Gyo: Ugomeku Bukimi
Gyo: The Death-Stench Creeps

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Horror is a hard thing to make in comics today without just being a mindless blood bath of gore and fluids splattered across the walls. Junji Ito does a good job of providing us with good, freaky stories that scare or just plain old disturbs us. Gyo is one of his most recent stories that he took a chance with and provided us with a new look of what is under the sea. Not just that either, in this series we were also given two quick short stories at the end of the series to leave us terrified of not going under ... our houses or go hiking anymore.

Story:

The main story is nice and helps build up tension and suspense as each chapter builds. The things that make this story from reaching a perfect score are that two chapters that take place in a carnival is a bit lacking and the end leaves us without a good real way to end the story. Otherwise this story provides us a good explanation of what is happening to our hero and builds up a nice strong storyline.

Now the other two stories are interesting. The first one is too short and lacks any real depth or horror to it, though it leaves us wondering. The second short story really is a lot better and can give us shivers. This story is strong and provides enough information to understand the situation but leaves us with two questions at the end: why are they drawn to the area and who was that at the end of the story?

Art:

This story has a nice sense of art style, the main characters are nicely drawn, the details the world are amazing, and the monsters or should I say fish, are drawn beyond any skill level I have seen before. This story has set the bar high on what a story should look like. There is nothing to complain about here.

Character:

What can I say about our only four characters? The female lead is a complaining brat who never gives up complaining about the smell, but after a while I say why she would complain. It doesn’t help us like her more though. The male lead character is pretty cool and has a good sense of luck throughout most of the story. His uncle is a bit weird and there isn’t enough information about him to connect him with us. His assistant is interesting, but still, not enough information is given about her to make us feel connected with her.

The short stories lack a bit of depth in the characters, but then again, they are just short stories so there isn’t enough time to shell out a lot of information about them. The first story leaves us with nothing to know about any of the characters, but the second story does provide us with enough information about our two characters, though not a lot, to understand them a bit.

Enjoyment:

The main story itself was fun to read, but not enough to make me want to read it over and over again. The short stories, however, would be fun to read again and again. Overall, it depends if you like the story the first time around then you might want to read it again.

Overall:

This is a solid horror story, but lacks a strong ending that may disappoint. Horror fans will enjoy the story and so will fans of Junji Ito as well. Also, if regular people are looking for a good story with a great art style, they’ll want to jump into this story.

Warning: This story contains graphic violence, nudity, and disturbing images. Do you hate that stuff? If you do, avoid this story at all costs!

The manga starts as a fun read, with a creative premise and situation. Since neither the reader or the characters knew anything about what was going on, it felt eerie and weird, as in, “what the fuck is going on?”, I’d say this was a good start.

But that’s it, after the initial beach chapters, the manga starts showing it’s terribleness.

Unlike most of Ito’s manga, Gyo, doesn’t have that creepy atmosphere always looming in the background, normally represented by the visuals, be it the dreadful backgrounds or the sheer expression of terror on the character’s faces. One of my main gripes with this manga is that ... it focuses too much on the premise, dead sea creatures with legs and walking among earth are scary at first, but a strong premise isn’t nearly enough to hold an entire manga on it’s own, it needs more than that to keep the reader engaged and entertained.

Gyo is a gore fest, it’s obviously trying it’s hardest to shock you and show off the nastiest images possible, but it doesn’t do that very well. Drawings of gore aren’t that disgusting, specially when it’s so ridiculous and over the top.

The “story”, if you can call it that, is simple and very cliché, another “save your girlfriend, save the world” kinda story, where the main character gets involved in all this and has to save his love, eventually discovering what really happened and the truth to these horrible creatures, despite being a completely average person. To make matters worse, he’s nothing new and hardly developed, if at all. it’s also incredibly hard to feel anything for the girlfriend when she’s just a damsel in distress.

The explanation of the mystery and events tries to be very scientific and realistic, but fails miserably, in actuality it is terribly lazy and weak, with a bunch of science mumbo-jumbo sprinkled in the middle.

