[Name Redacted] > Recent Status Updates

Yep. Vintage Ito now. The "Hanging Blimp" story ESPECIALLY has "The Enigma of Amigara Fault" shades... So whereas the first too were mostly just bleak and tragic, these second two are haunting and nauseating.

Now THAT is some classic Ito body-horror! The narrative feels more like some classic "weird fiction" mixed with Twilight Zone, but you can see Ito flexing his most disturbing muscles...

Hmmm. That was an interesting introductory joint -- I really wasn't expecting a horror story without any of Ito's trademark body-horror. It felt like a Twilight Zone episode by way of the One Ring...

Geez, again I'm left marveling at how much deeper & richer the obnoxious anime was than this manga series. Nephrite had a freaking character arc, romance, face-turn, etc. in the cartoon...while here he's basically just another swiftly-dispatched mook. I'm also left marveling at how much of that cartoon I remember despite only watching it as a kid intermittently on sick days when I was...11? 12?

The best parts are the author's commentaries. Last volume he talked about how the editors felt one female character was too unpleasant, so they made him increase her bust size...but given that he'd originally intended her to be flat-chested, he didn't have to increase much. Here he says a new char is too visually similar to the protag, so they'll probably demand he make one of them either a delinquent or gay.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think the kids' anime did a better job of building characters & relationships! The manga feels extremely dreamlike, in part because of how empty most of each page works out to be and there's no real "solidity" to anything. I had clear ideas of the characters & their personalities in the cartoon, but here? They seem like pencil sketches at best.