No Longer Human (Junji Ito)

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Written and illustrated by Junji Ito, the series began serialization in Big Comic Original on May 2, 2017. [2] The series completed its serialization on April 20, 2018. [3] Shogakukan collected the series' individual chapters into three tankōbon volumes. [4]

In a way, the focus lies on horror and visually disturbing images and I like it but sometimes it get exaggerated. There are tons of really graphic scenes that I found overwhelming. I hated Yozo Oba in here more than the novel. In the novel, I felt deep sympathy to him even if i hate him, i still felt so much for him because of his traumas and the way he was treated. In here, he seema terrible from womanizing and his manipulation but that was him, he was not a good man, he was deceptive. It was troubling and sad to see him. But Yozo was the embodiment of human's fear, desires, horrible, weakness and cowardice, that you may relate or hate for how similar he is to us. he is almost a reflection of ourselves we dont want to admit deep down in our heart. Yozo Oba suffers from intense anxiety and feels disconnected from the happiness that others seem to experience. He leads a dissolute life and resorts to wearing a mask to hide his spiraling descent towards death. Early on, a young man and his lover commit suicide by drowning themselves in a river, something Dasai himself did five days after completing this book. Ito is a man driven to creating horror comics, and he here is attracted to every day psychic horror. The books are in translation, too. How are we expected to find the heart and soul of Dasai, or Ito, or ourselves in this hall of mirrors about a man who people find to be a clown, a man wearing a mask of humor as he heads daily into greater and greater darkness? Who is Oba/Sadai/Ito, really?! Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

But Ito, apparently, did not want to really take on the challenge of the adaptation as it was. He changes the plot heavily in places, adding death, gore, more sex and ghosts (or at least visions of the dead). And more importantly, he makes the story even more misogynistic, adding plotlines for various women characters that are even more awful and prone to offensive stupid tropes than the original. This is a hard read. I have an immense affection for the original novel by Dazai particularly for how it made me feel. Junji Ito really shined here with his interpretations of Yozo Oba's demons and fears. They were potrayed in these vivid, cruel horrible, disgusting and disturbing images that came to life so extravagantly. I felt dread creeping all over my body, I was very much uncomfortable with all of the horrific and traumatising visuals. it showed the rawness of human. Rather than the grim, bleak and depressing prose by Dazai, Ito made the story seems more horror than sad. The latter part was different from the novel with the appearance of Dazai as a character, I think its unique. It gave me sadness as i read this part, i was emotional because of it.

Osamu Dazai’s immortal—and supposedly autobiographical—work of Japanese literature, is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Ito. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo’s mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Ito, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche. • While I appreciated Ito's ability to make this spooky without any monsters, I found that this reflected the source material a little too closely, so to speak - my god, the misogyny! Why take responsibility when you can blame a woman, right? One can almost immediately see that Dazai has the advantage in being able to describe the look on the boy's face without having to show it. He can make us understand the effect of the image. In adapting this to a visual medium, the artist must instead make us see this effect. And when Ito shows us this smile (as part of the story, not as a photo) he resorts to: a b Douresseaux, Leroy (December 18, 2019). "No Longer Human manga review". Comic Book Bin. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. I can't help but feel for Yozo. As a kid, he had an uneasy, pessimistic streak that he tried to hide under a buffoonish exterior, a mask that he soon regarded as tiresome but which he felt he can never take off. The abuse he suffered from lecherous servants must have cemented in his mind how untrustworthy and scary people generally are.

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And we get a child posed in a monkey-ish way, but instead of a nauseating feeling one just see a stupid looking pose. After a conversation with a GR friend, I decided to read this Junji Ito's adaptation, though I really am not a fan of Dazai Osamu's writing! Still I can't help but root for him. If you've undergone a spiritual malaise just like our lead, you'd understand the prodigious effort it takes to rise from all that weakness and pain. There's one point where it seems like he really had a chance. Question is - will his Beatrice be able to save her Dante?

This manga was a great adaptation of the novel. It's clear that Ito took some risks here. Where Dazai was more elusive, Ito chose to be more explicit. I personally am not a fan of sexual depictions, but thankfully this wasn't the focus of the story - and keeping in mind his usual demographic and the one targeted with this adaptation I do get the choices he made. I was really pleased to see how this manga was able to keep the essence of the story and I enjoyed most of the creative liberties Ito took. No Longer Human is an incredibly story and I don't think it is suitable for everyone. If one does however, I would highly recommend reading the novel beforehand as well as reading up on Dazai (there are a lot of autobiographical elements in the novel). I did so and it definitely payed off - I don't think I would have appreciated this manga as much as I do now. I'm working on a video discussing No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai and this adaptation for my Youtube channel, so stay tuned for that :). The fourth misfortune [of his "ten misfortunes"] was woman. Human women. More than difficult, these incomprehensible, insidious beings. The ones who always drew near and looked after me for some reason. [...] Women have no sense of moderation. They always asked for more of me. Their demands are insatiable. They sap me of all my energy. Ressler, Karen (February 11, 2019). "Viz Licenses Junji Ito's No Longer Human Manga". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. In February 2019, Viz Media announced they licensed the series for English publication. [5] They released the entire series in one hardcover book. [6] Volumes [ edit ] No. April (April 6, 2018). "Junji Ito's No Longer Human Manga Ends on April 20". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on July 25, 2023 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.This is a massive manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. I mean it is chunky. And I feel so guilty that this adaptation is… getting 5 stars, while the original got 4. Seriously, Junji Ito has this way of capturing sheer terror in one or two drawings, in his characters’ eyes – they remain with you when you turn the lights off right before you take the five or six steps to your bed. I usually write much more about the formal qualities of comics, but I found myself unable to avoid the problematic content of this manga. And then, I was unable to avoid thinking about how much of the content was Dazai's and how much was Ito's. It feels like Ito, by bringing in his horror tropes, amplified what was already problematic, taking the subtler elements and making them all too obvious. TW: sexual abuse, rape, graphic mature scenes and violence, suicide, depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, parental neglect, domestic cheating

a b 人間失格 ３ (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. Badman, Derik (January 29, 2020). "No Longer Human". The Comics Journal. Fantagraphics. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. Dazai's stand-in, Yozo Oba, seems to suffer from trauma and impostor syndrome due to childhood molestation and daddy issues. To compensate he becomes a class clown and womanizer in attempts fit in with other people -- from whom he feels separate and whom he hates and fears. He carves his way through the lives of others leaving suicide and murder in his wake, periodically attempting suicide himself. He alternates between living off a family allowance, being a kept man, and a life of poverty as a struggling manga artist and aspiring painter. He dabbles in Marxism and relationships but tends to betray everyone, really only committing to alcohol and drugs. Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga. In the novel, Takeichi basically serves as a soothsayer. He prophecizes to Oba that women will fall for him and that he will become a great painter. These two statements haunt him. Takeichi disappears from the story when Oba goes to college.This is not a pleasant story. It is about heartbreak and depression, sexual abuse and addiction, and a whole range of topics that are more raw and human and, sometimes, more grotesque than the terrors conjured by horror fiction.