{"id":20256,"date":"2025-11-17T07:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/?p=20256"},"modified":"2025-10-26T14:28:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:28:31","slug":"review-moan-junji-ito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/review-moan-junji-ito\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Moan by Junji Ito"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"banner<\/p>\n

\"coverMoan<\/em> by Junji Ito<\/strong><\/a>
\nVIZ Media (October 2025)<\/strong>
\nReviewed by Danica Davidson<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/em>, a short story collection. The first few stories run on the long end, and then there are a couple of shorter pieces.<\/p>\n

Each story shows off Ito\u2019s masterful artwork. He knows both how to draw characters beautifully and how to set a mood. The stories also showcase Ito\u2019s penchant for weirdness, creepiness and mystery.<\/p>\n

In \u201cSupernatural Transfer Student,\u201d 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\u2019s 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 . . .<\/p>\n

In the titular story \u201cMoan,\u201d 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\u2019ll be even crueler than her daughter in how she goes about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlood Orb Grove\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlesh-Covered Mystery\u201d shows a kindergarten teacher who is worried about one of her students. He is violent toward other kids, doesn\u2019t listen, and has an odd skin condition. When the teacher seeks out the boy\u2019s mother to figure out what\u2019s going on at home, she\u2019s in for a truly wild explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNear Misses\u201d is a pretty short story about a group of people trying to figure out if a friend of theirs died in a plane crash.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the Ground\u201d is another pretty short story, this time about adults going to their twenty-year junior high reunion and discovering a terrible secret.<\/p>\n

People who are already fans of Ito ought to check it out. People who are into horror comics but haven\u2019t tried out Ito ought to check it out as well and see why the manga creator is getting increasingly popular around the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue Reading! “Review: Moan by Junji Ito”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,444],"tags":[294,767,2217,3524,79,851],"class_list":["post-20256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-comics","tag-columns","tag-danica-davidson","tag-junji-ito","tag-moan","tag-reviews","tag-the-comic-vault"],"yoast_head":"\nReview: Moan by Junji Ito - 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