Museum of Terror Vol. #03

By Gary Thompson     October 24, 2007
Release Date: October 25, 2006



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Junji Ito
Translated by:Naomi Kokubo
Adapted by:

What They Say
Museum of Terror volumes one and two introduced readers to the horrific, beautiful creature Tomie... the woman no man could resist. Now Junji Ito, creator and curator of this horrible museum, brings a new type of exhibit to thrill and chill your senses!

First, his lovely violinists will escort you to dinner in a vampire den. Next, in a classroom full of grotesquely masked students, which one is a demon in disguise?

A musician's possessed arm attacks a schoolgirl by way of his mouth, and another young man listens to the tape recording left behind by a suicide victim. Why did she kill herself, and is he safe from its influence?

Swordplay, monk-ridden ruins, halls of upright corpses, infectious radio broadcasts, and murderous ceiling hair are among Ito's beastly offerings in this volume!

The Review
Museum of Terror vol. 3 is a collection of twelve short stories than ran in horror serials from 1987 to 1990. Since all of the stories are stand-alone, it is hard to provide a concise summary of what to expect, but suffice it to say that half of what is in this volume is so-so. Within the individual stories there are sometimes many neat or appropriately creepy moments, but they often fail to become cohesive and fall short of the grand effect that they are reaching for. Sometimes the stories themselves break the ever-so-important tension, mostly by accident, I would think, by including elements that are superfluous. “Sword of the Reanimator” in particular has one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments out of anything I have ever read, which, while still funny, is not good for a horror manga.

Even though this book is sometimes lacking, it is a very interesting read because you get to see a very clear and impressive progression of an artist and a storyteller. For the first stories, the art and the plot are just missing the elements that make them engaging. The art in “Bio-House” actually looks like it was traced in certain places, though I am certainly not making that claim. But when you look at the art from the first and last stories, the difference is night and day. Even from the very beginning it is easy to see that the overall shortcomings of these stories lie not with the imagination, but with the execution. So the redeeming good news is that as you move on from one story to the next, they become more and more satisfying. “Heart of a Father” marks the turning point where imagination and execution start to come together and it leaves you with that lingering sense of chills of an effective horror. While “Heart of a Father” still isn’t perfect, every story after that gets exponentially better: “The Village of Sirens” being truly exceptional, and the last story, “A Deserter in the House” is nothing short of a masterpiece of horror; both stories act as examples for what the rest of the book should have been.

In the end, I still recommend this book based on the absolute strength of the final stories, as well as that hilarious moment in “Sword of the Reanimator,” but I do so with reservations. That fact that over half the book is lackluster can’t be ignored, no matter how well it ends. But the same is true in reverse. Those last stories should not be missed by anyone who considers themselves a fan of horror or Junji ITO. Please note that the grading for volume is an average of all of the stories; the disproportionate quality from beginning to end is what accounts for the ratings.