Junji Ito wasn’t at his best when writing this, at least his other most popular work, Uzumaki, being as average as it was, had a stronger premise and also was an enjoyable, interesting read, the characters were realistic and had amusing reactions to their world and what was happening, you won’t find anything like that here.

Most manga by Ito has interesting visuals and presents something new and scary every chapter, a smart move by the author. It’s hard to be sacred by something you are familiar with. By keeping it fresh and introducing new horrors, he keeps that feeling of uneasiness and dread, the feeling of not knowing what’s to come. This is evident in that most of his work are one-shots or very short manga in general. Gyo, however, barely introduces new horrors or monsters at all, it escalates things, sure, but you can only be so terrorized by a shark with legs after you’ve seen it many times.

It’s become clear that Ito wanted to creep you out with the “monsters” on this manga, and that’s fine, but on this work, were the monsters are almost all fish, they get old fast, losing the impact along with it.


It’s easy to get a shark, put some legs on it and call it a monster.

The best I can say about it is, besides the beautiful art, that the ending doesn’t have any sequel-bait and just ends things quickly.

Don’t read this.

If you are interested in Junji Ito’s works, go read Uzumaki, Junji Ito’s Horror Collection or, better yet, The Enigma on Amigara’s Fault, a short tale on the end of this book, great fun and by far the best thing to come out of Gyo.

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Remember those B-grade horror films they air on sci-fi quite often? This is pretty much the same thing. If you've ever seen Snakehead Terror, its quite similar to that. I wouldn't recommend reading this after you've eaten, as some of the images are gruesome enough to make your stomach do loop-de-loops in your chest. The story however is very creative, and has many twists and turns you don't see coming, so if you have some down time, drop by onemanga or buy the manga if you have some extra cash, plop yourself down, and you'll never want to eat Sushi again.

Gyo— another masterpiece by Junji Ito after 'Uzumaki', one of the greatest horror manga series that could have ever been made! Having his works equipped with bizarre plots and aberrant visuals, Junji has proved that horror is not necessarily synonymous with 'the ghost with long black hair' or 'the evil, bloodsucking vampires lurking in the bush out there'. He has the ability to create gruesome horror out of anything and everything, even if it is a fish. Fish— that's exactly what he portrays in 'Gyo', well, in an extremely absurd way that is beyond anyone's imagination with Junji being an exception of course.

The manga ... has nineteen chapters, each having 16-19 pages for the main story, and another chapter that comprises of two short stories which are independent of the main story; the total being twenty chapters. The manga is thus pretty short but by the time I finished reading it, it felt as if I have been through a long journey filled with 'skin crawling' moments. To be precise, I love the story. I'm really impressed with Junji's creativity at horror storytelling. I seriously can never imagine something as unique as that even in the next ten, twenty or thirty years. It has suspense, it has that 'Oh-crap-why-did-that-have-to-happen' feeling and it keeps you turning the pages because you simply have no idea what's going to happen next. The characters are also pretty good. I especially liked the protagonist, Tadashi. He didn't give up in spite of the havoc around him. Instead he chose to stand up to the 'monsters' and protect his girlfriend. The ending, however, turned out to be a disappointment for me. It was not satisfactory and it seemed incomplete. I was so engrossed in reading that I didn't realize it was already over and when the first short story came up, I was literally like, "Huh? What is this?" until I realized that the main story is already finished.
Speaking about the two short stories in the end, the first one wasn't really that good. There was no mention of what had happened, how it happened and why it happened. It just happened. The second short story, on the other hand, was fantastic. I might as well call it a little masterpiece of Junji because it is short, hardly around 20 chapters or so, but it was downright creepy.

The art is great. It is similar to Junji's other works. The backgrounds are detailed, and the characters and their expressions are also well drawn. The style is well suited for horror manga.

To conclude my review, I will say that I recommend this series to all those who love horror and are looking for something unique to read which will stay in the back of their mind for quite a long time, if not forever. But I think it is also necessary to warn you that it has various disturbing visuals and if you think you can't take them, you must stay away from this manga.

