This manga is an adaptation of a novel by Dazai Osamu by Ito Junji. I have not read the novel, but there have been other manga adaptations and even a partial anime adaptation, of which I’ve read the manga adaptation by Furuya Usamaru, so I’ll basically be doing this review from the context of essentially comparing this adaptation to Furuya’s adaptation. Afflicted with an intense feeling of alienation and otherness and finding it nearly impossible to understand those who surround him, Ōba resorts to buffoonery in early years to establish interpersonal relationships. Establishing the mood of the rest of the book, Ōba describes humans as he is separate from them, describing them foolishly and always perplexed by humans. He also describes numerous times that his antics is a way to not anger humans and not to be taken seriously to avoid reprimands. He is sexually abused by a male servant and a female servant during his childhood but decides that reporting it would be useless. No Longer Human focuses heavily on Yozo’s severely broken perception of the world and how he keeps destroying himself in mind and body (helped in no small part by his environment); and in stories like this, my expectation is that the character’s actions and mindset be clearly understandable. In this pursuit, the manga succeeds partially, but it could have done so much more. An unpleasant and unappealing semi-autobiographical iteration of the artist as a tortured soul is adapted into a quasi-horror manga by Junji Ito filled with dread and supernatural flourishes. I haven't read the original novel, but my understanding is that Ito has taken many liberties, including the insertion of original author Osamu Dazai as an actual character.

My interpretation of the original book and Furuya’s interpretation continue to differ wildly. Furuya’s Yozo is less sympathetic than Dazai’s (who, granted, tended to be pretty terrible), more likely to blame his father for his own problems, and more calculating. Rather than just sort of being taken in by Shizuko, he does his best to manipulate her into offering to take him in, making use of both his good looks and his abilities in bed. the other world and ends up going from tragedy to tragedy. It’s an immensely depressing story that’s even a bit scary in how it explores the human psyche to show how things can so easily go terribly wrong. But at the same time, it’s not horror, it’s a psychological drama. And that’s the core of why I think this adaptation isn’t very good. This story relies heavily on seeing the world through the eyes of the protagonist, particularly in how he sees others and how his viewpoint affects how interacts with them. Oba is a complex character that sees the world in a very twisted way and that changes over time, but he isn’t insane. His thought process makes sense but from a broader view it’s clearly screwed up in such a way that will hurt him. Conveying Oba’s viewpoint in such a way that the reader can understand it but can also see the flaws in it is the essence of this story. This adaptation simply isn’t able to do that very well. The way Oba is basically portrayed in this is as a suffering artist type, which is a vast oversimplification. It also doesn’t feel like it fleshes out the people around Oba much at all and thus it’s really hard to see the effect they have on him. Thus, the majority of the manga just feels like it revels in his flaws and mistakes, without really putting proper effort into conveying where they came from. All it really feels like is the story of a character who is suffering, which kind of misses the point I feel. TW: sexual abuse, rape, graphic mature scenes and violence, suicide, depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, parental neglect, domestic cheating I have some conflicting emotions regarding this one. While I love Itou's style and tales his stories are plot driven. The characters are very much a vehicle for the story same as what you'd get from an episode of the Twilight Zone. This graphic novel is a departure from Ito's trademark narratives, interpreting as it does a Dazai classic that stands as one of the best-ever selling books in Japan. While the original seems to have focused on the sadness and pathos that marked the existential crisis that our lead (who seems to have been patterned after Dazai himself) labored under, true to Ito's style this book lets the horrors and absurdities of his experiences take the limelight.In this version, Yōzō meets Osamu Dazai himself during an asylum recovery, thus giving him permission to tell his story in his next book. The manga includes a retelling of Dazai's suicide from Ōba's perspective. Occasionally, Yozo’s worldview will leak into the art: he’ll be depicted as a helpless marionette, or the people around him will be depicted as faceless beings incessantly staring at him; and one standout sequence shows Yozo drawing a manga, filling it with grotesque and horrifying images, venting his feelings through his art, clearly expressing exactly what’s going on that we don’t see the rest of the time. Although the manga’s artwork becomes more expressive as the story goes on, it is ordinary for the most part, and the occurrences I’ve mentioned are the exception rather than the rule, and arguably a case of too little too late. The artwork doesn’t do quite enough to communicate Yozo’s thoughts and emotions, leaving the rest of the job up to the writing. Takeichi brings a reproduction of a self-portrait by van Gogh, calling it “the picture of a ghost.” Intrigued, Yozo shows Takeichi a book of Modigliani reproductions, which delights Takeichi. Yozo experiences an epiphany: through honesty, art can be used to paint the dark and damaged side of human beings. He begins producing a number of self-portraits, which he shows to nobody but Takeichi, who prophesies that Yozo will become a great painter in the future. What a bizarre and boring book! Horror manga artist Junji Ito adapts Osamu Dazai’s 1948 novel No Longer Human into comic form with mixed results. Ito’s art is fantastic as always but the story, etc.? Yeah, all of that is utter rubbish! No Longer Human by Usamaru Furuya is the first of four manga adaptations of the 1948 novel by Osamu Dazai, which I haven’t read yet. For years, this manga has been out of print, until November 2022, when Kodansha released a 3-in-1 omnibus volume containing the entire series. How does it fare? Find out here.

Furuya also makes Yozo dwell more on the attempted double-suicide, which I recall not affecting him too deeply by the beginning of "The Third Notebook." This, plus earlier references to Yozo's father, seems to be a means of fleshing out Yozo's character a bit more, ironing out wrinkles Furuya may perceive in the story, but it all seems extraneous... at least for someone like me who's read the novel too many times to the point of being confused at these minute changes. Ressler, Karen (February 11, 2019). "Viz Licenses Junji Ito's No Longer Human Manga". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. No Longer Human is told in the form of notebooks left behind by the principal character Ōba Yōzō ( 大庭葉蔵). These are divided into three chapters which chronicle Ōba's life from his early childhood to his late twenties. The notebooks are bookended by a preface and an epilogue by a nameless narrator, who is given Ōba's notebooks by a mutual acquaintance ten years after they had been written. Pesadilla existencial donde el descenso a los infiernos de un autor, está directamente contrapuesto con la propia ansiedad de tener que vivir el día a día cuando realmente apenas es capaz de luchar contra la oscuridad que envuelve su vida. Junji Ito capta a la perfección la esencia de Osamu Dazai. Furuya's adaptation of No Longer Human takes place nearly seventy years after Dazai's original. Set in modern day Tokyo, Dazai's tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japan's far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts, referred to in the novel as "memorandums," which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties. The comic is narrated by the artist, Furuya himself playing the role originally held by the author Dazai, who makes appearances at the start of each volume. In many ways, it could be said that Furuya has traveled a path that may be similar to Dazai's. Maybe that is what led these two together after 100 years.

Statistics

Dazai, Osamu (1948). No Longer Human. Translated by Keene, Donald. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions Publishing. Mateo, Alex (January 13, 2020). "My Hero Academia Ranks #3 on U.S. Monthly Bookscan December List". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on July 7, 2022 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. I’ve assigned this story a lot of weight because its source material is a classic, and Junji Ito adapted it into a manga before Usamaru Furuya. The novel is a significant contribution to misanthropic literature, something I care a lot about.