4 out of 5

As with the first The Liminal Zone collection, Junji Ito was using an online publisher – this time news site AERO dot – as the initial source for these works; and as before, we can imagine / assume an effect upon his usual working style: a sort of rediscovery of ways of working. But since this is later along in that process, the stories in LZ 2 feel that much more realized, feeling pretty expertly paced, and arriving at actual conclusions. A sequel to some previous magazine-published stories, a ‘The Strange Hikizuri Siblings,’ inevitably feels out of place, with its origins outside of this online-first era for Ito and being of his Soichi-style of humor; it’s still a lot of fun, and matches the other tales in terms of creativity, but all the same – the more silly leanings of the story definitely make for a weird tonal divide in the collection.

Otherwise, Junji again apologizes for his dwindling ideas in the backmatter, feeling like he’s trying to pull story pitches from the most basic concepts, but maybe he’s purposefully playing coy: these stories really tap into the uncanny chills of early Ito, without having to necessarily fall back on gross-out visuals. Yes, you can boil these down to “fear of dust;” “fear of pulleys;” and “a story about pissing turtles,” but Junji extrapolates so much from each of those – pissing turtles very much included – and goes for broke with some very complex artistic interpretations, particularly on the pulley story, Village of Ether.

Jocelyne Allen is back on translation, delivering another very natural, flowing text; Adam Grano’s design is just stunning – all of the Ito Viz books look good, but the original collections / stories have extra zhush, man, and they look awesome.