"The Liminal Zone" and "The Liminal Zone 2" by Junji Ito

Unfortunately, The Liminal Zone falls victim to a very standard short-story collection issue: parts of it are really good, and parts or it are mediocre. Of the four stories in the collection, the only one that really stuck with me in the way that I’ve come to expect from a Junji Ito story was Slumber. The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara was a decent second place to it, but the other two stories just didn’t quite work for me.

Even if I felt like half of this book fell short for me, it is still a Junji Ito collection. The artwork is phenomenal and the stories are well-made to set up the shocking, grotesque moments that these works thrive on. The book lacks the beautiful and haunting two-page spreads which are grotesque highlights in other Junji Ito manga, and I was disappointed to see them missing here. Despite this I did overall enjoy reading it, so I will probably pick up the follow-up collection at some point.

Everything above refers to the first “Liminal Zone”, and more or less all of it applies to it’s sequel. Replace the praise for “Slumber” with praise for “Ether Village.” Across both collections, the stories I liked made them worth reading. For the most part it seems Junji Ito’s short stories don’t do it for me in the same way that his longer works do.