Story: 9 | Art: 9 | Character: 9 | Enjoyment: 9 | Overall: 9

In the beginning "Gyo" pulls you in with it's weirdness. The things shown are so odd that it makes you wonder how it's going to be explained and what the meaning behind it is.

Unfortunately, there is no meaning behind this story as far as i can discern. Unfortunately, the explanations given are very poor and hard to believe.

It makes me wonder, what is the point of this manga? What did the author try to convey, if anything?

I guess this manga does offer some very disturbing images which may be enjoyable (they did not affect me a lot, positively or negatively) but what value is there ... in that if there isn't a decent story behind it?

The art to me is poor. You may disagree, art is very subjective and it is also a matter of style. I rate the art low but that's not an objective assessment at all. So if you really want to know how good the art is, read a chapter or two and decide for yourself.

The characters lack depth and development. They all act in a very straight forward way and without much thought. They may express emotions, but there are no feelings behind it, and you don't get to understand how the different characters think. To put it in a word, they are superficial.

I didn't enjoy this series at all. But you might, read it if you want to find out.

After completing "Gyo" i was left with a question: Why does this manga exist?

Even though I think this story is very good, I have to admit to not finding it even a little bit scary. More than anything, the things that happen in this story are very gross, bizarre, and hilarious. It's a unique, interesting concept overall, but I think its scare factor really relies on whether one is afraid of fish and the ocean or not; if you aren't scared by those things, you probably won't find this story scary.

If your a fan of zombies and fish then look no further for your aquatic horror fix. Gyo is the story of a world under siege by at first what seems to be spider versions of the entire underwater kingdom but later turns out to be crazy spider machines that take control of any living thing turning it into a walking biological weapon. The story follows Tadashi and for some part his easily hate able girlfriend Kaori as Tadashi attempts to survive the invasion and look after his girl, discovering the source of the invasion and his uncles involvement in it along ... the way. While reading this I couldn't help but be reminded of those corny Japanese monster movies along the lines of Gojira (on a smaller scale) but like those movies, it ends up working very well! However its not all sunshine and lollipops for this manga. There was one part that felt like a Naruto filler, something I don't like in my manga. The whole circus chapter was just pure randomness and I feel like it could have been left out.

Where the story gives the manga the feel of a 1950's monster flick the art is what makes it creepy. Ive never seen a more badass looking shark than one with mechanical spider legs and a whole buncha tubes going through it (don't even get me started on the whale). Along these lines the most hideous looking creatures in this manga are the humans themselves, bloated as they are filled with gases and hooked up to those machines (although that tube that can be seen going up the rectum once a human is attached to the machine is rather hilarious). The way the characters are drawn more closely resemble realistic people which adds to the overall mood of the manga itself.

Compared to everything else some of the characters themselves seem some what predictable which is alright really, but it could have been way better. The usual everyman characteristic of survival genres is portrayed as the main character and then theirs the mad scientist and his beautiful assistant. Whats more the circus ringleader, like the whole circus segment of the manga, was way random and didn't appear enough for his character to get fleshed out more. The same could be said for the mad scientist's assistant. She has a few instances of dialouge and right when you think some deeper insight to her is about to get revealed she flies away (literally). What keeps the characters part of this review from getting a 5 instead of the 7 I gave it is Kaori. While reading this manga and further learning of the character that is Kaori I came to the conclusions that I hated her....oh how I hated her. Shes obnoxious, rude, selfish, and jealous (even in death). Now I'm going to assume that the author intended to portray Kaori this way in which case he did an really amazing job.

Overall, despite a trip to random circus and some eye rolling character types, I enjoyed the manga very much. Very rarely do I see a manga pull off horror and although this one can have some comedic characteristics it does a decent job. The art though is what really hooked me, its honestly drawn really well. The feeling of vintage monster movie nostalgia was something I really enjoyed about this manga as well.

I will be totally honest - I love Junji's works. Ever since the first Junji's manga I've read I knew he'll be one of my favourite mangakas. He has the ability to write a great grotesque horror and I just simply respect him for that.

