5/11/2023 0 Comments Shiver junjiYet I wonder if this sliver of ubiquity, carved off by the endless posting and reposting of images that drive so much of social media, risks transforming Itō into a type of internet fauna: a Junji Itō that merely exists, ex nihilo, without consideration of the reality inhabited by the artist. I don't know if those names come directly from Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu (Kodansha Comics, 2015 emphasis added), but this is an artist at a level of general visibility high enough that I can't discount the possibility out of hand. There's pair of cats named in the story: Yan and Mu. Junji Itō, of course! Or: I'm sure you've heard of the Kristen Roupenian short story "Cat Person" by now. "Who drew this?" someone inevitably asks. This is another way of saying that his comics are pirated a lot enough so that the initial acts of piracy become stock for subsequent excerpts and details, often posted out of affection. And, provided you are extremely online, you've also heard of Junji Itō, surely among the most internet-famous of horror cartoonists, whose works are passed around - be they full stories or juicy images - on any platform for the dissemination of images you can think of. Hey, wanna hear a scary story? The internet has transformed the impulse for expressing affection into a dehumanizing and monetizable force! Well, I didn't say it was going to be a new story.
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