Comic Stack 10/14/15 – 5 Horror Manga Recommendations

Following on the heels of my 5 Horror Graphic Novel Recommendations, I give you my manga recommendations. I know what you’re thinking. You’re going to see my usual suspects, but I can assure you that I read so much more manga than Attack on Titans, okay. I just have my books I love and can’t get over ever. I really, really wanted to put Battle Royale in this lineup, but since it’s like one of my favorite books/manga/movie ever, I use it for everything.

I can still leave you with smiling Mitsuko, though. Anyhow, here are 5 picks, many of which have left me in a state of “Please, God, Japan, no!”

Tokyo Ghoul by Sui Ishida

I found this manga much like I find most of my manga by watching the anime first and then having to hunt down the manga:

Shy Ken Kaneki is thrilled to go on a date with the beautiful Rize. But it turns out that she’s only interested in his body—eating it, that is. When a morally questionable rescue transforms him into the first half-human half-Ghoul hybrid, Ken is drawn into the dark and violent world of Ghouls, which exists alongside our own.

Jisatsu Circle (Suicide Club) by  Usamaru Furuya

This actually isn’t an anime that tempted me to its manga. This was a movie I watched many years ago. It was one of those movies much like Battle Royale that was just horrifically creepy. Unfortunately, this manga is very hard to find, and obviously, there’s a huge trigger warning on this one.

54 girls jump off a platform in front of an on coming train. However, one girl survives and starts up another suicide club as more copycat clubs pop up around the city. The police begin a frantic race to figure out what is triggering these events that seem unrelated… at first…

Doubt by Yoshiki Tonogai

Yuu, Mitsuki, Rei, Hajime, Eiji, and Haruka have entered the game called ‘Rabbit Doubt’, where all of the players are ‘rabbits’ in a group, and one of the players among them is randomly chosen to be a ‘wolf’ in the group of rabbits. Each round, the wolf kills a rabbit. Each round, the rabbit group tries to figure out which of the rabbits is actually the wolf in disguise and kill it. If a rabbit kills the real wolf, the rabbits win. If they’re wrong, all of the rabbits will be killed. Who is the real wolf? And can they stopped it before the game is over…

Tomie by Junji Ito

All the best creepy Japanese manga seem to involve high school kids which has probably given me an irrational fear of all high school kids probably being evil entities. I’m a mom. I’m preparing the salt for my kids’ high school years.

These terse tales of terror tell the story of a high-school girl named Tomie, who can be seen as a living embodiment of lust and all the negative emotions that go along with it, such as jealousy. Tomie is the ultimate self-destructive entity, yet ironically she survives anything. She is identified by a mole under her left eye.

She possesses an undisclosed power to make anyone fall in love with her. Through sleight of hand, or emotional manipulation, she drives these men into jealous rages that inevitably lead to brutal acts of violence. Men kill each other over her; and girls are sometimes driven to jealous rages as well. Tomie is inevitably killed time and again, only to regenerate. Tomie is bound to go on forever in this way.

In the first story “Tomie”, she returns to school after an announcement that she had died, much to the horror of her friends and teachers. It transpires that during a school trip, her fellow students and favorite teacher murder her and dismember her body.

Each story tells a different viewpoint of how she lived and died, with some recurring characters. (wiki)

Fuan No Tane (Seeds of Anxiety) by Nakayama Masaaki

There are four volumes of these books which are basically just short stories that revolve around urban legends and myths and revolve a recurring theme. Most of them are terrifically creepy.