History Manga / JunjiItoKyoufuMangaCollection

* MortonsFork: "The Hanging Balloons" has one of those concerning the titular balloons, which are huge, flying, shaped like a person's head, and dead set on killing their look-alike by hanging them with the steel cable that serves as their balloon string. Either one gets caught and hanged to death, or someone fighting back pops/deflates someone's balloon -- which isn't any better, as that will cause the balloon's look-alike's head '''[[BodyHorror to also pop/deflate]]'''.

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: While a lack of privacy fuels the horror of the entire story, "The Town Without Streets" has distinctly different plots in its first and second halves. It begins with a girl's dreams being influenced by a shy lovestruck boy coming into her room to whisper suggestions to her for attention, before he gets murdered. As a result of the boy's instrusions, the girl's family starts persistently spying on her in disturbing ways, yet denies all peeping beyond reason, so she goes off to live with her aunt. The second half of the story deals with the strange town the aunt lives in, where everything is accessed by a maze of recently built-together houses, and all attempts at being alone are futile while more unnatural watchers peep in. [[spoiler: The murderer comes back, though.]]

* AdaptationDistillation: His take on ''Frankenstein''. It's actually ''very'' faithful, with one major exception: [[spoiler:instead of Victor destroying the female creature before she awakens, he goes through with creating her. However, she is as feral as "Adam" himself was when he was born, attacking Victor and being horrified by her intended husband. "Adam" himself destroys his "Bride," making his vengeance against Victor [[AdaptationalJerkass even less sympathetic]]]].

* UnseenEvil: "Thing that Washed Ashore" ends with the heavy implication that when all the people eaten by the sea monster were trapped inside its translucent gut, they saw many even worse monsters out in the water as it swam through the ocean abyss.

** Mr. Todoh in "A Father's Love" [[spoiler:possesses his children's bodies against their will, tries to get his daughter to kill herself and almost kills a boy who had pursued her romantically -- but admits that he just wanted to be young and have fun again by living through them, as he missed out on his own youth]].

** "Blood-Bubble Bushes" has this with a SadisticChoice as a result. The vampire's bite doesn't drain the victim outright but causes their body to grow "branches" with fruits of their own blood, which will eventually kill the victim when their blood has been transferred completely to the fruits. The only way for people to survive is to eat the fruit from grows from their body, but the drawback is that afterward they will be consumed by an ravenous thirst for blood, essentially damning themselves to be a vampire afterward.[[spoiler: The story ends with the protagonist's girlfriend ravenously consuming one of her own fruits.]]

** "Blood-Bubble Bushes" has this with a SadisticChoice as a result. The bite causes your body to grow "branches" with fruits of your own blood, which will eventually kill you when your blood has been transferred completely to the fruits. If you eat from the fruit, you will be saved from this fate, but suffer as a vampire afterward.

* SkewedPriorities: The father from "Hanging Balloons". There are giant killer balloons swarming above Tokyo, assimilating civilians left and right, yet somehow the father thinks getting to work on time is more important, [[TooDumbToLive which gets him killed moments after he leaves the house]]. Some readers have interpreted the father's fate to Japan's "''karoshi''" [[note]]death by overworking[[/note]] culture.

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/i97949.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250: Sixteen volumes of pure terror.]]

* CircusOfFear: In "The Circus is Here", many people, mostly young men, flock to the Papyrus Circus to see its beautiful tight rope walker Leiliya. But during the show, all the performers are killed in brutal ways during their acts, then they are unceremoniously dragged off the stage like trash on the ringmaster's orders. Eventually, Leiliya reveals that the ringmaster is actually a Shinigami who uses her as bait to lure unsuspecting people to the Circus so that they can die and he can reap their souls. The audience is horrified but can't bring themselves to leave as they're too entranced by Leiliya's beauty. Once all the performers are dead, the ringmaster gleefully asks for volunteers to join to replace those he lost, offering Leiliya's hand in marriage as a prize. The story ends with the protagonist's younger sister running home crying to their mother that he took the ringmaster's offer.

