Genkai Chitai
The Liminal Zone

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Published in 2022 under the name (The Liminal Zone) in English, there is a little declaimer in the back that the majority of the book was written/drawn in 2021 while Itou was confined in his studio due to covid. Maybe because of that the stories lack his usual punch? Who knows, this one is a D tier sadly.

The book is a collection of four independent stories, NO SPOILERS, one thing I'll note is that in all of them the art and visuals are top tier, it's the overall plot that lets it down.

1. Weeping Woman Way (7/10)

There is an odd profession called "mourner" where people ... would hire someone, usually a woman, to wail and cry during a funeral. Mostly so it'll look good for the family, suitable for the occasion and all that. Our heroes encounter one of those and now the tears won't stop.
This one is very Junji Ito, the fact that it's so mid yet is the best in the book tells you something...

2. Madonna (4/10)

I'm guessing Ito was trapped in his house for too long and needed to air the place out a bit. This is about the virgin Mary and Lot's wife turning to piller of salt. It's.... yeah it's not good. A lot of mixed metaphors and religious misinterpretations makes this a mess. This was noted in some of this other works but the Kanji for Madonna can be read as "wicked woman" or witch woman which is the whole joke this story is leaning on.

3. The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara (1/10)

Aokigahara, also known as the sea of trees, has a tragic history. There is something about that place that draws people looking to commit suicide to it. This one explores both that and the stupid incident where a shameless youtuber went to film in that place mocking the dead and attempting to profit off their tragedy. I think it's the first time something as modern as a youtuber popped up in an Itou story.
This one is kindda nonsense not going to lie. Also there is an uncomfortable implication that the spirit of those that died in the forest still roam it every night. Keep in mind this is a real place where people really go to do this so it comes off as in poor taste.

4. Slumber (2/10)

When you sleep you leave yourself open to anything and anyone. Don't let your mind wonder, who knows what or who will pick it up.
The art here is top tier, story really weak & boring. This one was the worst of the bunch plot wise because of how predictable it was.


Overall - 4/10

In the summery, this one might be the worst of his works so far. Unless you're a completionist I'd advice against this one.

The Liminal Zone – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended

TLDR
Weeping Woman Way: 3/10
Madonna: 2/10
The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara: 3.5/10
Slumber: 2/10
Overall: 3/10

Disclaimer: due to the nature of this work – a collection of short stories –, my normal parameters of Story, Art, Characters and Enjoyment with a weighted average won’t be applied. Instead, a global overview will be offered.
...
The Liminal Zone is a collection of four short stories – Weeping Woman Way, Madonna, The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara, and Slumber – that are neither remarkable nor well done. The stories are just a weak sequence of good panels with a good and functional art style. From a technical point of view, the stories are well done, with a good fluency and cadence of the panels, but with terrible stories to go along with it. Although supposed to be a collection of horror stories, one cannot ignore that most stories are downright funny and are everything but scary. This is especially visible in the first two stories – Weeping Woman Way and Madonna –, while the two last ones are just dull in every way possible.
The characters in the Liminal Zone are either just placeholders for the action to happen, classical cases of mass hysteria (Weeping Woman Way), which he often likes to do – like in Remina –, or an archetypal overzealous and delusional character (Madonna).
For all these reasons, I definitely do not recommend reading The Liminal Zone, for Junji Ito is capable of better stories, visuals – although these are quite good – and characters. It was, nevertheless, a quick read.

Check the other reviews for summaries of each chapter (bilingual, in fact). According to the afterword at the back of the book, this is a collection that was gathered in 2021 against the backdrop of the height of COVID-19's effects on the world. Because of this, I was wondering to what degree some of the themes of pandemic, sickness, isolation, loss of power, loss of access to public space, etc might come into play. Maybe upon a reread those might pop out more but I didn't sense much specifically around those themes.

I want to echo what another reviewer said that I would not recommend people ... start with this Ito compilation. I would definitely recommend to begin at what made him famous, and go chronologically. Earlier full stories like Uzumaki or more coherent collections like Tomie, or even adaptations like No Longer Human or Frankenstein allow you to see the power of Ito's illustrations over a longer narrative, even if stories like Tomie were published over long span of time, there is some coherence between. Once you dip into his work there, decide if it's for you and enjoy the various collections of short stories that are not this one. Then, and only then, would I recommend this collection of short stories. Not because I think they're bad, just because I think they're not his best, and even he admits one of the stories (Slumber) is more of a thought experiment rather than a fully developed idea. I liked the majority of these but I like them in the same way you enjoy a PB and J sandwich, like it's filling and nice flavor but there's not much there, no lasting power, cheap and easy.

I'm not one to absolutely enjoy everything an author I like puts out, I don't believe things are free from critique. I want to say something completely untrue but I feel it explains how I came to these stories: I think Ito Junji vacationed in Mexico, and partook in our culture a bit because these stories have elements of Mexican culture or are adjacent to it. Lemme explain. The first story starts strong with some inspiration from Mexican folklore of La Llorona (not recall, I said it's completely untrue that there's a connection to Mexico but who knows). I liked this one, it shows women in a ghostly town weeping to fix the drought in an area, but in classic Ito style, the characters grow obsessive and start to rampage. This story is fun and mysterious and allows Ito to draw some extreme faces of sadness and despair along with showing the potential effect of excessive crying on someone's skull (definitely read this one).

