There's an amazing Japanese horror anthology style manga called "skyhigh," which also got an excellent live action adaptation, but I don't think it's even been adapted into English.
Essentially, people who die in it due to "mishap" come before the guardian of the Gate of Grudges, and they have to decide whether to roam the Earth forever as a ghost, put a death curse on someone but go to Hell, or accept their fate and go to Heaven. It's a good mix of horror and psychological studies.
This one is interesting but not quite enough was shown to get me to read it!
A good horror themed manga you should check out(I've mentioned it before I do believe) is The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service! It is an awesome manga and does have some of the creepiest art I've ever seen!!
Or this one I've seen part of the anime of, but haven't read the Manga(it's not widely available here in the States)! That is creepy as all hell is GYO!! Bloated dead bodies on tripods running around and infecting people with what is basically Dysentery on steroids!
Oooh, a manga slipped into the Longbox of the Damned! Nice choice, btw. Uzumaki has a really tense, claustrophobic tone to it - rather appropriate when you consider one of the mangaka's influences was Lovecraft.
If you're ever looking for other horror manga for future installments of LotD, I could suggest a few things:
Gyo - this one is more obviously Lovecraftian in nature, as it's about rotting fishmen. It's also from Viz, like Uzumaki.
Afterschool Nightmare - this one is much more psychological in its approach. It's about a young intersexed kid who ends up getting roped into a strange sort of experiment in the nurse's office. There, select kids enter a dream world where their avatars interact and battle against one another, each avatar representing the deep pyschological issues within them. The trouble begins when he begins to recognize some of his classmates from that dream world. This is a 10 volume series that is sadly out of print, being put out by the now defunct Go Comi.
If there's one manga writer that you need to check out as far as horror goes, it's Eiji Otsuka. If you want to get technical, he's more of a mystery writer, but his writing tends to be both gruesome and expertly crafted. There are 3 works available by him, all from Dark Horse - MPD Psycho (about a homicide detective with DID), Mail (about a serial killer), and the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (about a Scooby-style gang of college kids with supernatural powers who helps the dead find rest). Sadly, the first two are out of print, but all are worth a look.
Finally, there's Monster by Naota Urasawa. It's a story about a surgeon who saves a young boy's life, only to have that boy to grow up into a sociopathic serial killer, and the surgeon may be the only one who can stop him. This was also put out by Viz, and is partially out of print - it's 18 volumes long, and a good third of it is hard to find at reasonable prices.
Next time you need a spiral to photograph please use at least a King Size Permanent marker to make the line. For most of the time it looked like you were spinning a blank post-it note. I know you saw that in editing but I had to say it. And on the pronunciation you were at least doing better than Roo from Clan of the Grey Wolf who just replaced japanese with random other language comments that do not say anything similar.
Can't help but wonder if leaving the town could have helped cure the spiral curse at least on the forehead scar.
Gonna be honest, at first I was skeptical about this new series, but I'm really like LBotD. It's nice to see you reviewing good comics for a change. Btw, will Muarto (sp?) ever be on ATFW, or is he just for this?
GOOD CHOICE. Holy christmas and christ, this series scared the ever living hell out of me. Though Vol. 2 was by far the worst -- mosquitoes, mushrooms, and pregnant women. *shudder*
When I think horror comics Uzumaki is the first in my mind, along with anything else written by Junji Ito. I know you usually don't review manga so I was pleasently surprised to see you doing an episode on it! Great stuff, keep up the good work!
You may have already gotten this comment -- and I apologize if this is so -- but I would also recommend "Tomie". It's by the same author/illustrator as "Uzumaki".
"Interesting choice of music for this one too. What made you choose Shostakovich?"
I couldn't find any music from the Uzumaki movie, so I asked myself what sort of musical form could represent a spiral? I went with a waltz because of the nature of repetition and waltz dances tend to involve spinning. I asked on twitter for some waltz recommendations and Shostakovich came up pretty quick. ^_^
Japan has a weird ass sense of terror. That panel of the spiral scar freaked me out. Freaking hell that was disturbing.