* CircusOfFear: In "The Circus is Here", many people, mostly young men, flock to the Papyrus Circus to see its beautiful tight rope walker Leiliya. But during the show, all the performers are killed in brutal ways during their acts, then they are unceremoniously dragged off the stage like trash on the ringmaster's orders. Eventually, Leiliya reveals that the ringmaster is actually a Shinigami who uses her as bait to lure unsuspecting people to the Circus so that they can die and he can reap their souls. The audience is horrified can't bring themselves to leave as they're too entranced by Leiliya's beauty. Once all the performers are dead, the ringmaster gleefully asks for volunteers to join to replace those he lost, offering Leiliya's hand in marriage as a prize. The story ends with the protagonist's younger sister running home crying to their mother that he took the ringmaster's offer.

* CircusOfFear: In "The Circus is Here", many people, mostly young men, flock to the Papyrus Circus to see its beautiful tight rope walker Leiliya. But during the show, all the performers are killed in brutal ways during their acts, then they are unceremoniously dragged off the stage like trash on the ringmaster's orders. Eventually, Leiliya reveals that the ringmaster is actually a Shinigami who uses her as bait to lure unsuspecting people to the Circus so that they can die and he can reap their souls. The audience is horrified can't bring themselves to leave as they're to entranced by Leiliya's beauty. Once all the performers are dead, the ringmaster gleefully asks for volunteers to join to replace those he lost, offering Leiliya's hand in marriage as a prize. The story ends with the protagonist's younger sister running home crying to their mother that took the ringmaster's offer.

** In "Deserter", [[spoiler:a family hides a war deserter and keeps him there years after the war's end, pretending the war is still on since they blame him for their sister's death during his initial stay. The grudge the family feels means that every day, they fool the deserter into thinking World War II is still taking place, even enlisting a family friend to dress as a military police officer to keep up the facade. On one evening, several years into the masquerade, they discover that he hanged himself the day the girl died, leaving them shaken at the question of what had really been happening]].

* EyeScream: In "The Town without streets", Saiko sees a peephole being made in her ceiling... and shoves a screwdriver up it. The next morning, her father is sporting an eyepatch.

The first and longest anthology serial of horror master Creator/JunjiIto's work. Totaling 16 volumes and including several subseries among the short stories, the collection's most notable contributions may be that it featured the first collection of his famous ''{{Manga/Tomie}}'' series and that it introduced many unconnected and wildly varied one-shot stories that defined Ito's range.

In addition to the ''Tomie'' stories, the manga includes the short ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'' series and multiple stories about Souichi, a creepy brat who partakes in supernatural mischief; Oshikiri, a boy with a height complex and several run-ins with parallel dimensions; the Strange Hikizuri Siblings, a creepy yet amusingly dysfunctional family unit; and finally, Ito's own take on ''{{Literature/Frankenstein}}''.

An anime adaptation of a select number of chapters, simply called ''The Junji Ito Collection'', was released in 2018. Consisting of 25 stories over 12 [[ThreeShorts Two Shorts]] format episodes and a two-part [=OVA=]. Reception was generally mixed, largely due to the conversion being far less scary in addition to being noticeably low-budget with simplified backgrounds and character design and limited animation.

The anthology would then receive another anime adaptation in the form of ''Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre'', released on Netflix in January 19, 2023.

* AdaptationDistillation: His take on ''Frankenstein''. It's actually ''very'' faithful, with one major exception: [[spoiler: instead of Victor destroying the female creature before she awakens, he goes through with creating her. However, she is as feral as "Adam" himself was when he was born, attacking Victor and being horrified by her intended husband. "Adam" himself destroys his "Bride," making his vengeance against Victor [[AdaptationalJerkass even less sympathetic]]]].
* AdultsDressedAsChildren: Used to horrifying effect at the end of "Bullied", when [[spoiler: the protagonist regresses into the pattern of abusive behavior she displayed in her childhood and dons her outgrown schoolgirl outfit and ties her hair in GirlishPigtails in a grotesque copy of her look at that age.]]