And Gyo isn't different here, it's just simply another masterpiece which has the ability to give you goosebumps or nausea, if you're eating anything while reading this title.
The art is simply amazing - he's a guy writing horror mangas, still his art is really manga-ish. But what I love about his arts are these macabre pictures. After you read about ... 2-3 of his works, you will have no problem in recognising his style. I admit - I didn't read many horror mangas (and most of the ones I read weren't even horrors in my opinion), but to me Junji is the father of horror manga. No one can make such good horrors as he.

But I guess I'm focusing too much on Junji, while I should write something about Gyo. I must say that before I got the chance to read it, I thought it would be something like in the one episode of Slayers - big fish with human's arms and legs, but going and killing people. Silly, I know. And how surprised I was when I found out that Gyo isn't a silly comedy-horror, but actually a well written and drawn grotesque story.

What I liked? The story overall. The art. Characters. This awesome mood typical to Junji's works. Every chapter has something new and unexpected - when you think you understood what's going on, after next 3 pages you find out that you actually know nothing.
And believe me - I don't know what Junji smokes to get such an awesome ideas.

What I didn't like? The Circus chapters. The ending. I don't like that kind of endings. I guess I can't be more specific, cause it'll be a spoiler.

But what I loved the most about Gyo was the last chapter. More specific, the second one-shot. And most specific, the last page. The story of this one-shot was awesome, I would never imagine such a thing. But the last page is the picture that pops up in my head when I'm in bed at 3 a.m., can't sleep and imagine a ghost in my closet - this picture is just simply scary, probably the scariest Junji's picture ever. And let me repeat myself - I have no idea what Junji smokes, but it must be from other planet.

I recommend Gyo especially for Junji's fans and also for people, who are sick of sweet shoujo and look for a really good horror grotesque manga. You shouldn't be disappointed with most of Junji's works, especially with Gyo.

Ito Junji's Gyo is a work that builds on the themes, art style and narrative structure of past works. Fans of Uzumaki, Tomie, and other past mangas will feel right at home with Gyo. That said, Gyo does not measure up to the best of Ito's work, or even the best of the genre.

Gyo starts off strong with a very solid premise, and a very interesting meta-narrative, however it fails to deliver as most of the characters and much of the plot manages to annoy more than frighten or startle.

I would recommend Gyo to fans of Ito's other work, as it remains fairly popular, but ... to me it is a lesser piece. Included are two one-shots, the second of which, The Enigma of Amigara Fault is my personal favourite Ito story, and which raises the overall score significantly. I consider it to be one of Ito's masterpieces, easily on the level of Uzumaki. It's unfortunate it wasn't also released separately.

All in all Gyo is a letdown as far as Ito's work goes, however it also comes with the masterpiece that is The Enigma of Amigara Fault, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

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.

Gyo was the first horror manga I ever read and it was also probably the weirdest manga I have ever read.

Freaky fish run rampant in this manga and not in a cool "yay fish" way. The fish get creepy and even beyond creepy.

The plot is... wait there was a plot? Hard to notice. I guess that makes sense because this is a horror manga but still. There were more panels about the freakishly grotesque fish-things than actual talking about what the heck was going on in the book.

This manga turned me off to wanting to read any other horror manga because of how ... bad it was to me. Maybe I'll try to find one that actually has a plot and doesn't involve mutating fish.

There's scary, and then there's senselessly scary. 'Gyo' frightened me beyond belief, more than any horror movie or book I've watched or read before. Truly, this is a tererifying manga.
The story is about a couple, Tadashi and Kaori, who are visiting a remote Japanese island on holiday. However, they encounter a walking fish in their house, and this quickly grows into one of the most horrible apocalypses that anyone could have ever dreamt up.
This manga disturbed me- I highly recommend it.

Ah, the story circling around stink.
After reading Uzumaki, I simply had to read another work of Junji Ito. Gyo was my first choice.
The first thing I noticed was the art. When people think manga or anime, they think of the huge, shining eyes, cute little turned up noses; a up-graded cartoon. I enjoyed Ito's art, it was a nice change. Breathtaking, actually.
The only thing I don't like is at first it's hard to keep up with what's going on in the story. At the beginning, it's just extremly confusing.
Though, as the manga unfolds, it becomes a delightfully creepy manga. I would really recommend ... those who love horror, as long as they can keep up with the story line.

