The way a seemingly innocent phenomenon is turned into a real horrific series of grotesque tragedies reminds me a lot of Ito's best horror manga Uzumaki; which made something as innocent as the shapes of spirals driving people insane and warping reality into repulsive abominations. The first half of Lovesickness is the five-story cycle, also known as ‘Lovesick Dead’, that gives this collection its title. After he begs for her to forgive him, she goes out and kills herself to spare herself and Ryusuke that torment, noting that by shortening her life, she has ended the problem while fulfilling the pronouncement.

Ryuusuke feels even worse and tells Reishi that he does like Midori, but he's responsible for something bad that happened. Ryusuke quietly agrees that the five-year-old child shouldn't have been murdered for his father's crimes. 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. The loose ends left by ‘The Séance’ led me to assume there are further Hikizuri tales, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, making this another case of an oddly inconclusive ending. She worries about him when he's labeled as the Intersection Bishounen and is the only one to know his hiding spot after he ran away from home.

When marking down where the other girls committed suicide, he finds that they are all around the same area where the woman killed herself ten years ago. The outsider finishes his questions and notes that all though it's still foggy the town has gotten a lot more quiet. They run into one ghost girl who asks for the love of her life to be fulfilled, and Mitsuru firmly tells her that the Intersection Bishounen is evil and that she should stay away from him. Before it's official English release, it was completely scanlated by fans, with the title Undying Love. Their affections turn to him and they mob him just like a normal group of teen girls and an attractive male idol, which is even what the scene is mistaken for by a curmudgeon complaining about the noise.

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. Big Bad: The mysterious boy at the crossroads, whose pieces of advice have compulsive and devastating effects on the girls who hear them. The local lore is that you stand at an intersection and ask the first person you meet for your fortune. It eventually comes out that while Ryusuke was involved, the actual Pretty Boy is possibly the son of the man that knocked up Midori's aunt, who vanished shortly after her aunt died by suicide. The Rib Woman - A wonderful story that blended themes of body image with a wonderfully creepy narrative.

Most people who read my reviews aren't aficionados of horror manga and I'm hoping to convert some of you to the unique and compulsively creepy world of Junji Ito, and to convince you to give his work a try. Over the next several nights, the woman keeps coming back, asking for advice about her relationship with the married man. Lovesickness takes place in a town obsessed with fortune-telling, where citizens ask strangers at the crossroads what their fate will be. He gives chase outside and finds out it's Teshima, who has been spreading the rumors and planting the fake earrings and jackets. 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.

On the one hand, it could be that the boy at the crossroads has some dark powers that make people take their fortunes to the worst possible end, but it's also possible it's more psychological and people are taking fortunes the wrong way due to suggestion and their own will rather than magic and that they are following them to the end due to the finality of the fortunes in the town's custom. The Mansion of Phantom Pain” is another example of Ito’s conceptual brilliance, with a starkly brutal ending. As with Frankenstein and its titular story, Lovesickness has a featured story of the same name that takes up the bulk of the book.It turns out that he man was the one who impregnated both Midori's aunt and the woman that had tormented them before (see Chpt 2) as two mistresses. There’s also a pair of manga about ‘the strange Hikizuri siblings’ – ‘Narumi’s Boyfriend’ and ‘The Séance’ – which have to rank among my least favourites of all the Ito I’ve read; this type of humour either works for you or really doesn’t, and I’m in the latter camp. In the way of the best eerie stories the moods shift under your feet and you never know what to expect next. Disproportionate Retribution: Ryusuke as a kid unthinkingly told a pregnant woman that the man who knocked her up would never love her, while he was trying to run away from home. It feels like a diet version of Uzumaki with less interesting set pieces, less scary horror elements and a far less satisfying conclusion.