I Feel Like Seriously Describing Junji Ito's Horror Works As Simply "wouldn't It Be Fucked Up If This

i feel like seriously describing junji ito's horror works as simply "wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened" is dumb because it's such a vague description that most other horror works can also be described as that. For example:

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if your house suddenly started creating new rooms and changed its dimensions on you?" (House of Leaves, specifically The Navidson Record)

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if the doors, windows, and your parents suddenly disappeared out of nowhere?" (Skinamarink)

"Wouldn't it be fucked up if a clown in a sewer started killing kids?" (It)

among others.

Not to mention, most of Ito's works do have deeper meaning to them, specifically targetting japanese culture. This video touches on his shorter works, but even his larger works have metaphorical meaning.

Junji Ito describing his mindset on writing Gyo as "man it would suck if sharks had legs" is real funny, but it's also critiquing Japan's war crimes in WWII; the origin of the "legs" being from World War II when the Imperial Japanese Army was trying to create biochemical weapons cannot be a coincidence. Hellstar Remina is about a hostile alien planet, but it's also an allegory of fans turning on a girl because of something beyond her control, reminiscent of idol culture. Hell, even Uzumaki, probably one of his greatest "WTF" horror works, is also about a pair of teenagers being unable to escape their hometown, unable to expand their horizons in the outside world. they just keep going in circles, unable to escape.

I don't know, at this point describing Ito's works only being "wouldnt it be fucked up if this thing happened" is starting to feel like "the curtains are blue because the author likes the color blue" but like. for horror

The way Grandpa sits in this picture is literally the most thug-gangster ass-shit like holy hell it's so badass

505 notes View Post

idrinkshavingcream69

2 years ago

Concept that won't leave me alone;

If Grimora had the OLD_DATA at the start of the game, I reckon she'd go for a dungeon crawler. Imagine, you wake up in darkness and in the distance sits a candleabra and some decrepit tombstones. An ominous voice speaks from behind them, narrating your journey and giving cryptic hints, slowly becoming less encouraging and more frigid.

The crypt is divided by checked tiles and the candle will only reveal ones in your nearest vicinity. For every step you take, ghosts and ghouls in the darkness will move- hostile or otherwise- and will engage if you move onto the same tile.

It's essentially a reimagining of her segment in Act 2 and the board she has in the finale, just given a more 3D spin compared to Leshy and P03's tabletop gameplay. Once you actually get to her, you see her chessboard and the pieces she's been controlling to battle you. Now that you've bested her ghouls, she wants to add you to her collection-

oh shit how cool would it be if you're roaming around and you find a ghoul with the name from your last run :0c maybe instead of having a death card, they offer you one of the cards from your old deck?

This shits so clear in my minds eye, but illustrating it has been a pain. Now that it's out in written form, maybe I can focus on the other concept gnawing on my corpse?

181 notes View Post

idrinkshavingcream69

2 years ago

it is still there, but to be fair Act II is the game going back to what it was before the Old Data in Leshy’s takeover, so the meat was probably always a game mechanic

Fun Inscryption fact

it’s implied that the meat pile Leshy gives you when you win a campaign in Act I is actually ground from Grimora’s corpse. It’s in the safe that you find the Stinkbug card in and Grimora’s corpse isn’t in the storage room with PO3 and Magnificus

49 notes View Post