Smashed is a collection of manga horror stories written by Junji Ito and published in 2019. It is full of macabre plots and fantastic visuals, and is a great treat for anyone interested in horror.
The first story, “Bloodsucking Darkness,” involves a girl who had recently broken up with her boyfriend. Angry, she decides to lose weight to show her ex that he made a mistake leaving her. While she did lose weight, her health also deteriorated due to her lack of consumption of food. One of her classmates approaches her and lets her know he is concerned about her health, and she answers that she is fine. She starts having nightmares of a large vampiric face visiting her at night. One day, the classmate who asked her about her health asked her to follow him to where he lived. Taking her to his backyard, he reveals that his pets are a whole colony of bats. One of them flies towards her and tries to feed her blood. Horrified, she knocks it to the ground, and he becomes confused, asking her why she would harm the bat, seeing that it wanted to help her. He reveals to her that without him, she would’ve died of malnutrition: he had been sending his bats to her house to feed her his blood to keep her alive. Shocked, she escapes from the house and is followed by her classmate. In a tragic accident, he was struck and killed by a train. When his corpse was examined, it was discovered that his head was missing. She is taken to the hospital, and after being released, she finds that many bats are trying to break into her house. She also began hearing a voice, and upon further examination, found that her classmate’s head was still alive: the bats have been giving it blood. Her classmate’s decapitated head then turns into a bat and flies into the sky with the others. The story ends with the sky raining blood.
The second story is “Ghosts of Prime Time.” The story begins with an announcement: the body of a rising comedian was found lifeless. Apparently, he had laughed himself to death, which scares the protagonist. The protagonist then leaves with a friend to see a comedy show, and are disappointed to see that the comedians weren’t funny at all. However, people began suddenly laughing. The protagonist, scared, leaves. He is informed by a friend that the comedians have been using their spirits/astral projections to tickle people to make them laugh, hence the reaction of the audience (they were also the murderers of the comedian who died of laughter: they tickled him to death). That night, the two comedians show up at the protagonist’s house. After realizing that he knew of their scheme, they attempt to murder him with his family and friend by tickling them. They laugh so much that they fall into unconsciousness. Once the protagonist awakes, he finds that he and his family have survived. However, his friend had died from laughter. To protect his family, he doesn’t tell the police what actually happened. Eventually, the two comedians become famous due to their ability to cause massive laughter. The story ends with a picture showing them using their spirits to cause a whole auditorium of people to thunderously burst into noise.
The third story, “Roar,” involves two friends who have gone camping. Despite their plans, they became lost, and are shocked to hear a flood coming towards them. Furthermore, they could hear the screams of people alongside the flood. They barely avoid being swept away, and one of the friends reveals that he is adopted: he doesn’t know who his parents are. Furthermore, he had an intense, seemingly irrational phobia of water as an infant. Later, the same flood occurs, and the two of them notice that the people who were in it were the same as those in the previous flood. They eventually meet a solitary hermit living in a hut. He informs them that the floods they had experienced were merely illusions: they were the remnants of a tragedy. Thirty years prior, a sudden flood destroyed the village he was in. He and his son were the only survivors, causing him to send his son away to be adopted. After a while of living in the same area, he experienced the illusions of the flood. Excited, he thought it would be possible to “save” his wife who had drowned by somehow managing to reach her. Despite his various schemes, he has failed time and time again. Furthermore, the illusion of the flood has become hazier over time, causing him to worry that he will never see his wife again. The narrator’s friend believes that he might be his son. However, before he could ask for further details, the illusion comes flooding back. The hermit becomes full of vigor and tries to rescue his wife by using a contraption, but fails yet again. Utterly frustrated, he jumps into the water to be with her. The two friends move on; one of them says that the hermit has spent so much of his life pursuing the illusion that he became part of it in the end.
