Gyo 2

Here we get the mutant circus. Here we get bloated scary humans, and here we get more mad scientists who engineer this kind of stuff. This kind of FLYING stuff. The ending put me off ever so slightly, but I love it all the same. I LOVE this series. There’s just enough bizarre shit happening, a weird enough threat, elements that come from nowhere, and enough going on to the main character that it winds up perfect.

Gyo ends, and the volume is filled out with two other short stories. One’s only about four pages long and is one of the most hilarious manga shorts I’ve ever read. The last is just sort of… short and horrifying. Seriously.

AWESOME.

Gyo 1

Man, I LOVE Junji Ito. It’s worth tracking down all his series (some are old ComicsOne series, and the others are old Viz series) because they are the best horror comics in English. Of course, I haven’t yet read any of Hideshi Hino’s body of work, but yes. Junji Ito.

I thought Uzumaki was amazing and nothing could match it, but this may have beat it. I read both volumes over the course of about an hour and a half, and I loved the story. It has just the right amount of bizarre plot element (stench and walking fish), landshark attacks, government conspiracy, weird WWII throwbacks, mutations, and bitchy girlfriends to make it amazing. It’s a bit more compact than Uzumaki, and the threat’s a little less abstract, and that may be a matter of taste, but I liked this threat a bit better than the spirals. Both are good though.

AWESOME. Worth the expensive cover price if you find it anywhere.