe so you can follow along as I delve deeper into the wonderful world of horror manga!
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Gyo: Volume 1, Chapter 2: The Death-Stench in the Air
Welcome to Geek Girl Reads Manga! I started this blog proper with the first chapter of Junji Ito's Gyo, and in this post we continue with Chapter Two
Oh, lord... I should not laugh this hard at a Junji Ito manga, but... Okay, I read Volume 1, Chapter 2 of Gyo, entitled "The Death-Stench in the Air". Tadashi looks at this weird-ass fish on spider legs and thinks he might have found a new species. Um... bonus? However, Kaori is still freaking out over the smell, so Tadashi agrees to get rid of the thing and tosses it in the garden. Kaori still complains about the smell (seriously, SHUT UP and shut the windows already) so he goes out to wrap it up and throw it away LIKE HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Only, when he gets out there he finds that, despite being crushed by a dresser, the damn thing has crawled away. He finds it, gets it in a garbage bag, and duct tapes the thing shut to seal in the Worst Smell on the Planet, but it twitches and keeps poking holes in the bag. Tadashi tapes up the holes, pins the thing under a rock and considers his job done. He comes inside to find that Kaori has a fever, so he agrees that they'll leave Okinawa the following day. Kaori keeps bitching about the smell, and suddenly the crawly fish comes drifting in through the window, with all the gas produced by its rotting having inflated the bag.
Yes.
Seriously.
So once again Kaori flips her shit and bolts from the room, leaving Tadashi to bustle the thing back out the window. I swear this things must be trolling Kaori, because it pokes ANOTHER hole in the bag, drifts BACK in through the window, and chases Kaori out of the house and down the street. Now, just sit back and take a moment to imagine this. You have this Japanese girl in an absolute flat panic, running down the street, being chased by a rotten fish with spider legs borne aloft in a bag filled with poo gas.
Even if I didn't dislike Kaori to begin with, I would have still had to take a moment to compose myself, because the scene was just so surreal and stupidly hilarious. In any case, Tadashi manages to drive the horrible mean dead fish away from his girlfriend, and it starts drifting towards the coast. At this point, I probably would have let the thing go about its business, go inside, and shut the windows so it doesn't come back in to terrorize Kaori, but Tadashi wants to find it again, because fish with legs = new species in his mind.
She throws another fit about him leaving her with a fever (and I come close to being on her side here) but he ignores her and chases after Mr. Evil Flying Bagfish. He loses sight of the thing in the darkness, but he hears more hissing coming from the water. He looks around and sees more rotten fish with spidery legs emerging from the water. On the bright side, if he wants to get another specimen for his Find of the Century, he'll have his choice...
Looks like things are going to get a lot worse for Okinawa, if my experience with Ito's other work is any indication. I'm not sure where things will go as far as crawling zombie fish, but it's sure to be interesting, regardless. I predict that Kaori will go insane from the smell before the story finishes. Beyond that, I have no clue why the raging hell a bunch of fish are coming ashore on little spider legs, only that it cam't mean anything good.
Looks like we'll have to wait for the next chapter to see where this is going.
Next up: Volume 1, Chapter 3: Going Ashore.
Oh, lord... I should not laugh this hard at a Junji Ito manga, but... Okay, I read Volume 1, Chapter 2 of Gyo, entitled "The Death-Stench in the Air". Tadashi looks at this weird-ass fish on spider legs and thinks he might have found a new species. Um... bonus? However, Kaori is still freaking out over the smell, so Tadashi agrees to get rid of the thing and tosses it in the garden. Kaori still complains about the smell (seriously, SHUT UP and shut the windows already) so he goes out to wrap it up and throw it away LIKE HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Only, when he gets out there he finds that, despite being crushed by a dresser, the damn thing has crawled away. He finds it, gets it in a garbage bag, and duct tapes the thing shut to seal in the Worst Smell on the Planet, but it twitches and keeps poking holes in the bag. Tadashi tapes up the holes, pins the thing under a rock and considers his job done. He comes inside to find that Kaori has a fever, so he agrees that they'll leave Okinawa the following day. Kaori keeps bitching about the smell, and suddenly the crawly fish comes drifting in through the window, with all the gas produced by its rotting having inflated the bag.
Yes.
Seriously.
So once again Kaori flips her shit and bolts from the room, leaving Tadashi to bustle the thing back out the window. I swear this things must be trolling Kaori, because it pokes ANOTHER hole in the bag, drifts BACK in through the window, and chases Kaori out of the house and down the street. Now, just sit back and take a moment to imagine this. You have this Japanese girl in an absolute flat panic, running down the street, being chased by a rotten fish with spider legs borne aloft in a bag filled with poo gas.
Even if I didn't dislike Kaori to begin with, I would have still had to take a moment to compose myself, because the scene was just so surreal and stupidly hilarious. In any case, Tadashi manages to drive the horrible mean dead fish away from his girlfriend, and it starts drifting towards the coast. At this point, I probably would have let the thing go about its business, go inside, and shut the windows so it doesn't come back in to terrorize Kaori, but Tadashi wants to find it again, because fish with legs = new species in his mind.