The fourth story, “Earthbound,” is my personal favorite in the collection. In this story, some people all over Japan have suddenly stopped moving and stand fixed in a certain place. Even when they are forced to leave by police, they always return no matter the circumstance (they remain almost completely immobile, utterly transfixed in a certain pose - one pose suggests a crucifixion). The protagonist is a volunteer for a society that is trying to help the so-called “Earthbound,” and one of the people which she helps is a young boy. His mother was crying for him to come home, and when she informed the boy’s mother of her good intentions, she was notified that the young boy was standing where his pet dog (which he loved very much) was buried. The protagonist came to the conclusion that the Earthbound appear where they are because they have a strong emotional attachment to something which they are incapable of letting go of. After informing her boss of her discovery, she is complimented by him, as he says that she’s a good person. She informs him that she’ll be moving soon, and he is shocked. She reveals that she moves every so often due to being raped some years ago by a burglar: she is paranoid that he is stalking her and waiting for an opportunity to strike yet again. She eventually went back to her apartment room and found her boss transfixed to the spot: he had become an Earthbound. He tells her that he loves her and doesn’t want her to leave, and she believes him. She goes back to the young boy and finds him still standing there. In an attempt to reach him, she tells him his dog wouldn’t want him to be like that. Upon hearing her pleas, he starts crying and reveals that he had killed his dog by accident: after it bit him, he wanted to “teach it a lesson.” Upon hearing this, the protagonist has an epiphany: the Earthbound cannot move due to the weight of their guilt. This conclusion is ultimately proven to be correct, as a series of panels reveal examples of the Earthbound: a man who stood near the side of the road was in fact a driver who accidentally killed a girl when his automobile crashed into her, a young woman was paralyzed in her room (she had asphyxiated her newborn child - its corpse was in her closet), and an adult male was standing in a forest where he had murdered someone (the skull is exposed on the ground). The protagonist makes her way back to the apartment and learns that a few years ago, an armed burglar intruded into the room she was currently living in, raping and killing his victim. Upon realizing this, she automatically suspects her boss as the one who had ravaged her years ago. When she asks him about it, he refuses to reply, confirming her suspicion that he was a serial rapist who had many victims. She leaves the apartment and doesn’t look back. It is then revealed that the Earthbound eventually become solid rock due to remaining immobile in their poses for so long: this is quite symbolic, as I read this as their guilt turning their hearts and bodies to stone.
The fifth story featured in the collection is “Death Row Doorbell.” In this story, the protagonist survived a terrible tragedy: she originally belonged to a normal, happy family. One day, while they were going on a road trip, a motorcycle gang intercepted them and beat to death her father, almost killed her brother (he lost an eye), and rendered her mother unconscious through physical abuse. As expected, the aggressors were caught (this was taking place in broad daylight in a public place, after all) and were brought to court. Those who had participated showed no signs of remorse, and the head of the gang even went so far as to smile at the protagonist and her surviving brother. The court, seeing the barbarity of the defendants, sentenced them to death. Upon learning of his sentence, the head of the gang begged the protagonist for forgiveness and his life; she rightfully ignores him completely. Desperate, he uses astral projection while he is in jail to contact her by sending a replica of himself: his duplicate begs for her forgiveness and for her to request his life be spared. She refuses to do so, and when her brother sees the illusion, he is filled with rage and savagely beats it with his crutch until it is gone. Regardless, the projection continues to visit them over the nights leading up to the night of the execution of the death penalty, and the protagonist’s brother, full of rage and grief, commits suicide. The protagonist’s mother dies while in a coma, never to regain consciousness. The death penalty is carried out and the nocturnal visits stop, leaving the protagonist utterly alone, with no person to depend upon save herself.