So, Manga huh? Didn't expect that for this series, a pleseant surprise and no doubt made some manga fans happy. It's always nice to showcase comics from outside the west. Not sure if this one is up my alley since Japanese horror freaks me out a lot but who knows, maybe I'll at least give it a look.
Oh good goddess not this series!! *dives under the bed*
I absolutely loved this series. It made me freak out at spirals for about a week, but it was a lovely, horrifying series. I do so love being scared hehehe.
By the way, Linkara, even a sharpie or a bold pen on a sticky note will have trouble being seen on the screen. Next time maybe find a marker with a thicker nib and try that.
Interesting that you chose a manga. I was considering suggesting the comic Song of Saya based off of the Japanese visual novel Saya no Uta* (which basically means Song of Saya) but I held off because you usually only do comics and because the comic adaptation apparently wasn't very good.
In any case Uzumaki is definitely a good place to start. Maybe you should try Drifting Classroom sometime?
"Ok, who would actually buy Longbox of the Damned, if Linkara were to put it on DVD. I know I would." Shut up and take my money! (And it's NOT Monopoly money! :) )
Oh man, Uzumaki. The series has big problems with me. The fact that it wanders around with no clear direction until the last volume, some chapters with only the looses of connections or none at all to spirals, the main characters are complete idiots and forget everything next chapter, and the ending made no sense to me. How the hell is she telling this story and who to in particular considering her fate? ARGH!!!!
Okay, definitely my favorite episode of Longbox so far XD That said, I've really been enjoying them all, I'm gonna miss the daily videos come November.
The sticky note, the Japanese pronunciation remark, the Sailor Moon reference.... Linkara has possesed Moerte!! Or the other way around... or something like that.
What is it with Japanese horror stories and hair? I think I'll give this one a pass. Sorry to Moarte but this one of your children is a bit faint of heart with some of these things. Well, to be more accurate, faint of stomach.
For the record, the only glitch I heard in your Japanese pronunciation was using the English-style silent E in Kirie's name. (In Japanese, you'd have an extra "eh"/"ay" sound at the end of how you pronounced it.) Otherwise, quite good!
Junji Ito, purveyor of grade-A nightmare fuel. He can make something harmless so terrifying. Egads. Just...egads. If his art style doesn't give you nightmares, you're made of stern stuff, that's for sure. I'm recalling Hellstar Remina right now. I tip my hat to you for looking at Uzumaki. I didn't expect any manga to be featured on Longbox of the Damned, but hey, it's just Japanese comics. Thanks for sharing. Now to resume hoping a monster planet doesn't come to our solar system and eat the Earth.
Good job on the pronunciation (other than as noted above leaving the last syllable off Kirie's name).
I've heard great things of the manga, but I have yet to check it out... while it doesn't look all that scary to me, it looks like it might be interesting. I want to see what the answer to the spiral's origin is.
Excellent review that series always creeped me out, if you ever do chose to do another manga for LOTD you should definetly check out Hell Girl, and yes I know that it did start out as an anime but it got a manga adaptation and a live action adaptation, one of the more interesting horror stories I have seen since Uzumaki. Keep up the Good Work.
Actually, Japanese words are very easy to read out and pronounce correctly every time without knowing the language.
When romanized, the letters make the same sounds in every word. The consonants make the same sounds as they normally would in an English word. There is a sound of theirs that's essentially a combination of the R and L sounds which we romanize as R. Using a hard R sound in this situation is perfectly acceptable.
The five vowels all make the same sound in every situation. A: ah I: ee U: oo E: ay/eh O: oh
Letters don't come together to make a new sound like in English either. When A and I are together they seem to be pronounced "eye" but if you listen closely it's actually "ah-ee". The only exceptions to this rule are "Ch" and "Sh". And as others have pointed out the E at the end of words isn't silent.
