The Liminal Zone – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended TLDR Weeping Woman Way: 3/10 Madonna: 2/10 The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara: 3.5/10 Slumber: 2/10 Overall: 3/10 Disclaimer: due to the nature of this work – a collection of short stories –, my normal parameters of Story, Art, Characters and Enjoyment with a weighted average won’t be applied. Instead, a global overview will be offered.The Liminal Zone is a collection of four short stories – Weeping Woman Way, Madonna, The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara, and Slumber – that are neither remarkable nor well done. The stories are just a weak sequence of good panels with a good and functional art style. From a technical point of view, the stories are well done, with a good fluency and cadence of the panels, but with terrible stories to go along with it. Although supposed to be a collection of horror stories, one cannot ignore that most stories are downright funny and are everything but scary. This is especially visible in the first two stories – Weeping Woman Way and Madonna –, while the two last ones are just dull in every way possible.
The characters in the Liminal Zone are either just placeholders for the action to happen, classical cases of mass hysteria (Weeping Woman Way), which he often likes to do – like in Remina –, or an archetypal overzealous and delusional character (Madonna).
For all these reasons, I definitely do not recommend reading The Liminal Zone, for Junji Ito is capable of better stories, visuals – although these are quite good – and characters. It was, nevertheless, a quick read.