Check the other reviews for summaries of each chapter (bilingual, in fact). According to the afterword at the back of the book, this is a collection that was gathered in 2021 against the backdrop of the height of COVID-19's effects on the world. Because of this, I was wondering to what degree some of the themes of pandemic, sickness, isolation, loss of power, loss of access to public space, etc might come into play. Maybe upon a reread those might pop out more but I didn't sense much specifically around those themes. I want to echo what another reviewer said that I would not recommend peoplestart with this Ito compilation. I would definitely recommend to begin at what made him famous, and go chronologically. Earlier full stories like Uzumaki or more coherent collections like Tomie, or even adaptations like No Longer Human or Frankenstein allow you to see the power of Ito's illustrations over a longer narrative, even if stories like Tomie were published over long span of time, there is some coherence between. Once you dip into his work there, decide if it's for you and enjoy the various collections of short stories that are not this one. Then, and only then, would I recommend this collection of short stories. Not because I think they're bad, just because I think they're not his best, and even he admits one of the stories (Slumber) is more of a thought experiment rather than a fully developed idea. I liked the majority of these but I like them in the same way you enjoy a PB and J sandwich, like it's filling and nice flavor but there's not much there, no lasting power, cheap and easy.

I'm not one to absolutely enjoy everything an author I like puts out, I don't believe things are free from critique. I want to say something completely untrue but I feel it explains how I came to these stories: I think Ito Junji vacationed in Mexico, and partook in our culture a bit because these stories have elements of Mexican culture or are adjacent to it. Lemme explain. The first story starts strong with some inspiration from Mexican folklore of La Llorona (not recall, I said it's completely untrue that there's a connection to Mexico but who knows). I liked this one, it shows women in a ghostly town weeping to fix the drought in an area, but in classic Ito style, the characters grow obsessive and start to rampage. This story is fun and mysterious and allows Ito to draw some extreme faces of sadness and despair along with showing the potential effect of excessive crying on someone's skull (definitely read this one).

Continuing my crackpot theory of Mexico-flavored Ito, the second story has religious cult of catholicism's repression in its entirety. Though thats not unique to Mexico, there's tons of people you can ask about their religion and they say they "grew up catholic" and we won't get into it but there's a reason it's past tense. This story shows some wonky stuff going on with a private school whose protagonist is the typical Ito Junji sameface heroine (no shame to the game but you can't say that he doesn't draw sameface often) but there's a creepy headmaster who's cheating on his wives left and right and some students are leaking salt out their ears. This has a really cool and silly ending when someone gets impaled by a cross, it's wild and overall yeah this one's okay, not bad. Not exactly inventive but efficient at getting across that religion and adoration of idols is a classic horror trope.

This third one has Mexican duende written all over it. Two people go into a forest to commit suicide (Aokigahara), and when they get there they discover a spiritual stream of power that shoots out a cave and one of them decides to go into the stream and it transforms them... I recommend this one for its surreal quality where shit just keeps getting much more wild. There's some sexy moments and the art style of the newly transformed protagonists is silly yet fun and I recommend this one for being on the silly side of Junji's stuff. Less scary, more just kinda funny how serious the protags become at becoming more and more... spiritually connected with the flow.

The fourth one's Mexican connection is probably forced (told you, my theory is stupid and doesn't always hit) but you could say it touches upon several killings like how Mexico is plagued by death (femicide, cartel violence, killing of journalists, etc, it's a problem we have in the motherland). It's the least enjoyable, it's a rather straightforward story of whether one should believe the protagonist or not due to them murdering people in sleep, but not being able to remember it when they are awake in the morning. Ito himself let us know that this came from an idea long ago and it's telling that this is how the collection ends because I think he started on a high note.

Anyway, I would always recommend an Ito Junji collection but I would never absolutely blindly love everything, these are fine and short stories and you can breeze through them in the night, there's a few memorable moments like the skeletons in the Weeping Women short, the impaling in the religious story, and the protagonists new form in the third story, but beyond that, I'm just gonna use MAL's wording for this is just fine, nothing wildly special, not terrible either. 6.5-7/10, I gave a 7 because I enjoyed things more with my theory that Ito went to Mexico.