Review: Mimi's Tales of Terror
This holiday we give Thanks for Junji Ito's latest release
Welcome to another review of our first graphic novel by the master of horror manga Junji Ito! I’m very excited to review this one for you all and I’ve been an avid fan of Ito since I first read Uzumaki (can’t wait for the cartoon to be released). I hope you all enjoy it!
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We begin with a simple story of a couple driving home in the rain. Only it’s not just a simple rain cloud passing by overhead, it’s a torrent of rain that seems to be hitting the car from all angles. Mimi, our protagonist, claims to see something standing on top of a utility pole in the middle of the storm. At first, she notes it as a simple observation. Maybe this is just her imagination. But her eyes do not deceive her, as her boyfriend, Naoto, sees it as well.
It’s an old woman.
Impossibly standing on top of a utility pole in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Understandably, they continue to drive on, too spooked by what they’re witnessing, and attempt to leave the area. Out of nowhere, the old woman lands on the hood of their car and leers at them with a hideous smile. They stop the car dead in its tracks, terrified out of their minds and when they emerge they discover that the old woman has vanished. She appeared and disappeared as quickly as a scrap paper being blown around in the storm winds.
We then move into the rest of the tales of terror, as Ito wastes no time in his desire to deliver the scares.
Mimi’s Tales of Terror involves nine different stories of varying lengths all containing our protagonist Mimi, as well as an unrelated bonus story. As the book progresses, Mimi is caught either directly or via her friends into increasingly horrific stories, about malevolent spirits, cursed rooms, and haunted beaches and cemeteries. Each story gets more disturbing than the last.
Ito’s familiar artistry is unassuming to the uninitiated, of course. When one first cracks open a book by him you’ll never think that one of his stories may scar you for life i.e. (Enigma of Amigara Fault or Uzumaki). Yet, he can skillfully jump from drawing an innocent and slender protagonist to sketching out a charred demon reaching out for your soul that’s ripped straight from your nightmares with ease.
Ito’s artwork is easily recognizable and unmistakable.
The characters throughout the book don’t reach any profound depth, but do they need to be for a collection of short stories such as this? I don’t want Mimi to be traumatized by evil spirits, but at some point, she needs to realize that she might need an exorcism if she keeps finding herself in increasingly terrifying situations.
Somehow Naoto is even less aware that maybe all of these terrifying happenings aren’t just spooky coincidences. We never do find out if any of these events are tied together for some strange reason, but it hardly affects the collection in a negative way.
The pacing of the collection felt just right. After reading the first tale, there really wasn’t anything more to say about the old woman on the utility pole, and by the time we start to become curious we’re already on to the next story. I didn’t feel as though any of the stories in Mimi’s Tales of Terror were too long for my liking.
At various points in the stories, there are breaks of humor, although some stories were too short to even make it necessary to enable the reader to let out some steam. This won’t be as emotionally exhausting as some of Ito’s other reads, fortunately.
I didn’t have many criticisms for this collection, save for the dialogue being written in a way that made the characters sound like they had some sort of Southern twang with ‘yas’, ‘yers’, and ‘right quicks.’ It happened so often that I expected a “Y’all come back now, ya hear?” being said at some point. There was a note from the translators that all of these stories are supposed to take place around a certain prefecture of Japan and that the dialect was intended to mirror what it might sound like in English. Not sure what exactly got lost in translation but it was a little distracting, to say the least.
It should also be noted that some of these stories have been out for years and accumulated into a full short story collection. On the Utility Pole has been out for a while and you might have even seen the image of the old woman with her hair blowing in the rain on a hipster’s sweater long before this was even released.
In conclusion, I would consider this one of Junji Ito’s better collection of short stories, there’s plenty of imagery contained in the pages to help give you nightmares and the pacing moves fast enough to ensure that you aren’t bored with unnecessary context.
If you are an avid Junji Ito fanboy like I am, this is sure to look good in the collection.
Written by Oscar Templeton
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