All around pretty easy. There's slightly more to it, mainly centered around the fact that Japanese is a pitch based language and English is a stress based one. But just remember this and you'll probably never mispronounce a Japanese word again. I hope this was helpful and if not, I'm sorry for taking out your time.
Actually, your Japanese was spot on.
ReplyDeleteThere's an amazing Japanese horror anthology style manga called "skyhigh," which also got an excellent live action adaptation, but I don't think it's even been adapted into English.
Essentially, people who die in it due to "mishap" come before the guardian of the Gate of Grudges, and they have to decide whether to roam the Earth forever as a ghost, put a death curse on someone but go to Hell, or accept their fate and go to Heaven. It's a good mix of horror and psychological studies.
Ok, who would actually buy Longbox of the Damned, if Linkara were to put it on DVD. I know I would.
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong but the music your using in this episode is from Howl's Moving Castle right? It sounds very familiar.
ReplyDeleteDid surprisingly well with the pronunciations, even through the accent.
ReplyDeleteThis one is interesting but not quite enough was shown to get me to read it!
ReplyDeleteA good horror themed manga you should check out(I've mentioned it before I do believe) is The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service! It is an awesome manga and does have some of the creepiest art I've ever seen!!
Or this one I've seen part of the anime of, but haven't read the Manga(it's not widely available here in the States)! That is creepy as all hell is GYO!! Bloated dead bodies on tripods running around and infecting people with what is basically Dysentery on steroids!
Oooh, a manga slipped into the Longbox of the Damned! Nice choice, btw. Uzumaki has a really tense, claustrophobic tone to it - rather appropriate when you consider one of the mangaka's influences was Lovecraft.
ReplyDeleteIf you're ever looking for other horror manga for future installments of LotD, I could suggest a few things:
Gyo - this one is more obviously Lovecraftian in nature, as it's about rotting fishmen. It's also from Viz, like Uzumaki.
Afterschool Nightmare - this one is much more psychological in its approach. It's about a young intersexed kid who ends up getting roped into a strange sort of experiment in the nurse's office. There, select kids enter a dream world where their avatars interact and battle against one another, each avatar representing the deep pyschological issues within them. The trouble begins when he begins to recognize some of his classmates from that dream world. This is a 10 volume series that is sadly out of print, being put out by the now defunct Go Comi.
If there's one manga writer that you need to check out as far as horror goes, it's Eiji Otsuka. If you want to get technical, he's more of a mystery writer, but his writing tends to be both gruesome and expertly crafted. There are 3 works available by him, all from Dark Horse - MPD Psycho (about a homicide detective with DID), Mail (about a serial killer), and the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (about a Scooby-style gang of college kids with supernatural powers who helps the dead find rest). Sadly, the first two are out of print, but all are worth a look.
Finally, there's Monster by Naota Urasawa. It's a story about a surgeon who saves a young boy's life, only to have that boy to grow up into a sociopathic serial killer, and the surgeon may be the only one who can stop him. This was also put out by Viz, and is partially out of print - it's 18 volumes long, and a good third of it is hard to find at reasonable prices.
Next time you need a spiral to photograph please use at least a King Size Permanent marker to make the line. For most of the time it looked like you were spinning a blank post-it note. I know you saw that in editing but I had to say it. And on the pronunciation you were at least doing better than Roo from Clan of the Grey Wolf who just replaced japanese with random other language comments that do not say anything similar.
ReplyDeleteCan't help but wonder if leaving the town could have helped cure the spiral curse at least on the forehead scar.
Dude we can bearly see the spiral thing in the video
ReplyDeleteGonna be honest, at first I was skeptical about this new series, but I'm really like LBotD. It's nice to see you reviewing good comics for a change. Btw, will Muarto (sp?) ever be on ATFW, or is he just for this?
