I will say this in every single review I do of Junji Ito's stuff. The man draws whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants. When you have the urge to just draw a bunch of people melting horrifically into gigantic liquid piles of fleshy ooze, then you may as well as just follow that urge. That's how Junji Ito's Dissolving Classroom came into existence.

Junji Ito felt like drawing people melting, and there are apparently people out in the world ~~(me)~~ who apparently sometimes just feel like reading something where just a bunch of people melt.

Who fucking knew that would be the effect that __ALL MIGHTY LORD SATAN'S _ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES___ would have on the human body?

...Wait, what?

#My Dissolving Brain#

"Our face has melted. But we do not need a face. The ooze people can exist in peace without burden of outward appearance." ~Gospel of the Ooze, 6:19.

Can I just say I don't know why that we in the US got a physical copy of this but NOT of literally any of Junji Ito's other short manga collections. You know, all the ones with the real good stuff (though, the new Junji Ito manga we're getting in a few month seems to be a best of selection of those stories). Not to say I didn't enjoy this because I did and I would probably buy it again because so far all of Junji Ito's manga's physical forms have been neat. Like with this, on the cover, the sibling characters actually come out of the cover a little bit which is a neat little thing. Then you have Fragments of Horror which is like this Junji Ito version of that ONE PAINTING, but like if the light hits the cover or the back just right, you can see like fucking typical Junji Ito nightmare creatures beneath of both sides.

Not to mention, all three of Junji Ito's "long series" are matching hardbacks, and everyone knows that hardbacks are superior to paperbacks. THEY'RE SUPERIOR.

Manga/book nerd-ery aside, this is one of the exceptions of Junji Ito's collections. All chapters are connected and/or there are at least one or two key central characters that are throughout all chapters. You have this weird pair of siblings that move from house to house after shit goes down in each chapter. The older brother is tall and wears glasses, and the younger sister asks a girl to let her suck her brains like within the first ten pages.

The sister just shows up and stares at the girl for three pages, and then bam, on the fourth page we're right into it. The brother has done nothing but apologize, whereas the sister just chases a girl out into the street to get hit by a truck and oh, the brother shows up and apologizes because the girl with a creepy face is his sister and he blames his sister taking on an evil streak on him killing small animals because of his parents arguing, and SHE IS POSSESSED BY ONE OF THE SNAKES HE KILLED WITH A ROCK.

Then the girl is like okay, I'm gonna go befriend your sister because apart from the creepy face, she's probably not all bad. But then the sister is like, no you got it all wrong, my brother is actually a Satanist and he keeps our parents' partially melted heads in a closet, and his apologies are in fact to Satan or a demon and they cause other people to melt basically.

"EXCUSE ME MISS, DO YOU HAVE A TISSUE? OUR BRAINS SEEM TO BE COMING OUT OF OUR NOSES, MOUTHS, EYES, AND OUR EARS. IT'S A SERIOUS FUCKING PROBLEM."

Then the girl becomes self-aware of the fact that she is in a Junji Ito manga and that both siblings are fucking completely out of their fucking gourds, so she does the smart thing and just fucking runs away but it turns out everyone in the entire school has already melted. But the guy is still chasing her because he really wants her to accept his heartfelt apologies that for some reason seems to melt everyone's brains. She manages to escape total brain melting but apparently her brain still melted enough to where while she's still alive, she's basically brain dead. And her parents who met the brother before and were thus apologized to are also dead.

I own the actual physical copy of this and the dialogue is translated differently. In the official translation, it's actually more insane? "My brother's apologies make people's brains melt. It must be the evil electromagnetic waves passing between him and the Devil!"

Electromagnetic... waves? What???

So the first chapter or story with these fucked up siblings ends with an entire school of people's brains melted, and our first protagonist is left braindead and alone. The siblings move away to melt innocent people's brains for another day. Actually, they move to another location literally after almost every chapter.

#Conclusion#

Not my favorite Junji Ito manga, but it was fun overall. A 6 out of 10! There is a little bit more that happens than literally just people melting, but I'll leave that to your imaginations. I just wanted to review this one because out of all of the ones I've read, this is the one where Junji Ito was the loosest as far as plot went. And also Satan's electromagnetic waves aside, it IS pretty weird to just do a manga where people melting is the entire thing.

"Oh, the creepy sister is evil and possessed by a snake the brother killed. Oh, the brother is actually a Satanist and for some reason if he apologizes to people, their brains melt. Oh, the brother and sister are now fighting, maybe they'll end up turning on each other--oh no, that didn't happen. Oh, the brother is still denying everything his sister is saying and is instead blaming it all on the sister... oh, it's over. WHOOPS, THE ENDING LITERALLY JUST SAID OKAY YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SIBLINGS IN THE END SO NO RESOLUTION. Granted, given all the chaos at the end, I'd probably say they're dead."

Weird, nasty, disgusting, and ugly. My type of Junji Ito manga. To conclude this review, here's a parting sneak peek at one of the other chapters of this. Sorry!

Don't worry, your brain will be fine. Because I'm not actually sorry. Also, I don't worship the Devil so I don't have access to his brain melting electromagnetic waves.