Junji Ito's Gyo

About two or three years back I read a manga titled Uzumaki and I loved it. Uzumaki is a surreal horror tale about a small Japanese town that becomes overrun with spirals (one of the most memorable moments in the book occurs when a schoolboy slowly transforms into a snail). Uzumaki was my gateway into the world of horror manga and, in turn, the works of the horror manga maestro Junji Ito. Eager to reenter the surreal, grotesque and wildly imaginative world of Uzumaki, I've picked up and read a number of manga horror titles since, including Ito's Gyo. And while nothing has matched the nerdy high of discovering Uzumaki, Gyo is a solid title and is worth a read for any English speaking Ito admirers clamoring to read more of his work. I recently revisited Gyo during the downtime in my holiday break and I thought I'd use my blog to show this relatively obscure title a bit of love.

Gyo tells the tale of Tadashi, a rather ordinary guy who discovers a monster fish whilst vacationing with his girlfriend Kaori. This fish is attached to a bizarre metal contraption with "legs" that allow it to walk on land and, unfortunately for our heroes, is only one of many sea creatures of its ilk. Soon all sorts of sea creatures, including a shark and a whale, are rising out of the water on mechanical legs and coming ashore to wreck havoc on human civilization. The image of the whale is visually stunning - its body is so massive that its legs bend and collapse under its weight. The origin of the creatures is unknown. What is known is that they carry with them disease and an overpowering stench, a smell which one character compares to that of a human corpse on a hot summer day. After awhile humans catch the disease and become infected. Eventually the bodies of the infected humans attach themselves to the same contraptions that allowed the fish to walk on land (see the picture for a particularly awesome and grotesque example) and humanity is pretty much screwed.

Gyo, like Uzumaki, excels at darkly imaginative and witty imagery. The bloated and diseased human corpses riding on mechanical legs form a great visual juxtaposition between organic fragility and cold mechanized efficiency, while also spectacularly capitalizing on humanity's innate fear of disease and decay. Fish walking on land is another great horror image because it violates the divide between land and sea in ways that are both grotesque and fascinating. In other words, Gyo thrives on contradictions and juxtapositions, like fish that live on land and dead bodies that move. Along this same line one of my favorite moments in the manga occurs when the hero comes upon a circus in which diseased animals and people perform for a non-existent audience. A circus held during the end of the world...what an awesome concept!

But lest I sound like a drooling fangirl, let me point out that I still think this work is inferior to Ito's Uzumaki. The narrative here is less developed and less strong than that in Uzumaki and the characters are pretty underdeveloped. In particular, Tadashi's mad scientist uncle came across as silly and B-movie-ish (and not in a good way).

That said, Gyo's still a solid work, and I highly recommend it to fans of Uzumaki or the horror genre in general. The complete story stretches two volumes and is available in English courtesy of Viz Media. Volume two contains two bonus short stories by Ito, which are unrelated to the plot of Gyo, but nonetheless make for decent capstones to this wonderfully weird work.