 Do you see that flickering light? Believe it or not, it inspired me to do this video. And welcome back to another exciting edition of a week in Geekdom, Geo here. It's been a minute since I've done this setup, and as you can see, we're having some technical hiccups. However, it kind of fits with the theme. It brings out the spooky in all of us, right? When you have a flickering light, and there's no way to control it unless you actually change it. But then I remembered, hey, I gotta talk about this book. And I thought, why don't I do it with the theme of a possessed light? Wouldn't that be fun? Deserter by Junji Ito is another short story collection, this time going back to his very roots, his very beginnings with some of his earlier works. This is probably one of my favorite of the Ito books that I own. I absolutely loved it. There are a couple of misses, but for the most part, everything is a home run in this book, and it definitely brings to spooks. It's not necessarily the scariest book of all time, but it leaves you questioning things. It leaves you wondering about what you've read, and the more you go into what you experienced, I found it more frightful. And that is a master of horror at work, in my honest opinion. And you can definitely see a lot of these staples and horror tropes that would become emblematic in Junji Ito works in here. Also, it was kind of interesting to see how the story begins with really rough artwork, but it's still awesome. That's what's fun about it. The first short story called Biohouse features some of the roughest early drafts, if you will, when it comes to character work and just overall art. But it still looks great and adds a lot of personality to the short story. So over the course of 300 and some pages, you get 12 different short stories. I'm just going to give you my overall thoughts. You had the story of Biohouse, which is super creepy and could easily be a horror short movie or a full length movie about this creepy science worker that invites a colleague to dinner at his mansion. And things go south quick with how creepy both of them are, but the dude turns out to be creepier and there is a lot of grotesque stuff that happens there. Face Thief was interesting. It featured the whole concept of someone stealing your identity and the scary aspect of that obviously exaggerated to have this character, this entity, I guess, be sort of like a chameleon and steal people's faces and become them. And the paranoia of losing one's identity and stuff like that. Pretty interesting, not necessarily my favorite. And I will say Biohouse and Face Thief, even though it is some of the earliest works and the art definitely shows, it has fantastic character work with the expressions on their faces. Where the Sandman lives, I thought was interesting. It definitely brought the creepy factor and it really showed you why Ito's famous for his body horror and man that light is still going. It's going to go for the rest of the video, so hang tight. Where the Sandman lives, like I said, fantastic work. I love the whole idea of dreams and how they can be a source of nightmares for some people because we have no control over that. And this sort of goes into that, but on a more terrifying body horror type of way. The long hair and the attic was extremely creepy and brotesque. I highly recommend checking that one out if you're into that sort of thing. Scripted Love is the next one and out of the bunch here, I gotta say this one to me felt the most real because it involves real people. And the fact that it relies on the lies we tell each other to comfort ourselves. The Reanimator Sword was the funnest of the bunch here because it didn't feel like I was reading a horror story and more like an action anime of this weird guy that has a sword that can bring people back to life and some crazy shenanigans happen in it. It's fairly short and by the time I realized what's happening I was a little disappointed that it ended. I kind of wanted to read more of it, of that world of that story. A Father's Love is one of the longest ones here in this book and it was really an engrossing read about the obsession and the mystery behind a particular family and of course a father, the head of a household and what he goes through with his children and his wife and the tragedies to strike and his resolve to somehow keep everything together although it doesn't turn out as he expected. The ending or the source of the mystery is a little comic bookie if you will but the story itself is really good and I really enjoyed that for once. I got the ending that I was looking for. The next one is Unendurable Labyrinth. This one was extremely creepy, I loved it. Essentially it's the story about these two girls that get lost hiking in the woods in this mountain and come across this Buddhist sect temple of these monks that are practicing some extreme doctrines that involve mummification and stuff like that and it starts out eerie and gets progressively worse as you keep reading it and the end even though it was not as bad as I was thinking it was going to be still managed to fully creep me out because it's something again that's based on reality and actually well yeah most of these stories are based on aspects of real life but this is something that happens that you can research but you can check it out on the internet and be creeped out by it. Village of the Siren is one of the