Dissolving Classroom (2017)

Dissolving Classroom (2017)

Author + Illustrator: Junji Ito  |  Page Count: 202

"She's a monster!! Her favourite thing to do is frighten people on street corners!"

Five of the seven shorts herein are connected, known collectively as Ito's youkai (dissolving) series, together telling the tale of male high school student Yuma Azeri and his younger sister, Chizumi.

The book has a few of the uncomfortably horrifying moments that the author is known for, but mostly it takes a more gross-out approach, something that's altogether less interesting to me. Frankly, if I'd had the opportunity to read it before buying it then I'd have saved my money for something better.

It's not terrible, but nor is it anything special. The pacing is decent, and the artwork is of the usual high standard, but it wasn't until the fourth story that I felt any kind of chill take a hold of me. Prior to that I was repulsed by the ickiness, but I can get a similar kind of feeling just watching someone eat mac and cheese and it won't cost me a penny (unless I'm forced to pay for the offending foodstuff).

The two non-youkai stories that close out the book are both standalone works, much shorter than what came before but more representative of the kind of outside the box weirdness that I personally want from an Ito tale; the final one in particular, Children of the Earth, touched a raw wiggins nerve inside me that prior to reading I didn't even know I had.

-The wraparound cover in full (Japanese version)-