Do you smell that?

That lovely scent wafting about in the air?


...


That's the smell of rotting garbage and dead fish.

SPOILER WARNING: I don't go too heavily into specifics, but I definitely do think Gyo's a lot better to experience the less you know about it.

#Introduction#

Oh, man. Gyo! This was the first Junji Ito manga I ever read. Rather, I watched the OVA adaptation of it first and um...

I'm not gonna go into it again too heavily since I reviewed it like four years ago, but it is almost by default the worst Junji Ito adaptation. Shit talk the Junji Ito Collection all you want, but at least that didn't make any of the short stories it adapted into an absolute farce. Really the absolute worst things you could say about the Collection is it just doesn't live up to Junji Ito's art and honestly some of the short stories really needed a bit more time than they were allotted. Gyo though... ugh.

Even the manga version I would probably say is one of the weakest Junji Ito series. As unlike Tomie and even Uzumaki, with Gyo you can't just take a bunch of the chapters and just be able to read them on their own and it actually still function. Because Gyo isn't just a bunch of connected short stories about a singular character or about a really fucking strange town. It actually is one long series.

Which almost makes it this interesting oddity among all of Junji Ito's works. Because you can pinpoint exact moments where Junji Ito was probably getting bored because he mostly does short stories and decided to throw a fucking curveball.

The circus part is so good that it's pretty much the only section of the OVA that's worth watching. And still, to this day I don't know why it's a part of the manga other than Junji Ito saying fuck it. When one of the human spiders like has a bunch of stuff come out of their exhaust ports onto the performers they're all like "oh no, we're gonna get fucking infected now!" and I'm just...

Why are you even doing this then??? It's hell on earth outside, let's go form a circus centered around these abominations even though they could infect us and make us one of them and also it's hell on earth outside WHO THE FUCK IS AROUND TO VISIT A CIRCUS

But the circus master is like yo check this shit out and then has his performers ignite the ~~fart gas~~ death stench with gasoline and it just turns into the spirits of the dead.

...I just realized I still haven't set up the manga's plot at all. I just immediately jumped straight to the circus like always. Which isn't fair to Junji Ito as the manga does start off relatively grounded and then the insanity is gradually increased unlike the OVA where they just slapped a bunch of shit from the manga around with absolutely no care.

Tadashi and Kaori just want to have a nice vacation. But Kaori has a super sensitive nose so she doesn't like unpleasant smells at all. After having an argument because Kaori wants Tadashi to brush his teeth every single time before he kisses her, she leaves the house in a huff and comes across a strange flying fish monster that possesses an overpowering rotten stench. Tadashi uses a dresser to smash it against a wall and believes it's dead, so he bags it up and puts it outside but...

The scene of Kaori being chased by a fish in a garbage bag is inherently comical and I remember laughing at it when I first read Gyo. But as a moment that has stuck in my head, it's persisted all these years. Because it does genuinely work as a horror moment. Kaori's weakness to bad smells has already been thoroughly established in these first two chapters, so her absolute terror at this fucking weird fish monster flying at her in a garbage bag makes perfect sense because it fucking reeks.

Even its mere presence in the house was already driving her up the goddamned wall, and now it's flying at her face.

Also, imagine being in the position to adapt this manga

and going yeah okay sure the manga itself provides the perfect introduction to the shark. Like you get the scene of a bunch of people on the beach and in the water and oh no, the lifeguard sees a shark fin! Everybody get out of the water! There's a shark!!! And everybody panics and gets the fuck out of the water because they've seen the classic 1975 horror movie Jaws and they know that the shark's weakness is land.

So there's that perfect moment where they're all like okay we're safe now that we're on the beach but wait a moment the shark's still coming OH FUCK IT HAS SPIDER LEGS

You're finally skimming through this manga because it's the day you're going to start working on the OVA adaptation and you just have not been able to bother looking at it until today. Because it's just absolute shit. Junji Ito is just some fucking hack who gets paid to draw spooky images wow big deal yeah sure this could be a cool thing to see animated but fuck that

JUST HAVE THE SHARK SHOW UP RANDOMLY IN THE ~~HOUSE~~ CABIN. NO THAT'S FINE. WHO NEEDS BUILD UP OR ANYTHING. NOBODY'S EVEN GOING TO BE WATCHING THIS IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER

...Anyways, the plot of the manga is rotten fish monsters and ~~fart gas~~ the death stench just fucking shit up everywhere and Tadashi's basically just along with it for the ride. Also even though she's more annoying in the manga, I prefer manga Kaori's character a billion times more.

Because you know she's actually a character.

She's being pretty unfair towards Tadashi and she keeps getting completely debilitated by the rotten stench of all of the fish monsters crawling around in Gyo. Which is better than "oh well you're the protagonist now I guess and your like one character trait doesn't even matter because then how could you bare to walk around and look at the fish apocalypse if the smell is just constantly blasting you in the face."

...

Oh! Before we conclude here, there actually are some bonus stories included in Gyo. As is the tradition, I'm going to be reviewing those as well!

#Bonus Stories: The Sad Tale of the Principal Post#

This one is pretty short (it's like four pages long) but quick to the Junji Ito horror punchline. A family has just had their brand new house finished and are celebrating. However, they hear the father yelling for help down from below the house.

And there he is, crushed by the primary house propping the entire house up. He refuses help because he thinks if they move him from underneath the post, it will actually cause the entire house's support to collapse. So they leave him there and he dies that day.