I’m a very big Junji Ito fan so this review is definitely going to be a bit biased. Having said that I absolutely LOVED Gyo. It’s just so incredibly insane and weird that I ended up finishing the manga in one sitting. Just when you think: ‘this isn’t going to get weirder’. Junji Ito manages to do just that. Every page turn was a f-ing jump scare, the art is just phenomenal. If you decide to pick it up you’re sure in for a wilde ride until the very end.

Personally I really like the weird storyline and the weirder it got the more I wanted ... to continue reading. However if you don’t like an absolutely silly premise I wouldn’t recommend reading it. If you prefer your horror to have a lot of depth you won’t find it here.

This is my first horror manga I’ve read and I’d say… I’m not really impressed. The story revolves around a strange creature (dead fish with artificial ‘legs’) invading the lives of two people – a boy and his girlfriend.

A storyline like this seems like an excuse to make a horror manga. While this sounds like it’s actually good, it’s not. The mangaka seems to throw the plot into different directions.

The characters? Not even. Of course the female character is a damsel-in-distress (the only thing I remember about her is that she screamed almost every panel she was in, thankfully I liked what the mangaka did ... to her eventually). Of course the main character (male, even) has to save her often. The character development is very minimal. All I remember that the main character seemed to be slightly scarred by the incident.

The art was nothing really impressive, though it was very fitting for a horror manga. I remember there were so many details on the strange monsters, though there was nothing memorable about the details on the characters and on the backgrounds.

I came for the bonus story though, the Enigma of Amigara Fault. Now that is more considered to be a horror manga despite being a little cliched. 4/10 overall on Gyo though.

In light of Gyo being set to become an anime, I decided it was time to finally read it. I adore Junji Ito's work and have read Uzumaki, Tomie, Black Paradox and now Gyo, particularly drawn by the way he draws such amazing and grosteque pages.

Story - I originally didn't read Gyo as I didn't think it would be that creepy. I mean 'fish with legs', how on earth could that be creepy? And yet again, as always, Junji Ito shocks and awes with his amazing art and fascinating story line. I don't want to spoil the plotline for you but it is very interesting, ... although I felt that the ending was lacking -something- but it did round off the story.
Ironically, I really loved the bones story at the end even more than Gyo itself. I felt that this story (with the people shaped holes) had a lot of potential!

Art - Anybody who has read his manga knows of his very unique art styles and especially the way that he draws horror so detailed and creepy that for a long moment it takes a while to get your head round. He is my favourite manga artist by a long way.

Character - I usually loved the female leads in Ito's work but in this one, she was whiney and a bit insufferable (I didn't feel any sympathy towards her at all) whereas her boyfriend on the other hand was a much more laid back and logical chracter which I found much nicer. He takes everything as it comes and I liked that quite a lot. As this manga was fairly short - or felt shorter - than his other mangas, there was not quite so much character development, especially since the focus was on the fish and machined limbs than the characters themselves in manga such as Uzumaki (guru, guru, guru!).
Anyway, the characters in the mini story at the end were very interesting and it would be lovely to see more of this.

Enjoyment? As always, I thoroughly enjoy reading Ito's work and always manage to get hooked from chapter one! Definitely worth a read and if you like this one, definintely go and read Uzumaki and the rest!

Hope you enjoy it!

Read for MAL's Manga Reading Challenge 2019 - Read a series you can finish in a day

Mutant fish, the scent of death, whales and sharks walking around on land, mad scientists, a creepy circus and tubes up a human's anus. You may be wondering what I'm babbling about, if you're not, then you're probably a fellow Itou fan.

Gyo is a story I had heard of as an Itou fan but had never paid much attention to. I knew it existed, I knew it was strange and screwed up, but I never really paid much heed to it before deciding to add it as one of ... my manga challenges.

