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CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  60/100
  Probably one of his whackiest manga hands down. Beware of Satan's brain melting electromagnetic waves.

  I will say this in every single review I do of Junji Ito's stuff. The man draws whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants. When you have the urge to just draw a bunch of people melting horrifically into gigantic liquid piles of fleshy ooze, then you may as well as just follow that urge. That's how Junji Ito's Dissolving Classroom came into existence.

  Junji Ito felt like drawing people melting, and there are apparently people out in the world (me) who apparently sometimes just feel like reading something where just a bunch of people melt.

  Who fucking knew that would be the effect that ALL MIGHTY LORD SATAN'S ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES would have on the human body?

  ...Wait, what?

  ---

  My Dissolving Brain

  

  "Our face has melted. But we do not need a face. The ooze people can exist in peace without burden of outward appearance." ~Gospel of the Ooze, 6:19.

  Can I just say I don't know why that we in the US got a physical copy of this but NOT of literally any of Junji Ito's other short manga collections. You know, all the ones with the real good stuff (though, the new Junji Ito manga we're getting in a few month seems to be a best of selection of those stories). Not to say I didn't enjoy this because I did and I would probably buy it again because so far all of Junji Ito's manga's physical forms have been neat. Like with this, on the cover, the sibling characters actually come out of the cover a little bit which is a neat little thing. Then you have Fragments of Horror which is like this Junji Ito version of that ONE PAINTING, but like if the light hits the cover or the back just right, you can see like fucking typical Junji Ito nightmare creatures beneath of both sides.

  Not to mention, all three of Junji Ito's "long series" are matching hardbacks, and everyone knows that hardbacks are superior to paperbacks. THEY'RE SUPERIOR.

  Manga/book nerd-ery aside, this is one of the exceptions of Junji Ito's collections. All chapters are connected and/or there are at least one or two key central characters that are throughout all chapters. You have this weird pair of siblings that move from house to house after shit goes down in each chapter. The older brother is tall and wears glasses, and the younger sister asks a girl to let her suck her brains like within the first ten pages.

  

  The sister just shows up and stares at the girl for three pages, and then bam, on the fourth page we're right into it. The brother has done nothing but apologize, whereas the sister just chases a girl out into the street to get hit by a truck and oh, the brother shows up and apologizes because the girl with a creepy face is his sister and he blames his sister taking on an evil streak on him killing small animals because of his parents arguing, and SHE IS POSSESSED BY ONE OF THE SNAKES HE KILLED WITH A ROCK.

  

  Then the girl is like okay, I'm gonna go befriend your sister because apart from the creepy face, she's probably not all bad. But then the sister is like, no you got it all wrong, my brother is actually a Satanist and he keeps our parents' partially melted heads in a closet, and his apologies are in fact to Satan or a demon and they cause other people to melt basically.

  

  "EXCUSE ME MISS, DO YOU HAVE A TISSUE? OUR BRAINS SEEM TO BE COMING OUT OF OUR NOSES, MOUTHS, EYES, AND OUR EARS. IT'S A SERIOUS FUCKING PROBLEM."

  Then the girl becomes self-aware of the fact that she is in a Junji Ito manga and that both siblings are fucking completely out of their fucking gourds, so she does the smart thing and just fucking runs away but it turns out everyone in the entire school has already melted. But the guy is still chasing her because he really wants her to accept his heartfelt apologies that for some reason seems to melt everyone's brains. She manages to escape total brain melting but apparently her brain still melted enough to where while she's still alive, she's basically brain dead. And her parents who met the brother before and were thus apologized to are also dead.

  

  I own the actual physical copy of this and the dialogue is translated differently. In the official translation, it's actually more insane? "My brother's apologies make people's brains melt. It must be the evil electromagnetic waves passing between him and the Devil!"

  Electromagnetic... waves? What???

  

  So the first chapter or story with these fucked up siblings ends with an entire school of people's brains melted, and our first protagonist is left braindead and alone. The siblings move away to melt innocent people's brains for another day. Actually, they move to another location literally after almost every chapter.

  

  ---

  Conclusion

  Not my favorite Junji Ito manga, but it was fun overall. A 6 out of 10! There is a little bit more that happens than literally just people melting, but I'll leave that to your imaginations. I just wanted to review this one because out of all of the ones I've read, this is the one where Junji Ito was the loosest as far as plot went. And also Satan's electromagnetic waves aside, it IS pretty weird to just do a manga where people melting is the entire thing.

  "Oh, the creepy sister is evil and possessed by a snake the brother killed. Oh, the brother is actually a Satanist and for some reason if he apologizes to people, their brains melt. Oh, the brother and sister are now fighting, maybe they'll end up turning on each other--oh no, that didn't happen. Oh, the brother is still denying everything his sister is saying and is instead blaming it all on the sister... oh, it's over. WHOOPS, THE ENDING LITERALLY JUST SAID OKAY YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SIBLINGS IN THE END SO NO RESOLUTION. Granted, given all the chaos at the end, I'd probably say they're dead."

  Weird, nasty, disgusting, and ugly. My type of Junji Ito manga. To conclude this review, here's a parting sneak peek at one of the other chapters of this. Sorry!

