GYO 1 Review
High expectations can be a curse. I came into GYO, the latest horror manga by creator Junji Ito, expecting to be disturbed by what I read. Ito's previous manga—UZUMAKI, TOMIE, and FLESH-COLORED HORROR—were all genuinely unnerving. GYO, on the other hand, is unsatisfying.

The premise of GYO—legged fish begin emerging from the sea—sounded silly when I first read it, but then again, how scary does a comic about a town's growing obsession with spirals (UZUMAKI) sound on the face of it? (What, they all become obsessed with Spirograph?) Alas, my first reaction proved to be accurate in this case: GYO just isn't scary. Perhaps the cultural connotations are different in Japan, but for me, seeing a shark crash though someone's door is amusing rather than frightening, since it brings to mind the old landshark skits from Saturday Night Live.

"Candygram!"

Because the horror isn't as strong in GYO, the weakness of characterization becomes more evident. Looking back at Ito's earlier works, it's probably safe to say that characterization was not a strong suit of those works either. The characters were there mainly to serve as fodder for the events that befell them. When the events aren't very frightening, the sparseness of characterization becomes glaring. The players in this tale all feel like stock characters from a campy 50s horror movie: The stalwart, stoic hero; the hysterical female; the mad scientist and his lovely assistant. Even the visual depictions feel tired, since the characters resemble protagonists from Ito's earlier works. The character who receives perhaps the greatest amount of attention in this story is the girlfriend, Kaori; much space is devoted to depicting just how whiny and selfish she is. Unfortunately, this also means that she becomes an entirely unlikable character. By the time misfortune struck Kaori, I found myself thinking that her boyfriend should just leave her. Instead, Tadashi sticks with her, risking his life in the process. I felt like a cross between a Springer audience member and an obnoxious movie-goer in a bad horror flick, mentally shouting out: "Leave her, you fool! She never treated you well, and now she's going to get you killed!!"

I've been reflecting on my different reactions to GYO and Ito's other works, trying to figure out what makes one horror story work while another one fails. I'm not sure I've arrived at a definitive answer yet, but here are some of the thoughts I've come up with:

• Horror is creepier when the explanations involve vague metaphysical forces instead of hokey pseudo-science. Towards the end of the book, it's suggested that the legged fish may be the result of a military experiment involving biological weapons. The mad scientist figure (Dr. Koyanagi) reveals that his father was involved in a project that sounds similar to the events occurring in the present day. I won't go into the plot, but there are a couple details that made me think more of Monty Python than Jaws. In UZUMAKI, such troublesome details are avoided by attributing events to strange supernatural forces.
• Horrific transformations are more disturbing when they affect humans, not fish. In UZUMAKI, characters were horribly, grotesquely disfigured (bodies twisting; children turning into slugs; faces spiraling inward into nothingness); but in GYO the mutations occur to the fish. There are some scenes involving changes to humans, but they fail to elicit shock or horror. One scene involving the professor is telegraphed much too far in advance to be surprising; and another involving the girlfriend has all tension sucked out of it by a couple out-of-place panels depicting flatulence.
• Threats must actually be threatening in order to get the reader's heart pumping. GYO isn't the first horror story with a "monster" that failed to frighten me. I never got why Hitchcock's The Birds was supposed to be frightening either. In one sense, I can see how nature suddenly turning against man is somewhat upsetting. But when the threat can simply be stepped on, it loses a bit of its impact. The threat becomes even less threatening (and even more ludicrous) when the professor reveals that the fish are long since dead: All that animates them are the mechanical legs attached to them. Which doesn't explain why creatures are shown with their mouths opening and closing in an attempt to devour victims. Although it probably does explain why a shark, having cornered the hero in a bedroom, suddenly lunges out the window instead of killing him.

If you've been hearing good things about Junji Ito and are looking to try out some of his horror manga, I'd recommend passing on GYO and checking out UZUMAKI instead.

Second Opinion: Randy Lander from The Fourth Rail seemed to like GYO much more than I did, giving it a 9/10 rating.

Misc. Details: Published by Viz; 200 B&W pages; $12.95 US.  ¶ 7:12 AM | |