History Creator / JunjiIto

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Many of his stories are fairly timeless, with any specific technology or fashion trends that would otherwise date them being absent, or so generic they can't be tied to a time period. ''Manga/{{Remina}}'' is set in the future, but how far in the future isn't clear-- the year is given as "20XX", which only narrows it down to sometime in the 21st century. One of the few exceptions is the oneshot ''Deserter'', which explicitly takes place in 1953.

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Many of his stories are fairly timeless, with any specific technology or fashion trends that would otherwise date them being absent, or so generic they can't be tied to a time period.

* ''Literature/{{Stitches}}'' (collection of {{short stor|y}}ies by Hirokatsu Kihara with illustrations by Ito, plus a manga adaptation of another of Kihara's stories)

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Leans towards the cynical side, as one might expect from a horror writer, with most stories ending with the protagonist dead/transformed/insane/[[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]. That being said, he's not without idealism, and some stories do end with bittersweet/[[RayOfHopeEnding ray of hope]] endings, and even a straight Earn Your Happy Ending if you are '''EXTREMELY''' lucky. And for all the horrible things that happen to his protagonists, he is completely against the idea of nihilism and your actions being useless, as Manga/''{{Remina}}'[='=]s aesop is essentially ''no matter how bleak things seem to be, so long as you are still alive there is hope for the future''

* ''Manga/MimisGhostStories'' (adapted from the book by Kihara Hirokatsu and Nakayama Ichiro)

** The anime does this to some of his works. For example, the manga version of "Further Tales of Oshikiri" ends with Mio asking Oshikiri if they'll ever return home; the anime has [[spoiler: ''another Oshikiri'' sneak up behind them]] as she says this.
** The television special version of “Long Dream” also does this, in part due to the story’s short length; in addition to covering the entirety of the original plot, the special adds additional plot elements, and continues beyond the ending into a second act that presents a second course of events with an entirely new conclusion.

* AlienAbduction: Subverted in the story "Venus in the Blind Spot". A woman named Mariko, who is obsessed with [=UFO=]s and aliens, is the target of the affections of several young men. However, she turns invisible whenever they approach her, which together with gaps of missing time convinces them that they have been abducted by aliens. [[spoiler: The truth is more mundane, but no less disturbing: Mariko's father, hoping to dissuade the attention of her would-be suitors, had them kidnapped and implanted with a special chip in their brains that blocks her from their view when they get close to her.]]

* AntiMagic: The psychic sisters in "Ghosts of Prime Time" can't make the protagonist laugh with their psychic powers possibly because of him being psychic himself as he can see ghosts. [[spoiler: They try to kill him after he learns their secret, he survives but his best friend does not.]]
* AssholeVictim:

** "Ghosts of Prime Time" centers on an unfunny stand-up duo becoming famous by [[spoiler: astrally projecting to tickle the audience and make them all laugh hysterically. They also tickle the protagonist's friend to death because the protagonist could see spirits and figured out their secret.]]

* BadassBystander: In "Hanging Blimp", when the titular monstrosities attack one man [[HopeSpot grabs a crossbow and shoots one of them, killing it instantly]]. [[spoiler: Unfortunately. It also kills the girl it's linked to, with her head deflating in the same fashion]].

** Inverted in "Memories": [[spoiler: The protagonist has lost her memories of her childhood. Although beautiful, she has just one memory of herself with a hideous/deformed face, and is terrified of returning to that state. She eventually learns that her memory is of her twin sister, whom she murdered out of terror of becoming ugly like her sister.]]

** "A Father's Love". [[spoiler: Tsukasa is able to save Miho and her mother from Todo, who subsequently has a HeelRealization and commits suicide. Despite this, Miho's two brothers are still dead, and Todo's death is treated with a degree of sadness after we learn that his actions were due to his [[FreudianExcuse own crappy childhood]].]]

** In "The Rib Woman", [[spoiler: the titular character is an unstable patient whose repeated rib-removal surgeries left her with a mass of wires in her chest, and then, ''later patients' removed ribs'', replacing those she had lost.]]
** In "Children of the Earth", some kids are found buried to their waists in the soil after going missing. [[spoiler: When their parents try to pull them out, they discover that their bodies ''don't end'', before what seem to be the children get sucked into the ground completely and disappear.]]
** "Layers of Fear" has a girl who, by means of a curse, is not structured like a normal human, but is composed of layers of her past selves, new ones growing over the older ones. When she has an accident and this is discovered, her overbearing mother goes too far and tries to peel off the layers to restore her to her two-year-old self. [[spoiler: Yeah, it turns out that growing changes your proportions, [[WhamShot messing up the structure of past layers]], and when she regrows them, [[NothingIsScarier one can only imagine from the shadowed back view how horrific she looks.]]]]
* CameBackWrong:

** Technically, Reimi in "Layers of Fear", both mentally and physically, and in regards to both an attempt at de-aging her and in her recovery from that incident, as both are failures to return her to a desired prior state. [[spoiler: Both turn out badly because her unusual layered structure doesn't disregard the proportional factors of growing up, getting an unexpectedly twisted body when trying to peel off layers to de-age her. However, she comes back wrong in regards to being an adult again, too, as she has to live with that altered structure as a new base for growing layers again, while now stuck with the younger mind of her two-year-old self.]]
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin:

* CreepyCemetery: This setting is sometimes featured, and played for additional horror in context-- Japan rarely practices burial, so the notion of whole corpses interred in the ground is seen as very bizarre and disgusting. That’s not to say graveyards can’t be found in Japan (as the graves usually house urns instead), and Ito uses the columnar style of Japanese headstones to great effect, emphasising the eerie and unsettling nature of a crowded space full of perfectly carved stones, somehow both ordered and disordered at the same time.

** One that you could say is cute is the younger daughter from "Layers of Fear", especially her [[spoiler: two-year-old layer's face...if not the rest of it]].
** The Female Wretch from ''Frankenstein'' is rather-good looking for being made of stolen parts but even she still looks rather off, owing to the new creature using [[spoiler: Justine Moritz's head, provided by the monster]].

** His adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo's "The Human Chair", which is about an author reading a letter that gradually reveals that the man who wrote it is a stalker who's been concealing himself inside of her sofa. In the original story, the twist is that [[spoiler:there never was a man in the sofa and it's a story he's written for her to critique]]. In Ito's version? Nope, he's really in there. [[spoiler: The ending shows that he has a descendant that plans on doing the same thing to another female author]]

* DeathByIrony: "Fashion Model: Cursed Frame" features a model with the eccentricity of being very uncomfortable when any part of her body is cut out of frame in her photographs. When she accidentally crosses another model who happens to be our dear friend Fuchi, [[spoiler: she is found lying dead in a tape square on the ground, with the parts that fell outside the frame having been torn off by Fuchi's teeth before going missing.]]
* DestinationHostUnreachable: In "The Return", a dying woman swears she will come back to her lover. After her death, he begins to sense her presence, and ultimately she does come back...[[spoiler: riding with a meteorite, charred to the bone by the impact, with only her engagement ring identifying her. How she got into space to begin with is left a mystery, and of course, the reunion is rendered null by the means of her return.]]

** In one of the "Strange Hikizuri Siblings" stories, the badly abused and mistreated Hitoshi manages to get back at his siblings [[spoiler: by summoning the terrifying ectoplasmic form of their father from his mouth. He's completely oblivious.]]

** Horribly subverted in "Hanging Blimp", where the apparent suicides early in the story are revealed to have been caused by something much more surreal and terrifying. [[spoiler: What's really causing the deaths are giant flying balloon-like heads with nooses hanging from them, bent on hanging their facial matches.]]

* EvilAllAlong: In ''Billions Alone'' large groups of people start disappearing in the blink of an eye and reappearing several days later dead and tied together with fishing line. [[spoiler: At the end, a girl the protagonist is attracted to turns out to be one of the killers, though it's unclear if she's working with other people.]]

** In "Billions Alone" people start disappearing and, days later, reappearing murdered with their corpses tied together by fishing wire. Despite the bizarre nature and the fact that ''hundreds of people are taken at once disappearing in an instant'', the government for the most part insists that the killings are simply the work of a deranged group of serial killers. [[spoiler: The ending implies that they are right.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}:

** “Gentle Goodbye” isn’t a horror story, has no antagonistic force or anything wrong and only has two NightmareFace panels before the character in question returns to being normal and harmless.

** [[spoiler:Souichi]]'s potential son., as well as [[spoiler:the mother of that son]], who eats someone in almost every story she's in.

* ItCameFromTheSink: In "The Groaning Drain", sisters Reina and Shinri and their cleaning-obsessed mother are at first only mildly annoyed when their drains start to clog. Reina is more concerned that her AbhorrentAdmirer Kari now knows where she lives (thanks to Shinri leading him to their house so their mother could insult him). Then the drains begin to leak a foul smell, and their pipes begin to moan. Shinri becomes convinced that Kari is causing the trouble, having crawled into their pipes to stalk them. Reina tells her that's ridiculous, as their pipes aren't more than a few centimeters wide, but [[spoiler: it turns out Shinri is right, Kari ''is'' in their pipes, having crushed his bones and deformed his skull to crawl into their drains]]. When Reina forces Shinri's hand into the shower drain to prove that there's nothing in there, [[spoiler: Shinri is dragged into the pipes inch by inch as a shell-shocked Reina watches in disbelief]].

