Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > Sensor

My second new Juni Ito horror manga in a week, to prepare for Halloween. Just finished Lovesickness, which is maybe novella length, and not his best, but creepy. The title of this one, Sensor, refers roughly to our senses as a way of experiencing the world. Not sure why it has this title in particular. So this one I maybe didn’t like quite as much, though it is quite different from the bloody Lovesickness. This one has a kind of psychic orientation and a religious cult. I think it has a kind of Lovecraftian supernatural air to it. Cosmic horror.

Near Kiyokami, there’s a volcano, into which Miguel, a Christian missionary is thrown, in keeping with an edict against Christianity during the Edo period in Japan. After that murder, golden hair falls all over the village, for some reason (well, Miguel had golden hair, but beyond that. . . . no real reason, though it would seem the goodness of Miguel showers down on the people. The hair transmits psychic powers to the villagers). (I am not smirking as I write this! One element of Ito's horror is the ludicrous. He likes pulpy campy stuff as much as any horror manga-ka anywhere).

''So then maybe. . . this is angel hair? But the nature of angel hair is still a mystery. Some people say it's spider silk or that it comes from UFOs.''

Kyoko Byakuya, she of the flowing golden hair, visits the village and sees this hair everywhere. Bad things begin to happen after that--horror, remember? And the religious cult, natch, with its creepy leader. And then--maybe the best part--suicide bugs (no, gotta read it to get it). No real reason for the bugs except creepy.

In Ito’s afterword he says he had 1,000 words to write in the afterword and admits he doesn’t have much to say:

"I had to write a thousand words for this afterword, so I went on and on there about things that didn't really need to be said."

which gives you a sense of the lack of purpose of the whole book, kind of casual, diy, random plotting. He tells us he had a plan, abandoned that, added a reporter to try a different point of view, left the reporter in and then sort of abandoned him.

So if you want to try Ito, try one of his best--Uzumaki or Tomie-- and not this, though if you pick this up as yr first Ito it is still better than most horror out there. It still has this batshit crazy approach that Ito takes, like Deep Unreason, close to madness, and of course great art, at the top of his powers.