** Mr. Todoh in "A Father's Love" [[spoiler:possesses his children's bodies against their will, tries to get his daughter to kill herself and almost kills a boy who had pursued her romantically - but admits that he just wanted to be young and have fun again by living through them, as he missed out on his own youth.]]

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Aside from those that specifically mention it, like "Deserter" (1953), it's frequently difficult to tell when any particular story takes place, giving them a weirdly timeless feeling. Even those that give suggestions to when the events are taking place - such as ''Dying Young'', which mentions the impending turn of the century, thus setting it during the 1990's - tend to avoid giving a specific year, allowing for a great deal of interpretation.
* BadHumorTruck: "Ice Cream Bus", where the old adage of [[spoiler:You are what you eat]] gets taken a bit more literally than you'd expect!

** "The Back Alley". [[spoiler: Shinobu kills Ishida but becomes trapped in the alley and is left helpless as the ghosts of her victims come out for revenge.]]
** "Marionette Mansion". [[spoiler: Haruhiko saves his sister and destroys Jean-Pierre but his girlfriend is killed and it's revealed that Yukihiko and his family have become marionettes.]]
** In "Shiver", [[spoiler: Yuji witnesses Hideo succumb to the curse of the jade statue, being warned by him that the doctor is really a servant. Hideo's body is later found with the statue missing, but Rina seems to be finally free from the curse with her body apparently back to normal.]]

** Chikara's mother in "Flesh-Colored Horror" thinks people are more beautiful [[spoiler: alive and sans skin]], and has developed a chemical process to make such a thing possible.
* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler:Souichi's grandfather]] in "Coffin" and [[spoiler:Shibayama]] in "The Supernatural Transfer Student".

* ClothesMakeTheManiac: The titular object in "The Reanimator's Sword" always possesses its owner and makes them carry out its will, [[spoiler: including Keiji after he acquires it.]]
* CompellingVoice: [[spoiler:Ms. Yokoi,]] in "The Devil's Logic", seems to use this to convince people to commit suicide.
* CompositeCharacter: In "Frankenstein", [[spoiler: the female creature Victor creates is made with Justine's decapitated head. Its portrayal also owes more to the eponymous ''Film/BrideOfFrankenstein'' rather than Shelley's novel; the "Bride" comes to life but rejects the Monster.]]

* CreepyTwins: "Souichi's Birthday" gives Souichi an equally terrifying twin (whether a ghost or a conjured figment of his imagination isn't clear.)
* DaddysGirl: Miho in "A Father's Love" is one until her father starts turning against her. Also Mizusu from "Approval", [[spoiler: whose father lies and uses a man for years just to be able to see her spirit.]]

** In "Deserter", [[spoiler: a family hides a war deserter and keeps him there years after the war's end, pretending the war is still on since they blame him for their sister's death during his initial stay. The grudge the family feels means that every day, they fool the deserter into thinking World War II is still taking place, even enlisting a family friend to dress as a military police officer to keep up the facade. On one evening, several years into the masquerade, they discover that he hanged himself the day the girl died, leaving them shaken at the question of what had really been happening.]]
** In "Mold", the protagonist finds his house becoming rapidly overrun by the fungus after letting his old science teacher's family rent it. [[spoiler: In a room that was sealed by mold-induced warping before the door rotted off, he discovers that the family, who introduced the mold, never left the house, having been consumed by it and dying some time before he returned home.]]

** 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.]]
* DyingCurse: The plot of "The Will" is based around this, with two vengeful spirits haunting out of hatred. [[spoiler: Neither ghost had the right house, and neither knew the other was dead.]]

** Kamei from "Face Thief" doesn't have a face of her own anymore as she automatically changes to copy faces she's seen. She thinks the only way to revert to her original face is to live in complete isolation, since simply being near other people affects her face. We never get to see what she actually looks like.

* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: In "The Will:, [[spoiler:the protagonist's "sister" turns out to be her cousin who was adopted by Hiroko's parents as a baby.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The creepy woman's house in "The Window Next Door" has some cracks on it, particularly around its only window. [[spoiler: When we see her terrifying last resort, it then seems as if she's pulled that trick before, and the cracks are from the deformation and reversion of the house's structure, i.e., the window has been stretched out and settled back in before.]]

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: The ending of "Ice Cream Bus" in the 2023 anime has one of the titular bus's eyes turn directly towards the camera before it [[SmashToBlack cuts to black.]]
** It happens again in "Long Hair In The Attic", with [[spoiler: Chiemi's hair covering the camera at the end of the episode.]]
* {{Gaslighting}}: Sakai's family in "Town Without Streets" does this to her - of course she catches on quick and her family keeps on trying to gaslight her.

** [[spoiler:A subversion in "Honored Ancestors".]] Risa's amnesia was caused by her seeing [[spoiler:the scalps and brains of every member of Shuichi's family grafted to his father's head. The end shows that, rather than just the person at the end inheriting their collected knowledge, each one can still actively ''think''.]]
** This is a significant plot point in "The Conversation Room". [[spoiler: The patients in a hospital ward are of one mind and assimilate through masses of needled tubes coming from their mouths.]]

** In "Back Alley", [[spoiler: the girl whom Ishida was staying with turns out to have killed many of her classmates, burying them in the alley. At the end, she becomes trapped there and their ghosts advance on her.]]
** "Used Record" is about a record of a postmortem performance that supernaturally compels people to listen to it, to the point of killing others to get it. At the beginning of the story, one of its victims kills her friend to get it from her - [[spoiler:and later dies herself when she is blockaded into an alleyway because she'd stashed her friend's body there.]]

** "Map Town": A couple are in a town where everyone magically loses the ability to navigate, forcing them to rely on maps everywhere. The husband is the only one unaffected by the curse. Later, he and his wife go looking for treasure and plunder an urn filled with gold Koban coins. As expected, the townspeople are not impressed, and try to apprehend them. In an attempt to lose the townspeople, the duo scribble over as many maps as they can. To the husband's horror, he [[spoiler:discovers that the curse has hit him, as well, leaving the couple unable to find their way out of the town. It's possible that the villagers could clean the maps, too, and they would find the thieves eventually...]]
** "Bronze Statue": A vain woman commissions several statues of herself from her ex-lover, a sculptor. She also has him kill the neighboring women who gossiped about her, by encasing them in concrete. After discovering that the body of her husband, whom she murdered, has turned into wax from being buried in a swamp and having it carved into a statue cast, she comes up with a plan to drown herself in the swamp and have the sculptor retrieve her and turn her into the most beautiful statue ever seen. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, he dies just as he is about to fill the mold with molten gold. [[AndIMustScream Her conscious spirit remains trapped inside the mold in the cellar forever.]]]]
** In "Mold", the titular super-fungus [[spoiler: is revealed to have destroyed the Rogi family who brought it into existence.]]

** The neighbor in "The Window Next Door" is clearly something pretending to be human, judging by the gaudy jewelry, misapplied false eyelashes, and perfect hair that can only be a wig. [[spoiler: Also, she has some unnerving ability to warp her house's structure closer to her neighbor's window.]]
* IdiotBall: In "Frankenstein", [[spoiler:Henry Clerval is involved in the chance to make a female wretch... and then runs off ''on his own''. Just like in the novel, he is killed by the first creature and Frankenstein is blamed for it.]]

* ImportantHaircut: [[DefiedTrope Defied]] [[spoiler: by the ''hair itself'']] in "The Long Hair In The Attic", where Chiemi is encouraged to cut her hair because it symbolized the control her recent ex had over her, as he had made her grow it out. [[spoiler: [[OffWithHisHead The cut gets made a little lower than the hair instead.]]]]