ReplyDeleteAaaaaaaaaaaahUzamakiaaaaaaaah (fetal position)
ReplyDeleteGOOD CHOICE. Holy christmas and christ, this series scared the ever living hell out of me. Though Vol. 2 was by far the worst -- mosquitoes, mushrooms, and pregnant women. *shudder*
When I think horror comics Uzumaki is the first in my mind, along with anything else written by Junji Ito. I know you usually don't review manga so I was pleasently surprised to see you doing an episode on it! Great stuff, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy you did this! Junji Ito is amazing, so it's nice to see someone else who enjoys his work. I'm loving the Longbox series, by the way.
ReplyDeleteYou may have already gotten this comment -- and I apologize if this is so -- but I would also recommend "Tomie". It's by the same author/illustrator as "Uzumaki".
ReplyDeleteI'm actually somewhat intrigued by this title, which says something since I REALLY don't like horror stuff.
ReplyDeleteAlso, gotta say that this Moarte character is really coming into his own. I think it might be the accent. Great job, Linkara!
I'm absolutely loving Longbox of the Damned Lewis, you must do it again next year!
ReplyDeleteInteresting choice of music for this one too. What made you choose Shostakovich?
a true classic of horror-manga!
ReplyDelete"Interesting choice of music for this one too. What made you choose Shostakovich?"
ReplyDeleteI couldn't find any music from the Uzumaki movie, so I asked myself what sort of musical form could represent a spiral? I went with a waltz because of the nature of repetition and waltz dances tend to involve spinning. I asked on twitter for some waltz recommendations and Shostakovich came up pretty quick. ^_^
Oh no way! I was just about to recommend a Junji Ito comic. Uzumaki was good, but I'd have gone with The Window Next Door.
ReplyDeleteJapan has a weird ass sense of terror. That panel of the spiral scar freaked me out. Freaking hell that was disturbing.
ReplyDeleteSo, Manga huh? Didn't expect that for this series, a pleseant surprise and no doubt made some manga fans happy. It's always nice to showcase comics from outside the west. Not sure if this one is up my alley since Japanese horror freaks me out a lot but who knows, maybe I'll at least give it a look.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Japan has a weird ass sense of terror. That panel of the spiral scar freaked me out. Freaking hell that was disturbing."
ReplyDeleteYou think THAT was disturbing?
The scar gets bigger and eventually overlaps her face to her left eye. >=)
Oh good goddess not this series!! *dives under the bed*
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved this series. It made me freak out at spirals for about a week, but it was a lovely, horrifying series. I do so love being scared hehehe.
By the way, Linkara, even a sharpie or a bold pen on a sticky note will have trouble being seen on the screen. Next time maybe find a marker with a thicker nib and try that.
ReplyDeleteGreat video series! I hope it continues. I love it!!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with everyone else and trust me, you pronounced the Japanese words and names correctly.
ReplyDeleteAs for this story, I got to see how Uzumaki ends. It's interesting to see the Eastern side of their execution of Horror stories really.
Interesting that you chose a manga. I was considering suggesting the comic Song of Saya based off of the Japanese visual novel Saya no Uta* (which basically means Song of Saya) but I held off because you usually only do comics and because the comic adaptation apparently wasn't very good.
ReplyDeleteIn any case Uzumaki is definitely a good place to start. Maybe you should try Drifting Classroom sometime?
You think I should be scared of spirals? Just who the hell do you think I am?
ReplyDelete"Ok, who would actually buy Longbox of the Damned, if Linkara were to put it on DVD. I know I would."
ReplyDeleteShut up and take my money! (And it's NOT Monopoly money! :) )
This goes for AT4W too though.
Oh man, Uzumaki. The series has big problems with me. The fact that it wanders around with no clear direction until the last volume, some chapters with only the looses of connections or none at all to spirals, the main characters are complete idiots and forget everything next chapter, and the ending made no sense to me. How the hell is she telling this story and who to in particular considering her fate? ARGH!!!!
ReplyDeleteI saw the film to this it was disturbing for the most part but because they blended the stories together with no cohesive plot it was a bit of a mess.