The sixth tale is “The Mystery of the Haunted House,” which sees a deranged man, Soichi, operating a haunted house. He charges a large amount of money for admission and promises to refund anyone who isn’t terrified. His bet is immediately accepted by someone in front of the protagonist (a young boy who is good friends with another boy), and Soichi quickly wins his bet: the person who took his bet was rendered in complete shock. Others test their nerves and are likewise terrified, causing the protagonist and his friend to want to check out what was in the haunted house. They try to sneak in at night but are caught by Soichi, who tells them that they can go in for free due to their guts. They do so, and they see Soichi’s family, who were all under his spell (were rendered largely immobile and somewhat brainwashed). One of his family members tells them that he moves around pretty frequently due to being afraid of his significant other and that he is a dangerous and vile human being. The protagonist and his friend reach the end of the haunted house and see a child (Soichi’s son) with extremely sharp teeth and large jaw eating the corpse of a policeman (said policeman, upon hearing of reports that there was a chained child in the house by those who had gone inside, went to investigate earlier the same day, only to be promptly murdered and devoured). Absolutely horrified, they try to escape, but the protagonist’s friend is eaten by Soichi’s son. Upon leaving the house, he is chased by Soichi but is saved when his wife shows up (the antagonist of the short story “Fashion Model”), an extremely tall, reptilian-looking woman with innumerable sharp teeth. He is terrified to see her, and she tells him that if he tries to run away from her with their son again (they somehow mated, don’t ask me how) she will kill him. They leave and the protagonist’s life is spared. By the next day, evidence of the haunted house (including the corpses of the policeman and his friend) had disappeared, leaving him with no evidence to report to the authorities.
The seventh story, “The Mystery of the Haunted House: Soichi’s Version” sees a young woman trying to find one of her childhood friends (the brother of Soichi). She remembers that he was a happy and amiable person. However, she was concerned when it came to Soichi, for he was a sadist. She recalls how he disappeared suddenly with his family one day; unable to let go of her concern for him, she decided, once and for all, to locate him. After some time, she is notified by the family who allowed her to stay in their home of a haunted house (this takes place in a setting different than the previous tale) that was located on top of a hill and was rumored to be terrifying. Deciding to investigate, she sneaks in and finds her childhood friend. He tells her to escape, but it is too late, for Soichi has returned. He uses his dark magic to brainwash his brother, and he orders him to kill the protagonist. Though the protagonist’s past friend initially tries to, he resists the brainwashing and succeeds in gaining back his autonomy after the protagonist reminds him of the happy experiences which they shared with each other. Breaking free of Soichi’s manipulation, he yells at him, telling him that if he loves his son so much, he should get closer to him. He then proceeds to kick the cage open, allowing for Soichi’s son to get out. He immediately jumps onto his father and bites down on his shoulder, causing him to shriek in agony and to leave the house, only to bump into his wife again. She tells him that he has betrayed her for the last time and bites his head off. He then wakes up: it was all a dream, and he was still a teenager (his dream was possibly the future if he doesn’t change his behavior - he doesn’t take heed of it, though).
The eighth story, “Soichi’s Beloved Pet,” sees Soichi’s home life while he was a child. One day, his family came across a cat that seemed to have been abandoned. They take it as their own, and it is very adorable. Soichi, as expected, tormented it by physically harassing it. The cat, angry, scratches his face in self-defense. He begins crying like a spoiled brat and receives attention from his mother, and his siblings (one brother, one sister) call him out as deserving of punishment. They tell his mother that he is likely to do bad things (like becoming a serial killer: many serial killers murder animals in cold blood when they’re young) when he grows up but she brushes them off, saying that he is normal (this concept of parents being misinformed and deluded when it comes to their children is quite prevalent, seen in books like We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver). Soichi later casts a spell on the cat, making it behave abnormally and aggressively. One time it brought a strange-looking creature into the house, shocking everybody but delighting Soichi. The cat eventually breaks out of the influence of the magic: the curse caused it to emit a large amount of electricity. The cat was sitting on Soichi’s lap when it happened, so the electricity seriously injured Soichi, giving him what he deserves. He was mostly paralyzed (at least temporarily, seen in how he was wrapped in bandages), and the cat goes back to its normal behavior, acting like a lovable, friendly kitten.