She throws another fit about him leaving her with a fever (and I come close to being on her side here) but he ignores her and chases after Mr. Evil Flying Bagfish. He loses sight of the thing in the darkness, but he hears more hissing coming from the water. He looks around and sees more rotten fish with spidery legs emerging from the water. On the bright side, if he wants to get another specimen for his Find of the Century, he'll have his choice...
Looks like things are going to get a lot worse for Okinawa, if my experience with Ito's other work is any indication. I'm not sure where things will go as far as crawling zombie fish, but it's sure to be interesting, regardless. I predict that Kaori will go insane from the smell before the story finishes. Beyond that, I have no clue why the raging hell a bunch of fish are coming ashore on little spider legs, only that it cam't mean anything good.
Looks like we'll have to wait for the next chapter to see where this is going.
Next up: Volume 1, Chapter 3: Going Ashore.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Gyo: Volume 1, Chapter 1: The Death-Stench of the South
Welcome to Geek Girl Reads Manga! For my first title, I'm reading Gyo, by Junji Ito (full title: Gyo Ugomeku Bukimi, or Fish: Eerie to Wiggle). I started this once a long time ago and never got very far into it before I forgot about it, so I'm starting it over from the beginning as my inaugural title. I've read other titles by Ito, particularly Uzumaki and Tomie, and in between the weirdness and the gore, I've found his work to be overall creepy as shit.
An interesting translation note before we start: the title Gyo is generally translated from Japanese as Fish, which works just fine as far as that goes, but the syllable gyo can't be used by itself to just mean fish. That would be sakana or gyorui. Instead, gyo is usually used in combination with other kanji to make other words dealing with fish, Depending on the kanji used, gyo can also be Japanese onomatopeia indicating a sudden glare, or a sound of shock or surprise. So many meanings for three letters, huh?
But enough Japanese language nerdery--on with the J-horror!
Volume 1, Chapter 1: The Death-Stench of the South
The low-level dread is established early on, as protagonist Tadashi has a close encounter of the vaguely sharky kind while scuba diving off the coast of Okinawa. He is vacationing with his girlfriend Kaori, whose response to his tale of the encounter is to complain that the smell of the sea is making her sick. Okay, fine. Some people have sensitive noses. Then when they get back to Tadashi's uncle's beach home Kaori decides that Tadashi's breath bothers her, too, so she wants him to brush his teeth before he kisses her. Like, every time. He already brushes twice a day, so his oral health isn't in doubt. She hadn't complained before, but she can't take it anymore.
Naturally, Tadashi flips his shit a little bit, and she accuses him of being selfish. I'm left with the impression that Tadashi is a freaking saint for putting up with her and her neuroses for this long.
During the course of their fight, they both leave the house, and notice a foul smell permeating the air, and encounter something unknown in the underbrush Tadashi coaxes her back inside, only to discover that the foul smell has followed them. Kaori is flipping out harder now, taking repeated showers to try to get rid of the smell, and she sends Tadashi out to get some air freshener, whereupon he discovers that the smell outside is gone, while she discovers that the smell inside is getting stronger. She investigates, and finds something that hisses at her. She screams.
Tadashi hears her scream, and he bolts back inside like a good boyfriend to find Kaori passed out on the floor, and the foul smell is overpowering. He makes sure she's okay (though I imagine she won't be when she wakes up and discovers the whole house smells like rotten garbage), and then investigates a tok-tok-tok noise from upstairs. When he gets up there, he sees something dart past at about ankle height, and gives chase.
Personally, at this point I would be thinking big freaking rat and calling an exterminator, but Tadashi is not me.
He chases the thing around a bit without getting a good look at it until he finally squishes it behind a dresser. It's a rotten fish, attached to some sort of apparatus with mechanical legs like a spider. Tadashi's reaction fairly closely mirrors my own: "What the hell is this!?" Welcome to Junji Ito's world, Tadashi, where weird shit like this happens more often than not.
So far Tadashi strikes me as the sort of seinen everyman that would star in whatever the Japanese equivalent of the The Twilight Zone is, and Kaori... I would feel more sympathetic towards her if coming to Okinawa weren't her idea in the first place. Instead she comes off as neurotic and bitchy and I just want to slap her. Other than that, the premise sounds intriguing, and this should prove to be delightfully horrifying.
Next up: Volume 1: Chapter 2: The Death-Stench in the Air!
An interesting translation note before we start: the title Gyo is generally translated from Japanese as Fish, which works just fine as far as that goes, but the syllable gyo can't be used by itself to just mean fish. That would be sakana or gyorui. Instead, gyo is usually used in combination with other kanji to make other words dealing with fish, Depending on the kanji used, gyo can also be Japanese onomatopeia indicating a sudden glare, or a sound of shock or surprise. So many meanings for three letters, huh?