ReplyDeleteThanks, now I'm gonna have nightmares. Again. And I still have the AT4W episode to watch.
ReplyDeleteThis is like creepypasta, I know I'm gonna dirty my pyjamas once I try to sleep (and fail), but it is sooooo addictive...
I'm actually shocked. No Naruto and Gurren Lagann jokes?
ReplyDeleteNah, I joke. Great video.
Okay, definitely my favorite episode of Longbox so far XD That said, I've really been enjoying them all, I'm gonna miss the daily videos come November.
ReplyDeleteThe sticky note, the Japanese pronunciation remark, the Sailor Moon reference.... Linkara has possesed Moerte!! Or the other way around... or something like that.
ReplyDeleteIf those people think that spirals are scary just wait till they see PARALLEL LINES!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYou did pretty well with the pronouncing the Japanese words. There are plenty of Horror mangas where that came from.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with Japanese horror stories and hair? I think I'll give this one a pass. Sorry to Moarte but this one of your children is a bit faint of heart with some of these things. Well, to be more accurate, faint of stomach.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, the only glitch I heard in your Japanese pronunciation was using the English-style silent E in Kirie's name. (In Japanese, you'd have an extra "eh"/"ay" sound at the end of how you pronounced it.) Otherwise, quite good!
ReplyDeleteJunji Ito, purveyor of grade-A nightmare fuel. He can make something harmless so terrifying. Egads. Just...egads. If his art style doesn't give you nightmares, you're made of stern stuff, that's for sure. I'm recalling Hellstar Remina right now. I tip my hat to you for looking at Uzumaki. I didn't expect any manga to be featured on Longbox of the Damned, but hey, it's just Japanese comics. Thanks for sharing. Now to resume hoping a monster planet doesn't come to our solar system and eat the Earth.
ReplyDeleteMoarte managed to make me laugh and also freak me out all at the same time. This manga also looks terrifying and I want to read it very badly now.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the pronunciation (other than as noted above leaving the last syllable off Kirie's name).
ReplyDeleteI've heard great things of the manga, but I have yet to check it out... while it doesn't look all that scary to me, it looks like it might be interesting. I want to see what the answer to the spiral's origin is.
The Thing was originally nominated for a Razzie?
ReplyDeleteOK, now at least I know there might come the day when Sucker Punch gets the love it deserves
Excellent review that series always creeped me out, if you ever do chose to do another manga for LOTD you should definetly check out Hell Girl, and yes I know that it did start out as an anime but it got a manga adaptation and a live action adaptation, one of the more interesting horror stories I have seen since Uzumaki. Keep up the Good Work.
ReplyDeleteDo you happen to know if the artist of this manga was the same one who drew "The Enigma of Amigara Fault"? The art style is similar...
ReplyDeleteHooray a manga! If you do another manga, I hope you do High School of the Dead.
ReplyDeleteNow, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go get some peach juice...
Actually, Japanese words are very easy to read out and pronounce correctly every time without knowing the language.
ReplyDeleteWhen romanized, the letters make the same sounds in every word. The consonants make the same sounds as they normally would in an English word. There is a sound of theirs that's essentially a combination of the R and L sounds which we romanize as R. Using a hard R sound in this situation is perfectly acceptable.
The five vowels all make the same sound in every situation.
A: ah
I: ee
U: oo
E: ay/eh
O: oh
Letters don't come together to make a new sound like in English either. When A and I are together they seem to be pronounced "eye" but if you listen closely it's actually "ah-ee". The only exceptions to this rule are "Ch" and "Sh". And as others have pointed out the E at the end of words isn't silent.
All around pretty easy. There's slightly more to it, mainly centered around the fact that Japanese is a pitch based language and English is a stress based one. But just remember this and you'll probably never mispronounce a Japanese word again. I hope this was helpful and if not, I'm sorry for taking out your time.
That's what drove Fibonacci utterly insane.
ReplyDelete