Venus in the Blind Spot by Junji Ito | Book Review

This striking collection presents the most remarkable short works of Junji Ito’s career, featuring an adaptation of Rampo Edogawa’s classic horror story “Human Chair” and fan favorite “The Enigma of Amigara Fault.” With a deluxe presentation—including special color pages, and showcasing illustrations from his acclaimed long-form manga No Longer Human—each chilling tale invites readers to revel in a world of terror.
-- VIZ Media

Venus in the Blind Spot is my first ever Manga novel.  It isn’t something that I would have necessarily picked up but I received it in an Abominable Book Box.  It certainly won’t be the last.  The artwork and the storytelling is both horrific and awe inspiring.  There is tales of misadventure, Japanese lore, and the undercurrents of love and suffering constantly being the backbone of the collection.  Darkness has seeped into these stories and it’s a set of stories that aren’t likely to be forgotten in a hurry.

The characterization was spot on.  On first meet you think these people have the perfect lives, perfect families and perfect lifestyles but on the flip side the reader peels back the multiple layers of perfectville and are left with a stripped back corpse; the rotten remains spilling out and infecting all those that come across them.  Each story has a catalyst, an implosion point that sets the tone for the remainder of the story.  Violence has the capability of ruining the victims contained within.  Mental illness for many of these haunting stories become and inevitable conclusion.

Some of my favourite stories within Venus in the Blind Spot were, An unearthly love.   A story that features a new husband that seems disconnected with reality.  A new marriage is supposed to be filled with joy and peace, but the husband keeps leaving the marital bed in the middle of the night.  A worried wife follows her husband and hears him uttering words to another woman, she vows to get to the bottom of it but is she really prepared for she finds in a locked box?

Another story I absolutely loved was The Human Chair.  My god this was so many levels of fucked up and perverted.  The implication is a hellish nightmare.  Its an experience that no-one would believe or indeed, would want to.  A writer is having a serious case of writer’s block and her husband purchases her a luxurious writing chair.  It does indeed help with the blockage, but it quickly becomes apparent that someone is living within the chair.  This story did chill my blood.  There is just something so sinister about someone being that close, they can hear you breathe, they can hear you move.  Its just so damn perverted. 

Billions Alone creeped the hell out of me.  A story about seriously screwed up murders being committed if you gather in groups.  Seriously relevant with the world in which we are currently living in.  victims are chosen who do not partake in a lifestyle that can only be described in self isolating.  Raw and poignant. 

This collection of stories felt like opening up pandora’s box.  Its an art form.  Ridiculously suspenseful.  Its opened me up to reading more Manga.   

ABOUT JUNJI ITO

Junji Ito  is a Japanese horror mangaka. Some of his most notable works include Tomie, a series chronicling an immortal girl who drives her stricken admirers to madness, Uzumaki, a three-volume series about a town obsessed with spirals, and Gyo, a two-volume story where fish are controlled by a strain of sentient bacteria called “the death stench.” His other works are Itou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection, a collection of different short stories including a series of stories named Souichi’s Journal of Delights, and Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu, a self-parody about him and his wife living in a house with two cats.

Website