The ninth story, “In Mirror Valley,” sees the story of two opposing towns in a valley. The two towns were originally a single group of refugees, but over time they divided and opposed each other due to some squabble. Furthermore, it was revealed that the reason the refugees were loathed by others was they possessed a strange ability: if they were to stare at a person and wish suffering on them, they would succeed in inflicting excruciating pain on their victim. When the two villages began fighting, they both set up large amounts of mirrors on either side of the valley to deflect the glances of the other members of the rival town. Eventually, two young lovers committed suicide: they wanted to be together, but the hatred of their respective villages prevented that from becoming a reality. After their deaths, their ghosts appeared at the two villages and would make love every night, greatly infuriating the villagers. Eventually, the hatred they felt for each other reached such a level that the various mirrors around the village shattered, destroying the inhabitants of the villages in the process. In the modern-day, travelers going to the Mirror Valley are plagued by the remnants of the mirrors.
The tenth story, “I Don’t Want to Be a Ghost,” sees a stupid, selfish protagonist. That is, he is a married man with a pregnant wife who does something so unimaginably misinformed I still have trouble sympathizing with him. That is, one day while he was driving home, he came across a young girl covered with blood. Concerned, he pulled over and brought her to a police station. Some time afterward, she showed up at his front door, and she was very pretty. They eventually had an affair (again, his wife was pregnant with their child, showing that he is a piece of shit), and she exposed the incident to his wife. His wife, upon hearing of his betrayal, committed suicide. The girl eventually reveals to the protagonist that when she was born, her mother was dead: however, her mother wanted her child to survive so much that she was able to nurse her regardless. Due to the method of her upbringing, her method of nourishment involved eating ghosts/spirits, hence why she was covered in blood when he pulled over some nights ago. She then remarks that she sees the spirit of the protagonist’s wife and unborn child, and proceeds to brutally devour them WHILE HE DOES NOTHING BUT WATCHES IN APATHY. She tells him that spirits are supposed to guide and comfort those who are still alive: with them gone, his life quickly falls apart. He becomes homeless and then becomes terminally ill, and when he is dying in the hospital he sees the girl waiting for him to pass away so she can consume his soul: she was licking her lips in anticipation.
The eleventh story, “Library Vision,” involves a young woman who married a man who had a vast and expensive library. He was obsessed with the books he owned, as they were all very valuable. It is revealed that when he was young, he had a regular life, but when his mother abandoned his family for another man, his father became deranged and tormented him by reading to him a horrifying story. This caused him to be psychologically unsound: his father, likewise, was eventually put into an insane asylum. The protagonist’s husband then reports seeing his father come to torment him by reading him the same horror story, so he decides to combat the specter by memorizing the contents of every book in the library. He is somehow gifted with excellent memorization powers (this ability is implied as supernatural and given to him by the library itself), allowing him to memorize every single book in the library save the contents of his diaries. After memorizing the vast majority of books, he lost his mind: he couldn’t accurately process all the information at once and was basically catatonic. The protagonist, heartbroken (quite ironic, since she didn't try to get her husband help while he went on a reading binge that cost him his mind) burns down the library (which is very stupid, seeing that she destroyed the manuscripts of much-wanted books which could have made many people happy if they were responsibly distributed).
