The monsters of Junji Ito: Part 2

The mind of Junji Ito is one of the most scarier places to imagine, a place where nightmares born. This is the second part (you can check the first part here: The monsters of Junji Ito: Part 1), on my way to build the bestiary of the creatures appearing in his works. Welcome again to a world of grotesque and disturbing abominations.

• Peeping Toms

Monsters full of eyes spying people in crowded houses. They could be the evolution of the voyeurs spying other people through holes in the wall in a town where people are losing their privacy. They could also be creatures feeding of voyeurism, and their existence somehow made people to live more crowded and giving up on their privacy

Source: The town without streets

• The connected women

Women sharing the same room in an hospital. In reality they are a unique creature with one mind connected by fibers of nerves coming out from their mouths. They use the spikes at the end of these tentacles to kill and drink blood. If the nerves are severed, the people connected will die.

Source: The conversation room

• Jean Pierre

Just a killer puppet, straight and easy. However, this little toy is directing a school where humans can be controlled like puppets in order to achieve their impossible dreams. Creepy cloned puppetters will move them from hiding places, for example, making a girl dance like a famous classic ballerina.

Source: House of marionettes

• The doll disease

A sort of strange disease is transforming children in doll-like creatures. The real problem is what will happen at the final stage of the pathology, when the body is not even comparable to a doll, but to an amorphous monstrosity.

Source: Hello dollies

• The grandfather ectoplasm

The ghost of the grandfather of a really weird family, still watching on them even in this form.

Source: The bizarre Hizuri siblings

• The dreamer

A man is having long dreams. In few hours of sleep his brain his able to experience 10 years of life. The more he dreams, the more his body will modify in a monster, ending up in an unrecognizable creature.

Source: The long dream

• The horrible woman at the window

This ugly and grotesque woman appears in the window in front of the room of a boy, only at night. She will talk to him in a sweet way, trying to get close and to enter in his room. Each day her window get closer to the one of the boy, and one day she will able to enter.

Source: The adjacent window

• Head with long hair

A girl is controlled by her own hair, which grows up without control and attacks people. After her death, what remains is only a head that moves around like a spider by her own hair.

Source: Long hair in the attic

• The doll teacher

A teacher is transformed in a human-size puppet, after the curse of a student. Not only she has a really creepy appearance, but she is also deadly aggressive and will try to strangle her students with a rope.

Source: Souichi’s diary of delights

• Watching graves

The graves are spying the life of alive people. They turn to watch inside people’s house, curious of their life. They have faces and eyes, to always watch.

Source: The graveman

• Woman covered in tattoos

A woman in need ask for the wrong advice to search bigger problems in order to heave a better life. One of her brilliant ideas is to cover herself in tattoos. What could go wrong?

Source: Lovesick Dead – Chapter 2

• Tomie abomination

In a mysterious mansion a doctor is experimenting with the unnatural regenerative power of Tomie. The result is a monstrous abomination made by several bodies and faces connect in a caterpillar-like entity.

Source: Tomie

Monster of the Week: Shadow Chie (Persona 4)

Origin: Persona 4

Appearance: A complex and elaborated design for a interesting and innovative creature. The main figure is a female woman, wearing a yellow revealing bikini and high-heeled boots. The head is covered by a bizarre and creepy triangular hood with a smile on it. To highlight her mistress-like nature, the woman is also wielding a red whip. A long black mantle is going down from her shoulders, taking the form of feathers mixed to shadows. The most disturbing feature of this creature is the throne of unnaturally pale schoolgirl-like mannequins supporting her. The girls are clearly suffering while trying to support the mistress, bending in tiring positions. The mistress is also imprisoning them with a leash made of chains, highlighting their submissive role.

Symbolism: Everything in this creature is focused around the concept of a master and slave relationship, a complex bound based on dependency and ego. The dominatrix figure is bounding the other under her control, forcing them to suffer just to please her, just to keep her in a comfortable position. The schoolgirl-mannequins are clearly in an uncomfortable position, both physically and mentally, in contrast with the smiling face on the hood of the dominatrix. They are unnaturally white, like if they were wiped out of any personality and expressive feature, simple objects abused by a dominant personality. This is also reflected in the choice of the colors, having the dominant character to be highlighted by the color yellow, while the victims are almost part of the background, losing what is making them humans.

The concept behind this creature can also symbolise the bullying at school. This is supported by the school uniforms worn by the submissive characters, and by the fact that the videogame Persona is set in a high-school environment. Bullies tend to build their personality on the fears of the others, represented here by the throne-like structure physically build on the submissive characters. Bullies need to intimidate and to command to feel important, without having submissive and scared people around, they will just fall on the ground. Bullied students tend to lost their personality, to live in fear just to limit the abuses their are suffering.