Frankenstein is one of my favourite books, and the star attraction of this manga anthology is an adaptation of Mary Shelly’s original novel by the iconic horror manga artist, Junj Ito. The story is adapted pretty darn faithfully and I think that his art offers a fantastic visual interpretation of events. Something that I was particularly impressed with was the design of Frankenstein’s creature himself who looked truly monstrous in a way that is very distinct for any other designs I’ve seen for him.
Although I acknowledge him as a very flawed person, I am very much an apologist for Frankenstein’s creation. Junji Ito, however, gave me the most hateful version of the character I’ve seen so far. It’s interesting, because he doesn’t deviate far from the source material, and yet he still manages to portray the events in such a way that makes the bitterness and hatred his primary driving motivation. I know these emotions are driving him in the novel too, but Ito manages to make him seem much more repugnant than usual, which made it feel quite different to the story as I am familiar with it.
Frankenstein isn’t the only thing in this anthology though – even if it is what has been used to sell copies. It also contains a number of stories about a school boy named Oshikiri. Oshikiri lives alone in a creepy old house while his parents have business that keeps them away from him. These stories were really weird, and typically dealt with evil spirits or dark paralell universe where a murderous version of Oshikiri lived.
While I typically enjoyed the Frankenstein adaptation more, I have to admit that the Oshikiri stories were probably creepier overall. One of them (Neck Spectre) has him killing one of his classmates and then finding the body distorted in terrifying ways, while another, The Bog of Living Spirits, had teenagers drowning in a local bog and dealt with really weird and obsessive behaviour. I think the stories were more unsettling in general because they had the energy of people not really taking teenagers seriously, and then kids losing their lives because of it. It was also somewhat hard to tell how much was real and how much was in Oshikiri’s mind. Something supernatural definitely seemed to be happening, but I thought he was quite an unsettling character.
Towards the end of the anthology, there were some shorter standalone pieces. One about a girl turning into a doll was really kind of unpleasant to read and pretty sad. Meanwhile, there were also some bits about the author’s dog which added some light comic relief to the overall very dark and twisted collection of tales in this anthology… but even that ended on a very sombre note.
If you like the story of Frankenstein, but find it hard to read classic literature, then this manga may be the perfect way for you to experience the story in written form. The additional standalone stories feel like supplementary extras, but I don’t say that to suggest that they are lower quality – only that they are much shorter and don’t have as much time to leave an impact as Frankenstein. Oshikiri stuff is also interesting because it contains every one of the stories about that character, but it feels like a ‘best of’ collection, because you never really truly have the details of his life properly explained… but perhaps that’s just to add to the eerie feeling. If you’re a fan of manga and horror, I recommend checking this out.
Rating: 8.6/10