The twelfth story, “Splendid Shadow Song,” sees a young woman in a subway. She sees a person playing the guitar who was singing a highly aggressive and angry song which involves the singer berating and yelling at someone for supposedly abandoning them. Confused and somewhat shocked by the content, she becomes even more disturbed upon realizing that she can’t stop thinking of the contents of the song. She becomes obsessed with the woman playing the guitar, as she wanted to be fixed of the problem. She eventually discovers that the woman has become a celebrity due to her method of singing, and when she attended a concert she realized that she wasn’t an isolated incident: everyone who heard her song reported being unable to forget the lyrics. The woman then takes the stage and starts singing her standard song, but becomes so infuriated while singing that she smashes her head onto the ground, forming a gash on her forehead. Taken to the hospital, she is then pressed with many charges, as people’s lives begin to fall apart due to their being unable to think of anything besides her song. The woman disappears completely, and the protagonist, still suffering from the effects of the song, tries to find a cure. In doing so, she finds a scientist who specialized in sound: she learns that he is treating the guitar-player. He tells the protagonist her backstory: she was a normal young woman who liked the guitar who had a relationship with a man who also played it. Though their relationship went well in the beginning, the man’s character flaws (arrogance, stubbornness, lack of talent) caused her to break up with him. He turned into a stalker and refused to leave her alone, and upon realizing that she wouldn’t be with him, slit his throat with a knife in her room, traumatizing her. A song then crept into her head: the lyrics were sung in her boyfriend’s voice and came from the afterlife (or the next world for that matter). Horrified, the guitar-player went to the scientist for help. He deduced that the best way to beat the song is to create an inverse of it to cancel out the wavelengths. While he was still working on his cure the guitar-player lost her patience and began living on the streets, eventually reaching a large number of people. The scientist then gives the guitar-player the inverse of the song. While it seemed to be successful in the beginning, it later failed at canceling out the wavelengths: the guitar-player’s head broke upon entirely, spilling out the contents of the song into the air. It infiltrates the protagonist’s mind, causing her to double over in pain and confusion. The scientist, disappointed, then begins to work on his next “cure” for the shadow song.
The last story, “Smashed,” is the main inspiration for the name of the book. In this story, a man became lost in a forest in another country but was fortunate in that he stumbled across a village of friendly people. They treated him well and gave him a vat of delicious honey (it tastes so good no other food or liquid could compare with it), but not before warning him that he should only drink it when no one is looking: if he doesn’t, he will die. He tastes the honey for himself in the privacy of his home and is amazed at how good it tastes, and he invites his friend over to try it for himself. He tells his friend of his adventures and is asked for clarification about what “not getting noticed” meant. He responds that he has no idea, as he had largely forgotten what the villagers had told him. His friend then asks for some more honey, but is immediately denied, as it tasted too good to be shared with anyone from the opinion of the traveler. Feeling wronged, the friend later broke into the apartment with some of his own friends later on. They find the honey and call out for the traveler’s name but get no response. Upon going to the backroom, they find that an object has been splattered on the wall: it looked like a pancake. Confused, they weren’t sure about what it was, and leave the apartment to not be implicated in any potential criminal proceedings. Once they are out of the apartment, one of them tastes the honey and is immediately flattened. The others recall the warning to not get caught. Despite their best efforts, they find the honey too alluring and tasty, eventually leading to some more deaths when they turned to it for sensory satisfaction. With only three of them left, one of them, a girl, takes some out of desperation. One of the others, a boy, upon seeing that she wasn’t splattered, takes some himself but is flattened. The girl remarks that she saw something coming from the sky at an extremely quick velocity to flatten him. She hypothesizes that she can outsmart whatever does the squashing by rapidly changing her location after tasting the honey. Her prediction is shown to be false, for she is still squashed. The only survivor then takes out the wallet of the traveler and finds a map. He travels to South America (where the traveler got his honey and met the villagers) and finds the plant where the honey came from: it was extremely tall and had many branches with tendrils that seemed to disappear into thin air before reappearing mere seconds later. This clearly shows that the tree could defy the fabric of reality: what mosquitos are to humans, humans are to the tree. That is, the tree is somewhat omnipotent: it frequently knows if someone is drinking its honey, and if it knows where they are, one of its branches will bend the law of physics to kill (punish) them for acting like a parasite. How the natives of the area were able to extract the honey is unknown, but it was detailed that they worshipped it, which implies that they knew it very well, hence how they were able to survive. The lone survivor then foolhardily uses a knife to wound the tree and begins drinking the honey which poured out of it with no precautions. The tree reacts appropriately by flattening him with one of its tendrils.
Personal thoughts:
Smashed by Junji Ito is a fantastic, chilling, horrific collection of short stories that are likely to frighten and unnerve the reader. The plots are unique (especially the concept of the Earthbound and the nectar plant) and the visuals are superb. Smashed is a quick read, which makes the horror element only more enjoyable. I highly recommend Smashed for anyone interested in manga, horror, unnerving visuals, and unique plot elements.
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