"I'll die to support this house!"

Because he's the father and the head of the household... yeah okay. That's so stupidly blunt I actually like it. Also while the image of the father's skeleton still crushed under the post is pretty fun, the creepiness moreso stems from the fact that they were just like "oh okay well that sucks but we're gonna keep living here. Don't move the skeleton, it might still be supporting the post."

#Bonus Stories: The Enigma of Amagara Fault#

Ah. That one.

I guess I can't evade it any longer, huh...

I actually very briefly touched upon this story in my first ever Junji Ito review. Which I honestly thought was the Gyo OVA but it was one of his specific oneshots, Human Chair. Not to just copy and paste that entire part from that review into this one, but before I even knew Junji Ito's name, before I even delved into manga at all, I had seen this fucking image. I don't know where or how I saw it, but I did...

So after I read Gyo and got to the bonus stories, I had this beautiful epiphanic moment of "holy fucking christ THIS IS THE HOLES GUY. I FUCKING FOUND THE HOLES STORY."

I feel like whenever I say yeah Hanging Balloons is my favorite Junji Ito short story there's a tinge of doubt within myself. You just don't want to say it's Amagara Fault, don't you? Junji Ito has done a lot of short stories. There's quite a few misses, but this is one of the perfect critical hits.

It's so perfectly goddamned creepy from beginning to end and not only that but it's a really fucking simple idea which makes it all the more better. There's a mountain with human shaped holes in the side of it and already that's inherently a pretty fucking creepy visual because that obviously doesn't just happen in nature.

Then people find this weird ass mountain and one of them sees a hole shaped like them. Which causes everybody to start looking and finding their own holes. The reason this works at least for me is that I can absolutely believe that there would at least be one person foolish or curious enough to actually go "yeah, I'm gonna fucking go see what's in there."

And like goddamned lemmings, a bunch of other follow in suit. Because while the smart thing is to go "yeah fuck no" and immediately leave this mountain... I mean, curiosity is a powerful thing. You would never be able to just shirk it off. Your mind wouldn't allow you to. Remember that day when a bunch of people inserted themselves into weird holes in a mountain and just disappeared inside and we were the only ones who didn't? What was the fuck up with that, huh?

While we never get any concrete answers (as per usual for a Junji Ito story) as to what the fuck was inside of the mountain, thankfully Junji Ito isn't a hack. Meaning he absolutely does not shy away from showing us that sweet eldritch abomination body horror that's coming out on the other side of the mountain.

It's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's fantastic. 10 out of 10.

That's... that's for Amagara Fault.

Not Gyo. We're circling back to that now.

#Conclusion#

So yeah, that was Gyo. ~~Plus a bonus story and Amagara Fault.~~

The fishiest and stinkiest apocalypse manga you could probably ever read.

And it was the catalyst of me reading every single goddamned thing Junji Ito has ever made. I think I've made it quite clear that it's not exactly Junji Ito's best manga. As you may or may not have noticed but I wholeheartedly focused on the fish bits of the manga for this review. And... not the whole section of people turning into large inflating fartbags with the spider leg machines inserting large tubing into their mouths and asses. Because obviously when it stops being about fish and instead about the ~~fart gas~~ death stench that's where it really goes downhill.

When the circus shows up, that's its second wind ~~(IT WASN'T INTENDED AS A FLATULENCE JOKE)~~, but at that point the manga's almost pretty much over anyways.

I feel like if you're on the path of being a Junji Ito completionist you should probably read Gyo at least once. Definitely though if you've read pretty much anything else by him before you get to Gyo... I won't say you'll probably dislike it but... I would say Gyo's honestly the perfect Junji Ito starter series. If you read it after Uzumaki, you'll probably go well I would have rather just read Uzumaki again. Or if you read like Hellstar Remina beforehand, you'll go oh wow, he actually stayed pretty on the rails for Gyo!

I'd give Gyo the manga... a 6 out of 10. I should note that years ago when I wrote the review for the OVA I actually gave that a 6 out of 10. I did so mostly because as bad as it was, I still found it pretty funny I guess and despite everything, it was my introduction to Junji Ito.

However, both thanks to the passage of a few years and also having just reread the manga now for this review... my hatred for that absolute piece of garbage has grown substantially. Oh, by the way!

In the OVA review, I stated I didn't remember an octopus ever showing up in the manga version, and thought it was unique to the anime. Turns out that it wasn't and that it did in fact show up in the manga!

It actually took part in a serious horror scene (as goofy as an octopus showing up was) where it dragged Tadashi off somewhere else with its tentacles. Whereas in the OVA, where Tadashi is not the main character and instead it is Kaori...

...So on that note, for the very first time in one of my reviews I'm going to change the score of a past review.

Gyo the OVA is now a 2 out of 10. As I even said in that review, I don't recommend watching it. ~~Although, I could have sworn I did.~~ Just read the manga instead. Not only is it genuinely better but it also is still entertainingly dumb. Whereas the OVA is just a different and more annoying type of dumb. Like it's not even the genuine type of bad anymore. It's bad on purpose. The worst type of bad.

"TGG, it's too late. I watched Gyo four years ago and it's your fault. While you actively recommended not watching the OVA, you still gave it a much higher score than it deserved. So I watched it, and it was fucking garbage."

Well... that sucks. Sorry!

That doesn't come off as very genuine but seriously if anybody actually watched Gyo because of my review, I seriously apologize.