Museum of Terror, Vol. 1: Tomie 1

This is horror, and it's not for the faint of heart. So, if you've just had breakfast, watch out. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Tomie is a horror manga, a vast collection of stories. This is only volume 1 of all the Tomie stories that Ito created!! I heard from a reviewer that the second volume shows a significant improvement in quality, which is good to know. However, I'm not sure if I really need to read another 400 pages of this story or this theme that repeats in every tale. I'm not as obsessive as Ito or the countless boys driven insane by Tomie.

Tomie is a supposed-to-be gorgeous (in manga, it's challenging to create the kind of wild beauty he aims for in this style - cute, like in Yotsuba, is possible, but gorgeous?) teenage girl who makes certain boys she meets fall head over heels in love with her. How crazy? Well, that seems to be the point! These boys literally go nuts, lose their minds, and for some unclear reason, they kill Tomie to relieve the agony of lust. You might ask, why not just have sex with her? Tomie seems to invite it. And indeed, some of them do, but this manga is more about crazy desire, blood, murder, and Lovecraftianly gross images. Sex is too nice for Ito to depict.

But don't worry, Tomie-loving readers. If you mourn her loss, she has the power to regenerate herself from, say, her own decapitated head. Any body part will do, actually. Or preferably each and every body part, so we can drive all lusty boys to the charnel house or to their deaths. There's blood everywhere in these stories. And in the photographs some guys take of her, you can see these gross Tomie-growths emerging from her very head. Yuck, unless you're into horror, and then you'll be overjoyed.

Freud help me, but I think there might be some Calvinist guilt issue underlying this obsessive story where every boy who lusts after Tomie must destroy the object of his lust and also be destroyed for his lust. The stories don't offer anything particularly new, no real surprises, or any significant development. It's just a collection of individual Tomie stories, where he explores the same idea in a slightly different way in each one. And yet, it's masterful in its intentions. I actually liked it, anyway!

I have to classify this as a femme fatale story, similar to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' somewhat less successful Fatale noir series, where the beautiful blonde bombshell also leads men to madness, suicide, and murder in different stories throughout the ages. In Museum of Terror, it happens in a similar way, but it's just straightforward horror, which works better than the horror noir crime approach of Brubaker and Phillips. But I like both. I really do.

Read Eisnein for the best review of Ito, without a doubt. As Eisnein points out, Ito has a history of horror obsession that might be unrivaled in the history of literature. In Ito's Uzumaki, for example, he manages to create a creepy horror manga based on the increasing proliferation of... spirals. 800 pages of spirals, yes! Everyone in a small town is driven crazy by spirals, everywhere, and increasingly, taking over everyone's minds. I actually liked this even better. It's so strange. But you see what I mean about the obsession issue with Ito. When he gets an idea, he clings to it for years...

Ito is amazing. And successfully creepy, especially if you're a horror fan!

Çizimler, hikayeler yine iyiydi. This time, it tells about Tomie, who charms men with the beauty of her face. The illustrations are detailed and vivid, bringing the story to life. The story itself is engaging and full of mystery. It makes you wonder what will happen next. I am on the way to becoming a Junji Ito fan. His works always have a unique charm that吸引人们的注意力. I can't wait to read more of his works and explore the strange and wonderful world he creates.

It's never fully explained what Tomie is. In the opening salvo of chapters, there's sufficient content to assist you in formulating your own hypotheses and allowing your spider-like imaginations to run wild. However, in the end, it's left purposefully vague, and that truly creeps me out.

1. Tomie - The origin story. Junji is still in the process of learning the craft, so the art appears a little rougher. Nevertheless, that final image at the end still manages to send shivers down my spine.

2. Photograph - The art is improving, and we begin to obtain a clearer picture of what Tomie's influence and character will be like. She is becoming more defined, and that gonzo ending is quite something.

3. Kiss - A direct continuation of the previous story, if you thought it couldn't get any weirder, just wait. The lesson learned here is: don't fall into the friend zone with Tomie.

4. Mansion - This ****ing story is bananas. It has been teased in the previous two chapters, but now we get the full reveal. With its combination of mad science and body horror, it's enough to keep Brundlefly awake at night.

5. Revenge - This is the simplest story in this collection and also the most forgettable.

6. The Basin of the Waterfall - "Oh oh here she comes, watch out boy she'll chew you up. Oh oh here she comes, she's a maneater."