Continuing my crackpot theory of Mexico-flavored Ito, the second story has religious cult of catholicism's repression in its entirety. Though thats not unique to Mexico, there's tons of people you can ask about their religion and they say they "grew up catholic" and we won't get into it but there's a reason it's past tense. This story shows some wonky stuff going on with a private school whose protagonist is the typical Ito Junji sameface heroine (no shame to the game but you can't say that he doesn't draw sameface often) but there's a creepy headmaster who's cheating on his wives left and right and some students are leaking salt out their ears. This has a really cool and silly ending when someone gets impaled by a cross, it's wild and overall yeah this one's okay, not bad. Not exactly inventive but efficient at getting across that religion and adoration of idols is a classic horror trope.

This third one has Mexican duende written all over it. Two people go into a forest to commit suicide (Aokigahara), and when they get there they discover a spiritual stream of power that shoots out a cave and one of them decides to go into the stream and it transforms them... I recommend this one for its surreal quality where shit just keeps getting much more wild. There's some sexy moments and the art style of the newly transformed protagonists is silly yet fun and I recommend this one for being on the silly side of Junji's stuff. Less scary, more just kinda funny how serious the protags become at becoming more and more... spiritually connected with the flow.

The fourth one's Mexican connection is probably forced (told you, my theory is stupid and doesn't always hit) but you could say it touches upon several killings like how Mexico is plagued by death (femicide, cartel violence, killing of journalists, etc, it's a problem we have in the motherland). It's the least enjoyable, it's a rather straightforward story of whether one should believe the protagonist or not due to them murdering people in sleep, but not being able to remember it when they are awake in the morning. Ito himself let us know that this came from an idea long ago and it's telling that this is how the collection ends because I think he started on a high note.

Anyway, I would always recommend an Ito Junji collection but I would never absolutely blindly love everything, these are fine and short stories and you can breeze through them in the night, there's a few memorable moments like the skeletons in the Weeping Women short, the impaling in the religious story, and the protagonists new form in the third story, but beyond that, I'm just gonna use MAL's wording for this is just fine, nothing wildly special, not terrible either. 6.5-7/10, I gave a 7 because I enjoyed things more with my theory that Ito went to Mexico.

As a New Junji Ito's fan I read this workand I decided to rate o write a review of every chapter .
[EN]
Weeping Lady Hill: A couple who are about to get married decide to take a trip, but that's where they see woman called to cry, a mourner, who when she sees the protagonist catches her attention and tells her that she is the reincarnation of an old mourner who , despite having died years ago, his corpse continued to cry, releasing the souls in pain.

Madonna: Maria is new student to the religious institute. She has suspicious of the director and director's wife. Then he ... finds out that the director is somewhat shady, that he intends to go further with Maria. He promises that she is the reincarnation of the virgin, but then we find out that the director's wife went through the same thing, and they had murdered the director's ex-wife in order to turn his current one into Maria. Gross.

The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara: A couple decides to go to the forest of Mount Fuji to commit suicide after get to know that the boy has a terminal illness. They get into the flow and... become addicted, transforming into amorphous forms like tears of water.

Slumber: A boy frustrated by not being able to pass a bar exam (he's studying to be lawyer) goes out at night to kill, but wakes up in his bed, scared by those memories. It comes out unconsciously. Then her friend reveals information that something similar happened to a man. The memories of this man were somehow passed into the memory of the protagonist.

[ES]
La cuesta de las plañideras: Una pareja que esta a poco de comprometerse decide hacer un viaje, pero allí es donde ven a una mujer llamada para llorar, una plañidera, que cuando ve a la protagonista le llama la atención y le comunica que es la reencarnación de una vieja plañidera que, a pesar de haber muerto hace años, su cadaver seguía llorando liberando las almas en pena.

La Madonna: Maria es nueva en el instituto religioso, tiene sospechas del director y directora. Luego se entera que el director es algo turbio, que él pretende ir más allá con Maria. Le promete que ella es la reencarnación de la virgen, pero luego nos enteramos que la mujer del director pasó por lo mismo, y estos habian asesinado a la ex mujer del director para asi convertir a su actual en Maria. Turbio

Flujo Espiritual de Aokigahara: Una pareja decide ir al bosque del monte fuji a suicidarse tras enterarse que el muchacho tiene una enfermedad terminal. Se meten al flujo y... se vuelven adictos, transformandose en formas amorfas como gotas de agua.

Entredormido: Un chico sale a las noches a asesinar, pero despierta en su cama, asustado con esos recuerdos. Sale de manera inconsciente. Luego su amiga le revela información que a un hombre le sucedio algo similar. Los recuerdos de este hombre de alguna manera se pasaron a la memoria del protagonista.

Please avoid this book if you want to get into Juni Ito, there are better entry points like Uzumaki or Smashed.

- Is the story unique? If it was predictable, did you enjoy it anyway because you like this genre/set-up? There are three stories. "Weeping Woman", the first one, is the only well rounded one. The other two are whacky horror fillers he wrote during the pandemic.
- Do you think the art style is fitting for the story? This is one of his latest works so the art is excellent.
- Were the characters well-rounded? Did they have flaws and strengths, or were they unusually strong/smart/stupid? "Weeping ... Woman" has well rounded characters. The other two are just forgettable.
- Did the characters react to situations and events in a realistic way? Yes they did, within a fantasy horror universe.
- Do you think others will enjoy/dislike this series, even if you didn't? Why? I think a hardcore Junji Ito fan will like it but it might not be great for newcomers to his work.