It was increasingly effective as they became twisted into something much more haunted and menacing. The crossroads fortunes, a strange folkway of Nazumi where you ask the first stranger who passes you at a crossroads for advice, were a great focal point for the story because they were so evocative of youthful whimsy and wishful thinking. He took an uncertain premise and molded it into a compelling and unique ghost story. This story was a real gem among the other Ito stories I’ve read most recently, in this and other books. Where at first his connection to it all seemed too convenient from a storytelling angle, it became a great motivation for just how dogged Ryusuke becomes in trying to resolve the bizarre events unfolding. By the end of the first chapter we learn of Ryusuke’s uncanny connection to the suicides taking place and, more importantly, much of the predictability dissolved away.
Fortunately, despite my misgivings, this is a tale that Ito allowed to grow into something a little more. At first, I did not realize just how long the story would be, the premise was a little flimsy, and the details laid out seemed to be leading down a predictable path. The story “Lovesickness” itself took a chapter or so to grow on me. It’s still technically a collection, but it’s worth knowing that one story stands out as the headliner of the book, rather than one among many that just so happened to become the namesake for the collection. What follows is a smaller, two chapter section called “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings” and then three other short, standalone tales, the final only a handful of pages long. It is five chapters long and makes up roughly 60% of the book’s content. As with Frankenstein and its titular story, Lovesickness has a featured story of the same name that takes up the bulk of the book. Though advertised as a story collection, this book more closely resembles the release of Ito’s adaptation of Frankenstein from late 2018 than the likes of Shiver, Smashed, or Venus in the Blind Spot.
Eerily reminiscent of a dark secret of Ryusuke’s from before his family first moved away, the boy takes it upon himself to confront the beautiful boy of the crossroads and bring an end to the mystery once and for all. Soon after moving back and reuniting with some old friends, rumors begin swirling about a bewitchingly handsome young man who has been compelling girls to commit suicide after telling them their fortune at the crossroads. The featured story stars Ryusuke, a middle school student who has returned to the foggy town of Nazumi after his family moved away eight years previously. Lovesickness by Junji Ito is the latest story collection by the horror manga author to be published in English by VIZ media.
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