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A review by menschmaschine
No Longer Human by Junji Ito
3.0
The original No Longer Human is probably my favourite novel of all time. I've read it several times and its impact on me never wanes. Sadly, Ito's adaptation is painfully disappointing.
Adapting the original text into manga requires a number of artistic liberties that work to its detriment. The prose is simplified, introspection is sacrificed in the name of action and internal monologue is sacrificed in the name of dialogue simple enough to be placed into neat little bubbles that don't make up much of the panel. Of course, these are necessary given the medium and Ito's art is beautiful enough to make the reader forget about it for most of the time.
The liberties taken by Ito in regards to the story itself are something else entirely. By welcoming the novel into Ito's preferred genre (because although No Longer Human is a horrifying tale one can't exactly call it a horror), full of recurring ghostly figures and waking terrors (I'm sure Ito saw at least a bit of himself in Yozo, the protagonist - an artist who, even when painting his lovers, can only produce images of horror), the tone of the text shifts from cold and unforgiving realism to that of yet another ghost story. Perhaps I expected something more avantgarde - perhaps my expectations were misguided and I had simply hoped to read the original novel again with the occasional illustration by Ito - either way, the work didn't deliver.
Adapting the original text into manga requires a number of artistic liberties that work to its detriment. The prose is simplified, introspection is sacrificed in the name of action and internal monologue is sacrificed in the name of dialogue simple enough to be placed into neat little bubbles that don't make up much of the panel. Of course, these are necessary given the medium and Ito's art is beautiful enough to make the reader forget about it for most of the time.
The liberties taken by Ito in regards to the story itself are something else entirely. By welcoming the novel into Ito's preferred genre (because although No Longer Human is a horrifying tale one can't exactly call it a horror), full of recurring ghostly figures and waking terrors (I'm sure Ito saw at least a bit of himself in Yozo, the protagonist - an artist who, even when painting his lovers, can only produce images of horror), the tone of the text shifts from cold and unforgiving realism to that of yet another ghost story. Perhaps I expected something more avantgarde - perhaps my expectations were misguided and I had simply hoped to read the original novel again with the occasional illustration by Ito - either way, the work didn't deliver.