* ItsBeenDone: Meta-example. In author commentary for "Honored Ancestors", Ito notes his pride in the imagery of Shuichi Makita running on all fours while on his back [[spoiler: and attached to the scalps of his ancestors]]...and his disappointment that ''Film/TheExorcist'''s director's cut included the spider-walking scene and beat him to it.

** Subverted in several ways in "Bronze Statue". Mrs. Sonobe, an ugly and rich widow, commissions beautiful sculptures which apparently reflect herself and her husband in their youth, though nobody buys it. She puts microphones and cameras into them to see what people are saying to her and talk from them, invoking this idea, and she later starts to see the sculptures come to life and mock her. This is implied to be nervous hallucination, [[spoiler: but also might be because one of the supposedly-living sculptures was molded from the waxified, reshaped corpse of her husband. When she goes under this preservation to be turned into a sculpture, her spirit is stuck inside the unfinished form.]]
* LoveBeforeFirstSight: Souichi for Fuchi, after seeing her in a magazine in "Rumors" [[spoiler:if the dream-future with Binzo Tsujii is to be believed.]]
* TheMaze: "Unbearable Labyrinth" features one used by a monastic order [[spoiler: who entomb themselves alive within it in an eternal meditation]].
* MortalityPhobia: Mami in "The Long Dream" has one, and it's solved through extremely questionable means.

* NoSenseOfDirection: In "Map Town", the entire town of Shirube is cursed so its inhabitants have no sense of direction and are forced to rely on excessively-provided maps and signposts.
* NotEvilJustMisunderstood: The father in "Approval" cruelly and repeatedly denies the hand of his daughter to a suitor [[spoiler:because his daughter is actually dead, and the unaware suitor asking for his permission to marry is the only way that he can see his daughter's spirit]].
** [[spoiler: An interpretation of the lady in "The Window Next Door" is that she's genuinely attempting to be friendly with her new neighbor, but as a result of her HumanoidAbomination characteristics and privacy-violating behavior it comes across that she has much worse intent than she actually does.]]

* OlderThanTheyLook: The ending of "Face Thief" implies this about Kamei.

** "The Bloody Story of Shirosuna" features something like vampiric ''land'', [[spoiler: as the town is powered by a giant subterranean heart which pumps blood in and out of its citizens and can take over circulation for new members of the town]].

* PerversePuppet: Jean-Pierre in "Marionette Mansion".

* PrehensileHair: Subverted. In "The Long Hair in the Attic", a girl's hair [[spoiler: decapitates her for trying to cut it. It still hangs around, dragging the head with it as its body]].

* RuleOfThree: In "Honored Ancestors", the sight of [[spoiler: the connected scalps of Makita's family]] causes Risa to undergo a mental break and lose her memory three times, with Makita quickly bringing her up to speed the second time it happens, which is after she tries to escape.
* ScaryScarecrow: The story "Scarecrows" uses scarecrows in two ways:

* SweetsOfTemptation: In "Ice Cream Bus," Sonohara, a single father, moves to a new neighborhood with his young son Tomoki. There is a bus that drives children around the neighborhood, with the friendly driver giving them free ice cream. Sonohara becomes suspicious of this, and discovers that the children eventually start turning into ice cream if they eat enough of it.

* TearOffYourFace: In "Flesh Colored Horror", [[spoiler:Chikara's mother rips Maya's face off (revealing that she wears a skin suit like her in the process) in a desperate attempt to save herself after Chikara dissolves her skin suit]].

