Gyo: Ugomeku Bukimi
Gyo: The Death-Stench Creeps

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Despite only a score of 7 I quite liked this manga. It's different from the other 2 Ito manga I've read, Uzumaki and Tomie, in the sense that it manages to be more weird. The death stench and the leg machines are a really unique concept that I certainly couldn't have come up with and then fused together to make some of the most interesting horror/body horror I've seen. Really amazing drawings here albeit disgusting at times. While the main characters were nothing great and the main story lacking besides the main premise, its a really interesting sort of experiment on what can be done ... with horror and it was quite good.

Just like Uzumaki, I feel that Gyo started out very well, perfectly conveying that feeling of strangeness, but little by little it was lost.

I don't know if it's us, the readers, who simply get used to the absurdity of ideas, but what I noticed is that Ito presents us with something we've never seen before and then makes it so absurd that we're not actually scared or uncomfortable, but yes, just admiring how quickly it escalated. Which for me takes a lot of the tension out of the scenes. In fact, that might be why I preferred the beginning of his manga.

I even had fun ... with Gyo, but for me, he wasn't as "charming" as Tomie or as bizarre as Uzumaki.

Gyo – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended


TLDR
Story – 2/10 – 2 x 0.275 = 0,55
Art – 7/10 – 7 x 0.2 = 1,4
Characters – 1/10 – 1 x 0.225 = 0,225
Enjoyment – 4/10 – 4 x 0.3 = 1,2
Total: 3,375 -> 3

...
Story – 2/10
Gyo’s story isn’t scary at all. Instead, it is quite funny. Genuinely, it probably one of Junji Ito’s funniest stories. There is a sense of strangeness, but it just ends up being funny. There isn’t really much to say about Gyo. It’s a story about a fish invasion in Okinawa and, later on, Tokyo. There is no eerie atmosphere, drama, cliffhanger, suspense, or nothing. We have fishes with legs walking around running amok, fishes with legs inside of plastic bags that float around the city, fishes with legs that are being caught in the sea by fishermen, walking whales invading the city and, later on, mechanical creatures, and some of which fly. There is basically no plot, other than surviving, no intrigue, nothing: we just have panels after planes of fishes walking around the city and creating chaos. There were times when a plot was foreseeable, but rest assured: the story will not deliver! Most, if not all, action scenes are just walking sharks or mechanical creatures pursuing the main characters. The ending is horrendous, and one does not understand why it ended (only for a straightforward aspect that got resolved). This is definitely one of Junji Ito’s worst stories.

Art – 7/10
The art is good, in the sense that it is functional. The gore scenes that are meant to be disgusting are nothing more than just a dead fish with legs, ending up being, once again, quite funny. There are some good panels, but definitely nothing too fancy, and none are awe-inspiring. The character design is just the average of a Junji Ito story. And although there are some stories that have memorable panels, this just isn’t the case with Gyo. It doesn’t have problems with panel fluency and is technically well achieved.

Characters – 1/10
There are no characters worth mentioning, for they have no personality. Gyo’s isn’t about the characters but the invading fish with legs. Thus, the characters are null and only serve to be pursued or scared by the fish. It is incredibly bland. The “main” characters—Tadashi and Kaori—only fit the aforementioned purpose. In all due honesty, only Koyanagi isn’t all that annoying. Without going into spoilers, Kaori will fill a role other than running, but it is so idiotic that one cannot take it seriously. Mechanical creatures abound.

Enjoyment – 4/10
Gyo is a great comic relief, but it cannot be compared to some of his better works, such as Tomie, and cannot definitely be considered a horror story. For being so ludicrous, it deserves a not recommended: the story is bland and outright bad, the premise is stupid, the development is terrible, and the characters are ever worse than the story. Gyo may be made of the stuff of nightmares, but for all the wrong reasons.