The Tomie series is an extremely disturbing collection of horror stories. Each one centers around a seemingly beautiful girl named Tomie. Men are helplessly drawn to her, unable to resist her wishes. Tomie, on the other hand, is destructive and greedy, using her charm to shatter other women's relationships and families and to acquire luxury and wealth. Wikipedia describes her as "a living embodiment of lust and all the negative emotions that accompany it, such as jealousy."

About half of the time, Tomie meets a brutal and gratuitous end, usually at the hands of one of the men who love her. One character explains, "I just... wanted to kill her, detective... when I saw her... For some reason, I felt this urge to dismantle her." But this is just the beginning of the horror. Every part of Tomie that is cut off has the ability to sprout into an entirely new Tomie, who returns to life, often driving her murderers insane, or sometimes simply moving on to cause new chaos. The other half of the stories focus less on lust and murder and more on Tomie's regenerative abilities, showing her inherently unstable flesh splitting open to form new heads in stressful situations or following the consequences of her parts being scattered in various places (and on at least three occasions, in other people's bodies).

The most disturbing aspect lies in the first type of stories, where the author externalizes male sexual violence onto a female-looking demon-monster. Men can convince themselves that they are not powerless due to unrequited lust but because of a woman's evil power. Their desperate urge to hack Tomie into pieces is something she has forced them to do. Similarly, Tomie may look like a beautiful girl, but she is really a monster who secretly wants to torture men and selfishly accumulate material wealth. The horror is not the crimes that people commit but the callous beauty that has emasculated them by taking away their free will and completing its emasculation by defying their attempts to reassert dominance with violence.

As a reading experience, there is something deeply unpleasant about this. It's like when you read a poorly written fictional rape scene by a male author and feel like they are compulsively picking at a need-to-confess mental rape fantasy scab in public, and it's disgusting. Ultimately, you feel dirty and complicit and just want to scrape the whole reading experience off your brain. From his other works that I've read, I think Junji Ito is an intuitive writer. I doubt he thought through any of the above when creating Tomie, but I'm sure it is this symbolic power that drove the writing. This led-by-intuition tendency is also why Ito is an interesting (and in some cases, dissatisfying) author, as he never lets the symbol set a logic for the narrative. He just gets lost down some new sidetrack that also has a powerful ick factor, and stories are often an exercise in capturing that essence, ending evocatively on the moment of horror's realization, with the what-happens-next being irrelevant to him.

Reading over what I've written, I feel like I should emphasize that Tomie is not at all a rape-sex-death extravaganza. These ideas just bubble in the background. There is no sex at all, and apart from a few stabbing sprees, the narrative is classic 80s movie pulp horror, with a healthy dose of Lovecraftian crawling, cancerous masses of flesh, eyes, and polyps.

The best part of the collection is a set of three chapters in the middle of the book about a young girl named Tsukiko, who incurs Tomie's wrath when she fights back by spreading a series of photographs that manage to capture her true demonic face. This really captures the sense of terror I associate with films like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street, where a chilling monster is placed firmly in everyday suburbia, and a gutsy heroine, though seemingly doomed, repeatedly overcomes the usual rules of the narrative and emerges unscathed, thanks to bravery and a good dose of luck. The girl-versus-girl setup takes the emphasis off male attraction, and the more watchful tone deepens the mystery, suggesting a sometimes human-seeming consciousness to Tomie (albeit evil). You wonder what this monster, doomed to mutate and be endlessly dismembered, thinks.

One other thing I'd like to mention, shamelessly borrowed from another reviewer on GoodReads, is the great black humor in these stories. Charles Dee Mitchell writes: "Although they know she has regenerated herself from a severed head kept in an aquarium, two doctors have this exchange: 'What an ungodly monster!' 'You're telling me. And yet... an extremely alluring one.'" He's right, it's amazing!

On the whole, I'd say this is a pretty good volume, and if you like Ito, you will get what you're looking for. For those who haven't read this author before, I'd recommend trying to find a volume that features a range of his short stories with lots of different characters and scenarios, like Falling, Thing That Drifted Ashore, Slug Girl, The Enigma of Amigara Fault. A lot of these you can read online for free thanks to scanlations, but of course, if you enjoy them, do the author a favor and buy yourself (or a friend) one of the official published volumes.