most messed up apocalyptic things I've read from Junji Ito. It's not grotesque, it's not scary, it's more shocking and I thought okay so this just opened the portals to the freaking apocalypse by the end of it. Essentially this kid gets an invitation from his mother to go back to his town that they used to be farmers but now they've built the town has built a factory and there's a giant siren tower and all that stuff and he goes back to the town to investigate what's happening because it sounds so weird they used to be farmers for many years how could they suddenly just drop that and of course once you get there you do have sort of Uzumaki vibes in that everything seems normal at first but it quickly turns eerie and twisted and demented and the fact that Ito used Christian imagery and doctrines and lore makes it stand out from the rest of the bunch and I think it's one of his finest efforts when it comes to horror it really brings that fear of a good scary story and there are some really messed up things that happen in it you don't see it but it's implied and that's what makes it more frightening in my opinion bullied was really messed up it's not scary whatsoever although it is scary for people that have been bullied in the past to an extreme degree where it develops PTSD and stuff like that I'm not saying like a normal tease by a school bully or a friend or something like that I'm talking like physical violence that can really trigger some people that experience that because even though it's played to extremes on the story there are cases in real life of people being abused in such a way which I thought was interesting and the ending just has one of the creepiest images that I have ever seen on a Junji Ito manga and the fact that the main protagonist in that story did what she did and it ends in such a horrific way holy crap it just reminded me how sick and demented some people are in real life and that is extremely sad and finally the best story is saved for last in my opinion deserter it's essentially a short story about this family that is hiding a world war two Japanese soldier he deserted the army if they catch him like stuff like that happened back in the day if they if they caught him they would have executed him they would have made him pay for what he did it was a super dishonorable when everybody was risking their lives to fight for whatever ideology they believed in and all that stuff so he is really putting his life out on the line by escaping and this family is hiding him in a warehouse in his house the thing is the war ended it's been eight years I think and they are still tormenting him and letting him believe that the war is still going and it's evolved and has a bunch of crazy things happening now it sounds far-fetched but we've seen stories of people that have been trapped in islands in the pacific and they believed that the war was still going and stuff like that so it's not too out of the ordinary where it gets really interesting is the revelation as to why they're doing that to this soldier ex-soldier I guess and it's it's really it's really sad and scary that people wouldn't manipulate others into into doing that the final reveal actually gave me goosebumps and I thought man this is some awesome stuff that I'm reading right here and I highly recommend picking up deserter just for that story alone it's an excellent beautifully done story if you like horror if you like short stories this one is a must-read in my opinion oh and I actually missed one the devil's logic which was actually the weakest one of the bunch I did not like it whatsoever it was the shortest one I thought it was just uh being trying to be scary and edgy for the sake of it and it didn't really contribute anything this girl unalives herself and uh another kid is trying to solve the mystery but as soon as you start reading into it the story ends in the most dumbest way possible uh from a storytelling point so I really did not like that one going into this book I thought I wasn't going to like it like I said at the beginning of the video because I thought it's going to be too rough around the edges it's you know ito at his earliest it's not going to be as strong and as is other works that he's most known for but on the contrary this is a solid piece of fiction it has a lot of cool stories from a time where ito may have not been as renowned and well known but you see that dedication you see that passion for the craft there and just inventive writing and making some really spooky stories and I gotta love this book for that and also I mentioned that before but the art is great and on all of these and as you read from story to story the art gets progressively better and it merges into what you've come to know of ito so I highly recommend it if you like good short horror stories with a nice beginning middle and end with good character work and aren't and just the creepy factor raced up a bit go check out deserter so yeah that's going to be it for now thank you everybody thank you so much for liking commenting subscribing and being a part of this channel I truly do appreciate it comment down below if you've read deserter and if you have it what are some of your favorite short stories that you think I should check out not necessarily spooky or Junji Ito just short stories overall thank you everybody once again god bless stay safe out there catch you guys on the next one