Moan by Junji Ito
VIZ Media (October 2025)
Reviewed by Danica Davidson
Junji Ito, a popular horror manga creator in Japan, has been getting increasingly known in America. More and more of his horror works are being released in English, with the most recent being Moan, a short story collection. The first few stories run on the long end, and then there are a couple of shorter pieces.
Each story shows off Ito’s masterful artwork. He knows both how to draw characters beautifully and how to set a mood. The stories also showcase Ito’s penchant for weirdness, creepiness and mystery.
In “Supernatural Transfer Student,” a school has a supernatural club of students who believe in supernatural phenomenon. One boy in it has the power to break spoons with his mind. A new transfer student shows up, and he shows an easy way to fake breaking a spoon with one’s mind, putting into question whether or not the other boy was also faking. However, then real supernatural things start happening, and it seems the transfer student is causing them . . .
In the titular story “Moan,” a girl rejects a boy for being too dirty, and then we see that she lives in a home where her mother is absolutely, fanatically obsessed with keeping things clean. And she’ll be even crueler than her daughter in how she goes about it.
“Blood Orb Grove” follows a young couple who get in a car crash after a mass of blood unexpectedly splatters their window. Stuck in rural Japan without a phone, they travel to an abandoned village, where they do find one resident. This tale offers a unique and provocative twist to the vampire legend, and might be my favorite from this collection.
“Flesh-Covered Mystery” shows a kindergarten teacher who is worried about one of her students. He is violent toward other kids, doesn’t listen, and has an odd skin condition. When the teacher seeks out the boy’s mother to figure out what’s going on at home, she’s in for a truly wild explanation.
“Near Misses” is a pretty short story about a group of people trying to figure out if a friend of theirs died in a plane crash.
“Under the Ground” is another pretty short story, this time about adults going to their twenty-year junior high reunion and discovering a terrible secret.
People who are already fans of Ito ought to check it out. People who are into horror comics but haven’t tried out Ito ought to check it out as well and see why the manga creator is getting increasingly popular around the globe.
