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Black Paradox

Review of Junji Ito's Work

By Manga MoonPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
2
"Black Paradox" by Junji Ito

Context for Black Paradox

In Japan, suicide has always been an act linked to the historical, social and cultural tradition of the country. It was part of the code of the ancient samurai, who were willing to give their lives by calling seppuku, a sign of their fervent courage and will to preserve their honor and that of their family above all else.

In the 20th century, during World War II, Kamikaze pilots and soldiers tried with their sacrifice to safeguard the nation and stop the advance of the Allies in the Pacific Ocean. Today, almost seventy years after the greatest war ever experienced by mankind, Japanese morals and ethics are still inextricably linked to concepts such as respect and honor.

Times have changed, but Japan still has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. In its mentality and attitude, the act of taking one's own life is often accompanied by a certain sense of responsibility. This may explain its presence in the Japanese horror genre, usually anchored in the framework of the psychological thriller and linked to classic ghost stories and urban legends that highlight the inability of human beings to understand the rules of the universe.

The following review will deal with all aspects of Black Paradox. It is a work that grabs the reader and immerses them hopelessly in the particular universe of this mangaka where nothing is what it seems.

About the Manga

In Black Paradox, we have the story of a group of four strangers who interact through a website where they use nicknames like Taburo, Pitan, Baracchi and Marceau. They decide to organize a meeting with the sole and common goal of ending their lives. But this apparently simple plan will turn into authentic and grotesque madness, during which the universe itself will prove to have prepared for them a destiny much more incredible and frightening than death itself can be.

How the Story Reflects Society

In this way, Junji Ito manages to give shape to one of the most present terrors of the modern society of his country, a practice whose rate does not stop rising in the statistics. Suicide presents an increasingly high rate among young people who have taken the encounters through the Internet to give such a macabre and forceful epitaph to their lives.

This problem, a real concern for the authorities and the media in Japan, serves as a starting point for a proposal in which Junji Ito also speaks to us (among many other themes) of our indispensable and necessary sense of identity and the contrast between spirit and materialism in our contemporary situation.

Publication and Themes

Black Paradox is a work of psychological horror. It consists of six chapters and was originally published in the Big Comic Spirits magazine, belonging to the Shogakukan publishing house, during 2009.

The work revolves around the theme of alternative universes, paradoxes and Doppelgängers. A Doppelgänger could be defined as an "evil double" or a dark half. This applies to each of the main characters and is expressed differently with various resources, such as a disfigured half-face or a robotic body.

Review

The first thing we can see when we approach Black Paradox is that we are not in front of a conventional work, neither speaking in general terms nor limiting ourselves to the horror genre. Junji Ito avoids from the beginning any possibility of building and narrating a story with its common and ordinary drifts. On the other hand, this does not mean that in his characteristics we cannot guess prototypical and consubstantial issues of the same genre, the struggle of Good against Evil, the erratic behavior of his characters when dealing with the unknown and the unfathomable mystery of death.

But Junji Ito's paths, and even more his unpleasant ways, are inscrutable, swinging his nightmares between the surreal and the morbid, the parodic and the scatological, and the terrifying and the marvelous. The aura of cosmic horror akin to H.P. Lovecraft (whom Ito reveres) hovers over the entire atmosphere of Black Paradox, placing its characters before the unfathomable immensity of their own fears and longings, simple dualities in a shared curiosity for the indecipherable enigma that haunts and harasses them.

It is very remarkable how Ito in this work seems that at first he is going to take us down a very specific and concrete path: the decision to end one's own life and how each person assumes it. However, in a few pages, with a stroke of a pen, everything takes a 180º turn, adopting a surreal, fantastic and somewhat terrifying tone, delving into the fears and worst virtues of human beings, such as greed and avarice.

Drawing Style

As for the drawing, Junji Ito uses very fine strokes and does not delve excessively into details. However, he manages to imprint his drawing with a great deal of expressiveness and personality. The author's surprising imagination when it comes to imagining delirious objects and situations (facets that are also shown in Gyo) also stands out.

"GYO," a work I'll be reviewing very soon. Wait for it!

Narrative

The narrative rhythm of Black Paradox does not falter at any time, and the surprise is continuous, with unexpected twists and turns that lead to the final surprise. It is to be welcomed that the work has a definite, clear and almost closed ending.

The universe itself turns against its protagonists, in a cruel and implacable way, and as human beings they can only respond irrationally as a small part of an intrigue that surpasses them, the author himself and, of course, the reader.

What we interpret at first as a delirium, as a paranoia of its creator, takes consistency through the form, as the eczema and tumors of the characters, and not so much by the power of his narrative, eventually generating in us a morbid interest in knowing the end (or beginning) of this madness.

Atmosphere

Junji Ito's drawing has the talent to pass apparently unnoticed in many moments of his story until we realize the strength and intensity deployed in his characterization and, above all, the atmosphere with which he is able to provide certain moments of the work, sick and disturbing scenes capable of disturbing, intriguing and seducing us in equal parts.

Junji Ito: Delirious Creator

Junji Ito is known for being one of the masters of horror manga thanks to his particular style and his ability to create oppressive atmospheres. Among his major influences are mangakas like Kazuo Umezu or Hideshi Hino and writers like H.P. Lovecraft.

The mangaka entered this world by winning an honorable mention in the 1987 Kazuo Umezu Award (with the same author as one of the judges). So in the 1990s, he began writing and drawing manga while working as a dental technician. Influenced by masters such as Hideshi Hino and Kazuo Umezu himself, the mangaka explores the world of horror from a malevolent perspective. He presents characters within a universe in which unnatural circumstances occur. His characters are often obsessed in some way with death and linked to the loss of reason or sanity.

The world he presents us with provokes an irremediable attraction towards the unknown and certainly welcoming for some artists of the seventh art, who have dared to adapt some of his works on several occasions. Tomie and Uzumaki are the two representative works that have live-action adaptations. Gyo, on the other hand, has an animated adaptation.

Summary

After meeting through a website, four people decide to embark on a journey to achieve a common goal: to end their lives. This is a strange case of collective suicide that horror master Junji Ito (known for Gyo and Uzumaki) turns into a supernatural thriller with which he reformulates the myth of the doppelgänger.

Conclusion

The ideas handled by the manga are both its best virtue and its worst part. In this story, Ito deals with themes such as collective suicide, alternative dimensions, greed, the search for personality, the ethical limits of technology and doppelgangers, among others. Many of these are extremely interesting and all are combined in a very good way creating a great plot, the downside is that so many things are handled that at times the story becomes extremely confusing and dilutes the mystery and terror. This is a shame because it is very well done, there is a good mix of psychological terror and body horror that will not leave any of the readers bored. The best thing about this work is that it is risky, original and includes 2 very interesting short stories. One of them is The Licking Woman (one-shot), which reaches even higher levels of terror than the previous one. Finally, it includes Mystery Pavillion (one-shot), another short story, full color, 4 pages long, just as strange. What I would qualify as bad would be its cover, not very appealing. It shines in the absence of any biographical or informative text.

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About the Creator

Manga Moon

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