Junji Ito - Mimi's Ghost Stories, part 1

[kamino_neko]

Hallowe'en's just around the corner, so it's time for some horror, innit?

So, to this end, I'll be posting a few stories from a short Junji Ito anthology called Mimi no Kaidan, or Mimi's Ghost Stories. Mimi's Ghost Stories is an interesting collection, based on the book Shin Mimi Bukuro by Kihara Hirokatsu and Nakayama Ichiro, a collection of supposedly true stories of the supernatural collected from all around Japan. The title references a similar earlier work, simply titled Mimi Bukuro (literally 'Bag of Ears'). They gave Ito permission to change things up, to make the stories work better for the manga. To this end, he altered the pacing of certain stories, gave resolutions to stories originally simply left hanging...and introduced an incredibly unlucky protagonist by the name of Mimi, a somewhat excitable young woman, who ended up getting tangled up in all of these originally unrelated stories. Introduction out of the way, let's start with the first chapter...

We open with Mimi talking about her apartment, which is in an old, not terribly well maintained building, with paper thin walls. This latter point bugs her a lot, as her upstairs neighbour is a noisy SOB...


See what I mean about her being excitable? On the other hand, dude's kind of rude...

(I love the second panel on the next page...Mimi's phrasing is so freakin' weird. I don't know if that's a translation artefact, or actually the way she was written in the original, however.)


Spooky chick. And rude.


Ito doesn't draw the most varied faces out there, but he sure does expressions well. Mimi in that second-to-last panel is perfect.

So, some time passes, and one day she comes home, to find the upstairs neighbour cowering against the side of the building...

Nervous little SOB, inne? I mean, sure, the chick's spooky, and OMG tall, but still, dude...

In any case, the last straw for him comes that night, and he splits the next day. Mimi asks to be allowed to move into the apartment he vacated, hoping it'll be quieter - and is allowed.

So, she's moving in, and decides to hurry out finish cleaning up her old apartment while her boyfriend and another friend finish up in the new apartment...and collides with one of the women in black, knocking her groceries out of her hands...



DUN DUN DUN!

What next? Well, I'm at page limits, so you'll have to read to find out. Too bad...you don't get to meet Naoto, Mimi's boyfriend, just yet.

But, I shan't leave you with nothing else, no no!

See, Mimi's Ghost Stories isn't the only adaptation of Shin Mimi Bukuro. Nono! There's also a TV series (made of short 5 minute episodes) called Kaidan Shin Mimi Bukuro, which adapt a large number of the stories. I'm not sure how faithful to the original book the TV series is, but if it takes liberties, they're different liberties than Ito takes. So...here's the TV version of this story...

And there's even a sequel!

Selected episodes of the TV series are available in English as Tales of Terror From Tokyo - a terrible name since a lot of them don't even try to try to be scary.

10 pages out of 30.

Comments

[whitesycamore]

Oh I so need to get this. I love Junji Ito - something about his panel layouts just create this really movie-like atmosphere, a prime example being when the tall lady first appears.

"Don't mess with me, sir, okay?!" I also need to make this my default phrase in the event of a confrontation.

[kamino_neko]

It is a terribly amusing phrase, is it not?

[fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com]

Spectacular line, really moving imagery. I wish more manga-nese flavor could drip into Marvel Comics.

About the only place it is allowed in the Marvel Universe is in the sketch cards:

http://sketchcardsaloon.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/four-on-the-floor/

Thanks for showing me the connection!

[mullon]

And that's how the Joker went insane.

[chaobell]

Eee, Tales of Terror. I have the box set! And yeah, even though a couple of them had some brickshitting moments, mostly they were just little five-minute bites of WTF.

The one about the hairpins was unintentionally hilarious.

[kamino_neko]

For unintentional hilarity, it's hard to beat The Lover.... But, yeah, Hairpins is something. And then there's The Red Coating (I'm not sure if that one made it to the Tales of Terror...I don't have them all)...

For intentional hilarity, The Backwards Suit is by far my favourite.

[chaobell]

Oh shits, I loved The Backwards Suit. But my favorite intentionally funny one was the one about the grandmother promising her grandson she'll come back so he can see a ghost. I lol'd hard at that one.

[ETA: This one! And here's the one that made me shit the most bricks while I'm at it.]

[leikomgwtfbbq]

So is this manga being released in the US? I want it so badly. XD Junji Ito is one of my favorite mangaka of all time. (Uzumaki is easily one of my top-five favorite manga. And Amigara Fault still creeps me out like crazy, no matter how many times I've read it.)

[kamino_neko]

'Fraid not. At least, not so far as I know.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

*SADFACE*

We need more proper horror manga released here in the States. >:(

[silverzeo]

This as scary as the story of that family that were sugar aliens....

[meatwhichdreams]

Gah, I love Jungo! He's one of the only horror storytellers that actually freaks me out. Brrr.

Also, I love how much of a little brat Mimi is. :D

[whitesycamore]

Brat? She's a bad-ass assertive woman! And apparently Kirie's doppelgänger to boot.

[meatwhichdreams]

Hey, every bad-ass assertive woman has a little brat child in them somewhere. :D I mean, uh, I don't speak from personal experience as a perpetual brat. IT'S A THIN AND ENJOYABLE LINE OK

[kamino_neko]

To be fair, she's also the doppelgänger of, like, half the women Ito draws. Closer to 2/3 if you limit that list to the pretty ones. >_>

[darkblade]

Until the sleeve was pulled back I couldn't stop myself from thinking the masked neighbour was Lady Gaga.

[ar_feiniel]

Junji Ito does creepy well.