  Don't worry, your brain will be fine. Because I'm not actually sorry. Also, I don't worship the Devil so I don't have access to his brain melting electromagnetic waves.

  
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• 

  bboyoatsnrice

  100/100
  The combination of the art, grotesque imagery, and disturbing nature of their situations left me aghast

  I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I was given this manga. The front depicts a pale boy, and a fiendish looking girl beside him standing in a classroom of what appears to be melted bodies. Being a fan of horror manga, the cover made me even more enticed to start it ASAP. Because even if a horror manga doesn’t manage to make me wet myself, I can always appreciate the art, or sheer absurdity of the story. With that said, was Dissolving Classroom as scary as the cover depicted?

  The story is created by Junji Ito, a famous horror mangaka mostly known for his series Tomie. A series I’ve yet to read as of writing this, but have heard nothing but great things about. Recognizing the name did make me more excited to see what was in store. So what was in store?

  A story involving a brother and sister, both of whom are odd, must keep moving place to place after leaving behind a trail of peculiar instances. The boy, Yuuma, constantly apologizes to everyone on account of his sister causing mischief for everyone they encounter. Though apologizing is actually his way of communicating with the devil. Anyone he apologizes to gets caught between him and the devil in a sea of electromagnetic waves that slowly causes them to melt. When he praises someone’s beauty, he’s actually praising the devil and thus anyone he directs his compliment towards turns more and more hideous. His sister, Chizumi, has a much more sadistic appearance and goes out of her way to torment anyone unlucky enough to cross her path and enjoys devouring the bodies that her brother melts. The manga is an amalgamation of all their misadventures, culminating into one book.

  

  As usual, the art is amazing. Aside from the attention to detail on the deformed victims, melted bodies, or even the normal humans themselves, Ito is able to convey such an uncanny and uncomfortable feeling through the expressions of the character's facial reactions. Sure, I won’t lie, before we see anything gory our first encounter with something out of the ordinary is Chizumi. And I thought she looked hilarious, maybe that was intentional but she did not freak me out in the slightest, at first that is. While her design was nothing too frightening, the way she interacted with others, aside from being an edgelord saying she wants to eat their brains, was off-putting and awkward. Her ugly appearance only enhanced her disturbing nature, which was much scarier than her physical appearance alone.

  Though I’d say the same applies to her brother as well. Chizumi is constantly telling the people who they encounter that her brother is a freak who performs these rituals as a way to get closer to the devil. He gets off to both apologizing and complimenting others. He also enjoys bringing his abusive parents from back to the dead to beat him. Disturbing stuff I know, but his normal appearance juxtaposed with what he does behind closed doors makes him more intimidating than his sister. Both siblings constantly point the finger at each other for who’s to blame for all this wicked stuff happening. Yuuma tells people that his sister is possessed by the devil as a punishment for him killing animals as a kid, hence all the terrible happenings surrounding them. While Chizumi tells others that her brother killed animals as a ritual to appease Satan and that he’s the one creating all this madness as a means to get closer with the devil.

  And the craziest part about all of this, is that by the end of the story, it’s still unclear who was telling the truth. Though there’s no doubt in my mind that Chizumi is possessed by a demon at the very least, I believe her story over her brothers. Though there’s validity to what he says as well. I think that as a kid he wished death upon his abusive parents so much that he wanted to send them to hell. And what better way to do that than to befriend the devil himself to give him the ability to do so? The devil making a demon possess his sister only makes his apologizing ritual easier to pull off, and whoever’s the demon inside Chizumi gets their payment through eating Yuuma’s victims. The final arc reveals that a detective that was using one of Yuuma’s victims, who managed to survive despite incurring brain damage as a result, to find the truth behind the siblings was, satan all along? Or did Satan just possess him as the siblings attended a press conference? Again, it’s unclear and up to the reader’s interpretation. Mine is that he possessed the detective spontaneously at the end, as Yuuma had performed the ritual enough times to bring Satan as close to him as he could. And the series ends with the author saying that nobody knows what happened to everyone who watched that press conference through their TV’s and that it’s up to the reader to decide what happened.

  

  My only gripe with the series is of no fault of the story itself, but rather the translations. There were times where I had an inkling that something was supposed to be scary or conveyed in a different way than intended. Sometimes the dialogue felt very literal with zero subtly. For example, seeing a panel with text along the lines of, “Yes, I am chizumi and I love to suck brains. Muwahah.” was very common and lacked the same punch that the rest of the page had. Maybe it’s stilted on purpose and that’s just Ito’s unique style of writing. Who knows, but I personally felt it detracted from the horror aspect and made it more comedical at times. Which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but I’m not sure if that was the intended effect.

  Getting this book filled me with joy and confusion, and seeing Junji Ito’s name on it only made my craving for a spooky comic that much more voracious. Did I get what I wanted? Most definitely, I got much more than I expected. The combination of the art, grotesque imagery, and disturbing nature of their situations caught my intrigue and held it long enough that it only took me two sittings to complete. If you’ve yet to read this then please do yourself a favor and read it, especially if you love body horror, and guro.

  
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