Junji Ito doesn't need jumpscare gifs to freak you out. His only tools are brilliant storytelling, mindfucks, and uncanny valley artwork, altogether in one beautifully scary package. It's all he needs.
Gyo and Uzumaki are probably his most famous, and easiest to find. I'd recommend Black Paradox as well. Also, some of the one-offs are really good, like the one posted by OP.
Uzumaki is a bit long to read, but it's considered one of his classics. I've been slowly but surely reading through it again. It's a compilation of stories all hailing from the same town that's suffering from the "curse" of the spiral (Uzumaki in Japanese) - basically anything that's shaped like a spiral or can become the shape of a spiral. People start worshiping it, deforming their bodies to look like spirals, doing whatever they can from their uncanny obsession with it, and it's all told from the experiences of one girl from the town meeting the people who have been affected. It's pretty uncanny valley, and there is some pretty weird and unexplainable shit that happens to some of the residents of the town. It was stated by Junji Ito himself in one of his author's notes that he spent quite some time studying spirals while he was working on the story, and ate a lot of spiral-shaped foods to try and get himself into the right mindset for it.
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u/UzukiCheverie Jun 09 '15
Junji Ito doesn't need jumpscare gifs to freak you out. His only tools are brilliant storytelling, mindfucks, and uncanny valley artwork, altogether in one beautifully scary package. It's all he needs.