But enough Japanese language nerdery--on with the J-horror!
Volume 1, Chapter 1: The Death-Stench of the South
The low-level dread is established early on, as protagonist Tadashi has a close encounter of the vaguely sharky kind while scuba diving off the coast of Okinawa. He is vacationing with his girlfriend Kaori, whose response to his tale of the encounter is to complain that the smell of the sea is making her sick. Okay, fine. Some people have sensitive noses. Then when they get back to Tadashi's uncle's beach home Kaori decides that Tadashi's breath bothers her, too, so she wants him to brush his teeth before he kisses her. Like, every time. He already brushes twice a day, so his oral health isn't in doubt. She hadn't complained before, but she can't take it anymore.
Naturally, Tadashi flips his shit a little bit, and she accuses him of being selfish. I'm left with the impression that Tadashi is a freaking saint for putting up with her and her neuroses for this long.
During the course of their fight, they both leave the house, and notice a foul smell permeating the air, and encounter something unknown in the underbrush Tadashi coaxes her back inside, only to discover that the foul smell has followed them. Kaori is flipping out harder now, taking repeated showers to try to get rid of the smell, and she sends Tadashi out to get some air freshener, whereupon he discovers that the smell outside is gone, while she discovers that the smell inside is getting stronger. She investigates, and finds something that hisses at her. She screams.
Tadashi hears her scream, and he bolts back inside like a good boyfriend to find Kaori passed out on the floor, and the foul smell is overpowering. He makes sure she's okay (though I imagine she won't be when she wakes up and discovers the whole house smells like rotten garbage), and then investigates a tok-tok-tok noise from upstairs. When he gets up there, he sees something dart past at about ankle height, and gives chase.
Personally, at this point I would be thinking big freaking rat and calling an exterminator, but Tadashi is not me.
He chases the thing around a bit without getting a good look at it until he finally squishes it behind a dresser. It's a rotten fish, attached to some sort of apparatus with mechanical legs like a spider. Tadashi's reaction fairly closely mirrors my own: "What the hell is this!?" Welcome to Junji Ito's world, Tadashi, where weird shit like this happens more often than not.
So far Tadashi strikes me as the sort of seinen everyman that would star in whatever the Japanese equivalent of the The Twilight Zone is, and Kaori... I would feel more sympathetic towards her if coming to Okinawa weren't her idea in the first place. Instead she comes off as neurotic and bitchy and I just want to slap her. Other than that, the premise sounds intriguing, and this should prove to be delightfully horrifying.
Next up: Volume 1: Chapter 2: The Death-Stench in the Air!
Welcome to Geek Girl Reads Manga!
Hello everyone, and welcome to my new blog Geek Girl Reads Manga! This blog was inspired by the Mark Reads blog maintained by Mark Oshiro, and I hope to be able to maintain the spirit of his blog here while going in my own direction.
A little about me, though: My name is Beth, and I am a fan of manga (Japanese comic books), particularly the horror titles. I got started with horror manga by reading Uzumaki by Junji Ito, and I've been hooked ever since. Japanese horror is just so delightfully weird at times, relying on psychological chills rather than the blood and guts of a lot of Western horror.
I've started doing dedicated reviews thanks to my own discovery of the Mark Reads blog (and by extension, Mark Does Stuff), so I figured I would give this a shot. If you're familiar with Mark Reads, you know the drill: I will read a title one chapter at a time, and give my review and overall impressions of each chapter as I go. Hopefully this will result in a more satisfying read, during which I'm able to understand the story better.
That said, I'll be going into these titles blind, so NO SPOILERS! I ask this as a courtesy to me, who has had countless twists ruined for me due to other spoiler-hounds with loose lips (Like The Sixth Sense, grrrr). I have no idea how large the horror manga fanbase is, or how many of it I will attract with this blog, but please be courteous.
Thanks, and enjoy my blog!
A little about me, though: My name is Beth, and I am a fan of manga (Japanese comic books), particularly the horror titles. I got started with horror manga by reading Uzumaki by Junji Ito, and I've been hooked ever since. Japanese horror is just so delightfully weird at times, relying on psychological chills rather than the blood and guts of a lot of Western horror.
I've started doing dedicated reviews thanks to my own discovery of the Mark Reads blog (and by extension, Mark Does Stuff), so I figured I would give this a shot. If you're familiar with Mark Reads, you know the drill: I will read a title one chapter at a time, and give my review and overall impressions of each chapter as I go. Hopefully this will result in a more satisfying read, during which I'm able to understand the story better.
That said, I'll be going into these titles blind, so NO SPOILERS! I ask this as a courtesy to me, who has had countless twists ruined for me due to other spoiler-hounds with loose lips (Like The Sixth Sense, grrrr). I have no idea how large the horror manga fanbase is, or how many of it I will attract with this blog, but please be courteous.
Thanks, and enjoy my blog!
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