5/22/2023 0 Comments Smashed by junji itoOther stories were fantastically horrifying. They had no bite, they had no fear or interesting build-up. Some of these stories were extremely lame to me. The first thing I have to state, emphatically, is that there is a beautiful display of different cultural ideals here. I bought Smashed on Halloween and began reading. Most of what I found was American made, which didn’t interest me at all, until a certain publisher approached me, but I’ll save that for next week… I wanted samurai, but I also wanted it to be frightening, I wanted horror and weird fiction to creep into my gritty samurai shit. I wanted more samurai stuff, I wanted Kurosawa. I picked it up because I had just finished the PS4 game Ghost of Tsushima. Junji Ito’s Smashed straddles the line between the two things fantastically. So understand that there are aspects of Japanese media and culture that I love and fanboy out over, and aspects that I just straight up cannot stand. I’ve had an easier time finding horror and cool things I like in Manga form, though a lot of what I have enjoyed actually came out of Korea. But at the same time, I mostly strongly dislike anime and most jrpgs. I love Kurosawa, Toho is my lifeblood, I enjoy samurai and ninja in books, comics and movies. Here’s a full disclaimer, I am both a fan of and a critic of Japanese media.
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