* TorturedMonster: Frankenstein's Monster, as part of the faithful adaptation. All he wants to be accepted by someone but his hideous countenance inspires horror for everyone who sees it (''especially'' the reader). Even the female wretch, a creature made to love him, couldn't see him as anything more then a monster.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: In "A Father's Love", [[spoiler:the titular father is able to possess his children's bodies. He forces both his sons to commit suicide when he decides they aren't living up to his expectations, and later tries to do the same to his daughter, since his wife is pregnant again with her "replacement"]]. Subverted, [[spoiler:when you find out in the end, that his sons really did commit suicide by their own free will, and rushed to get his daughter and wife to stop leaving.]]
* ZombiePukeAttack: In "The Supernatural Transfer Student", [[spoiler:Shibayama]] gets turned into a constantly-vomiting zombie.

* OutDamnedSpot: The obsessive-compulsive mother in "The Groaning Drain" deals with this when she accidentally kills her husband and his blood won't wash off the floorboards. Then she tries cleaning her skin...

** "The Bronze Statue": A vain woman commissions several statues of herself from her ex-lover, a sculptor. She also has him kill the neighboring women who gossiped about her, by encasing them in concrete. After discovering that the body of her husband, whom she murdered, has turned into wax from being buried in a swamp and having it carved into a statue cast, she comes up with a plan to drown herself in the swamp and have the sculptor retrieve her and turn her into the most beautiful statue ever seen. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, he dies just as he is about to fill the mold with molten gold. [[AndIMustScream Her conscious spirit remains trapped inside the mold in the cellar forever.]]]]

* IWasQuiteALooker: In "The Bronze Statue", a statue of a beautiful young woman is installed in the local park. The one who commissioned it, an ugly old widow named Madame Sonobe, says it was made to look like her younger self, but nobody believes that she actually looked like that.

** Subverted in several ways in "The Bronze Statue". Madame Sonobe, an ugly and rich widow, commissions beautiful sculptures which apparently reflect herself and her husband in their youth, though nobody buys it. She puts microphones and cameras into them to see what people are saying to her and talk from them, invoking this idea, and she later starts to see the sculptures come to life and mock her. This is implied to be nervous hallucination, [[spoiler: but also might be because one of the supposedly-living sculptures was molded from the waxified, reshaped corpse of her husband. When she goes under this preservation to be turned into a sculpture, her spirit is stuck inside the unfinished form.]]

** "The Blood Sickness of the White Sands Village" features something like vampiric ''land'', [[spoiler: as the town is powered by a giant subterranean heart which pumps blood in and out of its citizens and can take over circulation for new members of the town]].

* SeaMonster: One of these features prominently in "The Thing that Drifted Ashore". Although it's quite horrific on its own, [[spoiler:the titular prehistoric-looking monster is implied to be the least of your worries if you're trapped deep beneath the waves]]. Another one, which looks distinctly like Franchise/{{Godzilla}}, appears briefly in "The Supernatural Transfer Student".

* TakenForGranite: In "Gravetown", the residents [[spoiler:transform into grave markers when they die]]. However, when [[spoiler:the process is disturbed by moving the dead from the exact location of their death, they transform irregularly into hideous corpses riddled with jagged stone growths]].

* ThrownDownAWell: The disturbed corpses in "Gravetown" are dealt with in this way.

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: The ending of "ice cream bus" in the 2023 anime has one of the titular bus's eyes turn directly towards the camera before it [[SmashToBlack cuts to black.]]

In addition to the ''Tomie'' stories, the manga includes the short ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'' series and multiple stories about Souichi, a creepy brat who partakes in supernatural mischief; Oshikiri, a boy with a height complex and several run-ins with parallel dimensions; the Strange Hikizuri Siblings, a creepy and severely dysfunctional family unit; and finally, Ito's own take of ''{{Literature/Frankenstein}}''.

In addition to the ''Tomie'' stories, the manga includes the short ''Manga/{{Lovesickness}}'' series and multiple stories about Souichi, a creepy brat who partakes in supernatural mischief; Oshikiri, a boy with a height complex and several run-ins with parallel dimensions, the Strange Hikizuri Siblings; a creepy and severely dysfunctional family unit, and finally, Ito's own take of ''{{Literature/Frankenstein}}''.