** In ''Ghosts of Prime Time'', while the psychic sister's attempt to [[spoiler: kill the narrator]] fails, he can't do anything to stop them in turn and their plan to wind up on prime time goes off perfectly.

** "Layers of Fear" has this for Reimi and Narumi, but not played for a threat. [[spoiler: Each row of teeth belonged to a past "layer" of the daughters, who are by curse structured like nesting dolls whose past selves are grown over by new layers of their bodies.]]

* OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding: There are some horrifying exceptions, but in many of Ito's stories the protagonist at least survives whatever horror they encountered. One example is ''Death Row Doorbell'' in which the narrator is unharmed but [[spoiler: her entire family dies]].

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Leans towards the cynical side, as one might expect from a horror writer, with most stories ending with the protagonist dead/transformed/insane/[[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]. That being said, he's not without idealism, and some stories do end with bittersweet/[[RayOfHopeEnding ray of hope]] endings, and even a straight Earn Your Happy Ending if you are '''EXTREMELY''' lucky. And for all the horrible things that happen to his protagonists, he is completely against the idea of nihilism and your actions being useless, as [[Manga/{{Remina}} ''Remina'']]’s aesop is essentially ''no matter how bleak things seem to be, so long as you are still alive there is hope for the future''

** In ''Madona'' [[spoiler: Misuzu can turn people to salt as a reference to Lot's wife in the Bible.]]

** His adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo's "The Human Chair", which is about an author reading a letter that gradually reveals that the man who wrote it is a stalker who's been concealing himself inside of her sofa. In the original story, the twist is that [[spoiler:there never was a man in the sofa and it's a story he's written for her to critique]]. In Ito's version? Nope, he's really in there.

** [[spoiler:Souichi's grandfather]] in "Coffin" and [[spoiler:Shibayama]] in "The Supernatural Transfer Student".

* CreepyChild: Often featured, with the most frequent case being Souichi.

* EvilIsPetty: Souichi, to a truly breathtaking degree. At one point, he tries to kill his cousin for "stealing" his birthday.

** Pretty much all of the works involving Souichi and the Tsujii family after "Mystery of the Haunted Mansion". The first story portrayed Souichi as an outright murderer with his family as a group of emaciated slaves, while the subsequent stories are mostly [[BlackComedy Black Comedies]] where nobody really dies and Souichi is more of a quirky neighborhood menace than an outright villain. Ito strongly averts the KarmaHoudini status most of his antagonists have with Souichi - following "Mystery of the Haunted Mansion", almost all of Souichi's schemes end with them backfiring gruesomely (and amusingly) on Souichi.

* TookALevelInBadass: Souichi is a plump, spoiled sadistic kid with awesome paranormal powers, usually employed to be little more than a pest and a nuisance with delusions of grandeur, always caught and punished by his family. However, in time [[spoiler:with his powers increasing, he becomes a sharply dressed businessman, the owner of an haunted mansion where he enacts his revenge over his cursed parents and siblings and keeps his cannibalistic son with a demoness]]. He's not actually any better at avoiding gruesome and humiliating consequences for forgetting that EvilIsNotAToy, though -- we're actually introduced to this version of Souichi ''before'' the child version, and those two stories kick off his long tradition of gruesome and humiliating defeats. But... [[spoiler:it turns out to be Souichi's dream as a child, and is yet another blow to him since it causes him to oversleep and miss out on playing outside.]]

* ScaryTeeth: A great deal of Ito's monsters have them. [[spoiler: And not where you'd expect.]]

* OnlySixFaces: Particularly noticeable in his short stories. The character designs used for Kirie and Shuichi from ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'' appear all over the place with different hairstyles. Less savory characters tend to have more unique facial designs. This trope seems to be enforced in the case of Magami Nanakuse, whose face is notably different from Ito's other women...because she's not a woman... at least, not a cis one.

* {{Bishonen}}:
** Given they at least look like normal humans, male characters are usually good-looking, but some are more feminine or attractively drawn. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Not hard to understand]], considering that many of Ito's works were originally published in {{Shojo}} horror magazines.
** ''Lovesickness'' invokes this, as it has two characters referred to as "bishounen" by others: the Intersection's Pretty Boy and [[spoiler:Ryuusuke, who becomes the "White-Clothed Pretty Boy"]].

* BitchInSheepsClothing: [[spoiler:Misaki]] in "I Don't Want to Be a Ghost", [[spoiler:Shinobu]] in "Back Alley", and [[spoiler:Satoko]] in "Tomie: Adopted Daughter" to name but a few. Tomie very often starts out as one of these.