This is absolute horror in its pure form.

It is cruel, in some places even disgusting, with a gloomy painting that only emphasizes the darkness of the whole plot.

In short, this is definitely not for the faint of heart.

And it is definitely not for everyone.

When you read this, you will be plunged into a world of terror and despair.

The descriptions are so vivid that you can almost feel the fear creeping up your spine.

The story unfolds in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat, never knowing what will happen next.

It is a masterful work of horror that will leave you with a sense of unease long after you have finished reading.

However, it is important to note that this type of horror is not for everyone.

Some people may find it too disturbing or too intense.

It is a matter of personal taste and tolerance for such themes.

But for those who enjoy a good scare, this is a must-read.

This is the second story I have read by Junji Ito after Uzumaki. And although it is not as terrifying as the first one, it is equally incredible.

I thought it would be a typical and predictable ghost story, but the plot becomes complex and confusing. I think what happens with Tomie, our protagonist, is very original. Besides being very immature and evil, she is so selfish that she doesn't care about losing her life all the time.

I still haven't fully gotten used to the "exaggeration and extravagance" of the author. But undoubtedly, that touch is what makes him so original and at the same time disturbing. The way Junji Ito creates these strange and often grotesque worlds is truly captivating. It makes you question what is real and what is just a figment of his imagination. His art style, with its detailed and often disturbing illustrations, adds another layer of depth to the stories. Overall, I am really enjoying exploring the works of Junji Ito and look forward to reading more of his unique and unforgettable tales.

Junji Ito's imagination is truly awe-inspiring. He can take an idea that would stump most writers and expand it into 800 pages. How many cartoonists could create a horror masterpiece about SPIRALS? It seems almost impossible. And what about dead fishes on robotic spider-legs? It's completely crazy! But Ito approaches these wild concepts with remarkable tenacity and seriousness.

The 'Tomie' stories were among his earliest works. They center around a beautiful schoolgirl who is murdered by an infatuated student, only to miraculously return to class a few days later as if nothing had happened. Time and again, she causes men and boys to fall in love with her, manipulating her obsessive suitors in a cold and unnatural way. Inevitably, she is hacked to pieces by one of them.
Over the course of the 850-or-so pages of 'Museum of Terror: Volumes 1 & 2', Ito showcases his extraordinary gifts as an artist and storyteller. The story, as weird as it gets, remains highly entertaining. Watching Ito's artistic evolution is also a pleasure. But what does it all mean? Perhaps nothing. Ito wisely refrains from sermonizing, allowing his horror to remain terrifying纯粹 for the sake of entertainment.
In the Western comics tradition, there is a severe lack of quality horror titles. This makes the masters of manga horror, such as Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, Suehiro Maruo, and Kentaro Miura, all the more important for fans of the genre. The 'Tomie' stories, initially published in a Shojo anthology, have found widespread popularity across all demographics. As the stories progress and the art improves, it becomes clear that Tomie is more like a virus in human form, using and discarding her puppet-boys as she spreads the Tomie-Virus. Dark Horse has published two more volumes in the 'Museum of Terror' series, with the second one collecting the remaining Tomie stories.

Overall, Junji Ito's work is a unique and fascinating addition to the world of horror. His ability to create truly disturbing and engaging stories is a testament to his talent as a writer and artist. Whether you're a fan of horror or simply looking for something different, his work is definitely worth checking out.

I don't have a very in-depth knowledge of Japanese culture, and perhaps I'm missing some context. So from my "Western" point of view, here's what I have to say: Already in the second story, a clear feeling crystallized in me that the main horror and evil in this story is by no means Tomie. She is just a catalyst for what was already lurking in all those men. Roughly speaking, if we substitute any other woman instead of Tomie, who is not afraid to state that she despises men and loves herself above all else, the result will be the same. Perhaps it is difficult for the patriarchal Japanese society to accept that a woman can be different, not bound to a man, and the fear of losing control over her takes on various hideous manifestations. All this I'm trying to say is that it is the inner demons of men that are the main evil in this story, not Tomie. But again, this is a very subjective view.

I lowered the rating a bit because I felt the characters lacked depth, but since this is generally my first manga, I'm willing to accept that maybe this is how it's supposed to be. After all, the story itself is lush, and I will definitely read the second volume.