 13 chilling nightmares presented by the master of horror. Try not to be noticed when you eat the secret nectar, otherwise you'll get smashed. What horrific events happen to create the earthbound people, tied to a certain place for the rest of their short lives. A strange haunted house comes to town, but no one expects it to lead to a real hell. Welcome to Junji Ito's world, a world with no escape from endless nightmares. Hi everyone, welcome to another exciting episode, another manga review here at A Weakened Geek and finally, it's been a while and I am very happy to be here with all of you. You are the absolute best, thank you for liking and supporting this channel and in the case of this video, well, you already know what we're talking about and it is Junji Ito's smashed story collection. That's the official title, here's the cover looking pretty wicked, the spine looking pretty interesting, I'll explain that image in a little bit, here's the back and the binding, you know it's solid as usual with these Viz selected editions, they're really fantastic. I have been talking non-stop about Junji Ito on this channel since I read Uzumaki two years ago, it's already been two years, almost two years, but yeah, it's been an interesting ride, Uzumaki was pretty fantastic and then, you know, everything that I've reviewed so far, Tomie, Gio, Shiver, and I haven't talked about Frankenstein, but I'm saving that for later. Now, I'm concentrating on smashed, the latest of the Ito oversized hardcover, I guess you want to call it that, basically, like I said at the beginning of the video, it's 13 short stories of Ito's repertoire that is not collected elsewhere, it was actually pretty refreshing because when I did the video for Shiver, it double dipped on, I think it was a Tomie issue, I think, I might be mistaken, but I know it double dipped. So with this, none of the stories are present in the other books, so you can enjoy it and love it and don't have to worry about reading other books, other Ito works. So what does this entail? So this is 13 stories and at the beginning, you get a table of contents right there with this sweet vampiric image, so yeah, you get the contents and right off the bat, this wasn't as interesting of a collection as I would have wanted it to. There are some really, really good written stories here that I really appreciated. Others were just okay and some were a little bit forgettable. The idea, the execution, and everything else that was done for these stories, they're wonderful, they're really good, but when you compare it to other works, when you re-read Uzumaki and you read even the Frankenstein book, which I haven't talked about yet, this falls a little bit flat in some areas, but at the same time, there's much to be loved. It's a story called Blood Sucking Darkness, which involves vampire bats and it's pretty wicked and it's pretty fun and you get to, you have Ito at just throwing random ideas and crafting scary, horrific, or downright creepy stories out of topics or subjects that you did not know you could make a story out of. Blood Sucking and all the mythos and urban legends and all that stuff regarding vampires and creatures that, you know, sought the life force out of you, that gets explored there. There's also some stories that are more, they're weird and the fright comes from the implications of mass media, consumption and humor and, you know, very abstract ideas that get turned into horror elements. We see that with the two comedians, we see that with this story right here, this character, and how music affects us, and really, actually now that I think about it, the main theme of this story collection, you know, it's a weird name because it says Smashed, I didn't know why it was called Smashed, you learn on, you learn at the end of the book why it's called Smashed because that's literally the final story in this book, but at first I said to myself, okay, this is Junji Ito Smashed, when I hear that, three things come to mind, one, booze, two, sex, and three, hulk. It's none of those. This is a story collection about obsession, about our human lengths when it comes to obsessing over fortunes or obsessing over pride, material objects, or just, you know, just the obsessive nature of humans and how we can get fixated on something. And the stories do a good, mostly a good job of going into that theme and presenting some really interesting ideas. I know I said some of the stories are a little bit, they don't quite hit the mark, but the themes and the inventive nature of it, I gotta give my man props because he's able to take such random topics and create really interesting quirky, fun, dark and mysterious stories about it. Some of the other stories that I really liked in this collection was the mystery of the haunted house. That will be the highlight, I think, for most people that read this book. It's a basic setup. I don't necessarily like to spoil content on this channel, but it's a basic setup of finding a mysterious new haunted house and then you learn about its inhabitants and how this person is profiting off of creating like this living hell inside the haunted house. Once the story is over, you get to see the same story from another character's perspective and then you continue the story from there. So it's like three stories out of the thirteen. And to me that was the highlight. It was really, really creepy and pretty well done with some interesting weird characters that when I read it, I immediately thought, okay. So what I am theorizing, it's not so much as a theory because it's displayed in the book, but there are connections to other stories in the Junji Ito verse, if you will. So now I'm thinking, this is pretty much a connected universe of stories because, A, a lot of the characters look alike. That's one of the things that bugged me about these books is that most of the female characters and most of the male characters tend to look alike from book to book. But I've learned to spot the differences. So it doesn't bother me now that I've read, smashed. But at the beginning, yeah, it was a little bit confusing. And two, you know, having another character from another, from one of the other books, I won't say which, showing up here, I was not expecting that. That was a pleasant surprise because that character was my favorite from that other book. That was my favorite story. So yeah, this is the Junji Ito horror universe where a bunch of crazy messed up things happen to a lot of people in Japan. There are some really cool social commentaries, especially with the bodies that are being, you know, they're planted and solid on the ground, wherever they may be. And they start theorizing about why it's happening and how they could fix it and all that stuff. So for the most part, all of these stories do a good job of, like I mentioned with the stone people, introducing something that's creepy and horrific and leaving you with questions. Because part of the fun of a short story is introducing something, a quick concept. You get a quick resolution, but you get an ending which you sometimes do not expect and leaves you wanting more. And that to me is the general appeal of a short story collection. And with these horror stories, the second thing that I like is that, yeah, there's that intrigue. If something happens, you get like the main exposition and the resolution. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't, but most of the time you get a sense of dread because you don't know how it's going to work or how the character's going to solve things or if things are going to get better, if they don't. There was one story that was really, it kind of freaked me out because it did involve nature, how we perceive stories about ghosts. There was one that had to do with flooding and there was another one that had to do. What was the other one? There was one that had to do with spirits and it reminded me of old folktales and all that stuff. Character seeing things and all that stuff. So yeah, it was really creepy. Overall, the book is fantastic. The art is great. Some stories I fear that people may not like compared to Ito's previous works. The character modeling, you know, it's pretty much the same from other books. Even though I'm praising the book, I do recognize that some stories do fall flat, but in hindsight or to summarize, the majority of the book works for me and it is a very interesting read in the Ito verse, if you will. If I were to rank it, it would be low level entry for Ito. I still think Uzumaki is the best work that he's done and it's still my number one pick when I go to Junji Ito books, but still, Smashed is a wonderful addition to your horror library. Hopefully you like it. If you've read it, let me know what you thought down below and if you haven't, recommend me some horror manga that I should check out. I'm very interested in doing that. Guys, thank you so much as always for liking, commenting, subscribing. We've reached 1400 subscribers, which is pretty insane, pretty awesome, and it's all because of you guys. I love every single one of you. I wish you all nothing but the best. Thank you as always. I've got to go, follow me on your favorite social media platform, and yeah, I will catch all of you on our next episode.