Junji Ito is a horror manga artist known for having a huge number of works and for being very good at telling extremely unsettling stories. I recently re-read all of Ito’s work, so I decided to create a compilation post of his best one-shots.
Reading Ito for the first time is both riveting and disgusting, so if you are a horror buff but unfamiliar with Ito (or even horror manga), I encourage you to take a look at some of these shorts. You won’t be disappointed.
All come with a warning for gore, body horror, and disturbing images, with extra warnings listed in parentheses after synopses. You can access all of his works here. Enjoy!
Anything but a Ghost – a man finds a girl on the side of the road, totally unresponsive and covered in blood.
Army of One – bodies keep appearing in various places, naked and stitched together with fishing line.
The Back Alley – a boy rents a room from a family and hears the sound of children playing in the back alley late at night.
The Bully – a girl becomes a playground bully when a young boy won’t leave her alone (child abuse).
The Chill – a boy is curious about a sick neighbor girl, which leads him to question his grandfather’s death (trypophobia).
Den of the Sleep Demon – a boy’s dream self tries to leave his body during his sleep, forcing him to stay awake for days on end.
Dissection Girl – a girl poses as a medical school cadaver in her quest to be dissected.
Enigma of Amigara Fault – an earthquake leads to the discovery of a mountainside full of human-shaped holes.
Fashion Model – a man is disturbed by a magazine model with an inhuman appearance.
Flesh-Colored Horror – a preschool teacher deals with an unruly child and his strange family.
Glyceride – a girl’s house and family are covered in a thick layer of grease.
Hanging Balloons – after an idol’s suicide, Tokyo’s citizens are tormented by malicious balloon versions of their own heads that have nooses instead of strings.
House of Puppets – raised by a puppeteer, a orphaned pair of siblings find their long-lost brother, only to learn that he and his new family are now living as puppets.
Human Chair – an author, having trouble writing due to her uncomfortable desk chair, goes on a search for a new chair.
Long Dream – a man is hospitalized for dreams that continue to feel longer and longer until he is dreaming millennia.
Long Hair In The Attic – a girl’s boyfriend breaks up with her, and she decides to cut off the hair she grew out for him.
Love as Scripted – a girl falls for a notorious ladies man in her theater troupe.
My Dear Ancestors – a girl suffers from amnesia and her boyfriend tries to help her recover (centipedes)
Oshikiri 1 2 – a boy lives alone in a haunted mansion while his parents are abroad.
Penpal – a side story in the Oshikiri universe about a girl who is locked in a fight with her three penpals.
Red Turtleneck – a man struggles to hold his almost-decapitated head to his neck without severing nerves or blood vessels.
The Thing That Drifted Ashore – a deep-sea monster washes up on the beach (trypophobia).
Town Without Streets – a story about a girl’s experience with: a stalker, a family that can’t stop creating peepholes in her room, an extremely strange town, and Jack the Ripper.
The Window Next Door – a family moves into a new house, and the neighbor woman terrorizes their son at night.
The Woman Next Door – in a girl’s apartment building, there is an apartment occupied by mysterious women who wear all black.
Best Junji Ito one-shots!
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