About Junji Ito

Born: July 31, 1963

Debut: 1987

Junji Ito started a lot later than the other manga-ka I'm featuring. During the late 80s/early 90s he was actually a dental technician, and drawing manga was just a hobby. A lot of his inspiration for drawing comics came from Kazuo Umezz's works. Since his debut, several movies based on his more popular works have been made.

Tomie poster

Based on his Tomie series, about a beautiful girl that is always murdered by her lovers, and always regenerates from her remains.

Most of his works are based on ghost stories, horrifying body transformations, people suddenly becoming compelled to do very strange things, ancient secrets, strange creatures, and out-of-proportion punishments.

Before I read some of Junji Ito's by chance a few years ago, I had no interest in horror comics. I didn't even know about horror manga, even. I'm pretty sure this is true for many other fans.

I've noticed that Junji Ito is the most popular manga-ka overseas. He's not one of the grandfathers of horror manga like kino or Umezu, but if you ask any Western fan of Japanese pop culture about horror manga, Junji Ito will almost always be the first name to come up.

Just like the other artists featured, Junji Ito is very good at crafting humorous tales as well as horrific ones. One of my personal favorites is his Cat Diary. Cat Diary is drawn in his usual horror manga style, but the volume is just all stories about him and his wife living with cats. They are very funny stories.