This one is relatively hard to review as I'm pretty split between volumes one and two - in fact, the only thing that saved my rating from being slightly lower is the last one shot included in Gyo's publish.

Gyo starts off really well. It's strange, that's an unnerving and slightly comical sense as to "what the hell is happening" as the plot slowly emerges. Things are somewhat tense and I found myself biting my lip as I progressed through the first half of it. I found myself really in the mood for this and eagerly devoured the second half of the series.
The second volume is where I have some issues.
The plot seems to just divulge into how much craziness can Itou put into one series. Two of the characters don't even get a full ending and we're left wondering what happened to them. The horror art becomes somewhat repetitive and the same thing over and over again and to be honest, I found myself very let down. The ending frames were short and sweet and I enjoyed them but, truly, Itou left more questions open and it's left me very confused and not fully satisfied upon completion.

The first one shot in this, Daikokubashira Hiwa (The Sad Tale of the Principal Post), is just short and somewhat ridiculous. There's no real feeling of horror in it and after being confused about the ending to Gyo, having this one right after it when the whole purpose is a "how did this happen" probably wasn't a good move. I found it quite boring and meek, although I think Itou could have done more with this and increased what it is as a one-shot, I didn't enjoy it.

The second one-shot, however, Ashura no Dansou no Kai (The Enigma of Amigara Fault), really caught my attention. "The Mountain Holes", as a friend of mine calls this story, is one that had been recommended to me a few times and I had yet to have a chance to read it - I was extremely excited upon getting to the end of Daikokubashira Hiwa and finding this was the second one shot. This one is mysterious, with questions of how and why - most of which are answered, thankfully - and grotesque images that will likely haunt me when I close my eyes. Truthfully, Ashura no Dansou no Kai is the only reason this manga series didn't end up with a five. It's dark, disturbing and something about it really stuck with me after finishing it.

All in all, this probably isn't one of Itou's best works and is definitely my least favourite out of all I've read so far. It saddens me to say that, truly, but not all of his works are going to be for everyone. If you're new to Itou, I would recommend reading this one first; if you've already read most of his more popular works I would probably recommend skipping this - it pales in comparison to a lot of his works and left me confused and frustrated it didn't end better, unfortunately.

A wonderfully strange and creepy premise, but bad execution in the ending.

Nothing could prepare me for this manga called Gyo. Even from the get-go I was already being surprised by events unfolding. The story gets weird, and it's a good weird, not a bad weird.

I liked this story because it I could tell the author knew exactly what he was writing throughout the story. I liked the graphic depiction of events, I enjoyed the emphasized onomatopoeia, and I especially liked the sequence of events that built up continuously in each chapter. Nothing beats a good read that leaves you both shocked and overwhelmed as a result!

If you asked me what would be good to read ... for an hour and a half, I'd recommend Gyo: Ugomeku Bukimi completely, unless their squirmish hehehe >:)

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.

The story of Gyo starts off really strong with something absurd as fish having legs invading the town of Okinawa. With most of Junji Ito's work is more of how his able to create suspense and how bizarre the situations could be.

However for Gyo it wasn't the case , the horror aspect did felt surreal and somewhat disgusting which served it's purpose. However the plot felt very predictable in a way that you sort of would have known what's coming next with how he set up the story to it's climax.

For this story we have only 4 characters and all I want to say ... about them is they're just flat out bland and very cliche for the character they're portraying. MC felt like he had plot armour and was able to survive amdist all the chaos happening around him. FMC is just a mentally unstable girl which constantly needs reassurance from MC. I could go on but you get the point on how the characters feel somewhat boring and dull.

The art is definitely one of it's redeeming features as expected from Junji Ito. There are several panels which genuinely had the horror aspect drawn out of it perfectly for what it's portraying.

Another aspect which I didn't like was how the manga sort of didn't make sense with the origin of the machine and how they'd come about. They tried to go with a scientific explanation however it did not come together making it confusing since it isn't a supernatural event happening in this manga.

Overall what I would say about Gyo is that if you are looking for something absurd to read in the form or horrifying creatures , this might be up your arsenal.