'Dissolving Classroom' delivers large doses of social commentary with the horror

Dissolving Classroom (2017, Vertical Comics)
Story and Art: Junji Ito
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Whereever handsome Yuuma and his hideous little sister Chizumi go, horror follows in their wake. Beautiful young women are left disfigured, classrooms of students are reduced to mysterious puddles of slime, and the all residents of entire apartment buildings vanish mysteriously. Guilt-ridden Yuuma is constantly apologizing to those who are doomed while Chizumi cackles madly and prances about. What is the terrible truth behind these happenings?

Many of horror master Junji Ito's stories deliver bits of social commentary along with the creepy scares. In "Dissolving Classroom", these messages are more front and center that is usual, and they are the driving force of them. There are two issues tackled in the five stories of "Dissolving" cycle--which are all collected in this volume--and these are that it's sometimes difficult to recognize who is the abuser and who is the abused in relationships; and the ever-growing popularity of call-out culture and the attendant displays of empty apologies. This dual messaging and commentary on how damaging it is to individuals and society as a whole are most clearly on display in the second story, "Dissolving Beauty", and the final tale "Interview with the Devil", which wraps up the cycle with a literally cataclysmic event.

The "Dissolving" stories bear a resemblance in their nature to Ito's most famous cycle of stories, Tomie: In each story, the recurring characters visit doom upon the hapless individuals who cross their paths. Ito was wise in wrapping this one up quickly, though, because there's no mystery behind Yuuma and Chizumi and why people are meeting gruesome ends around them--Yuuma's apologies are actually rituals that sacrifice people to Satan. There's also nothing sympathetic about them; as monstrous as Tomie is, there's an occasional glimmer of humanity that the reader can sympathize with... and her victims sometimes are deserving of their fates. Although Ito tries to inject some humanity in Yuuma and Chizumi toward the end of the cycle, it's too little and it's too late.

Aside from the five "Dissolving" stories, this anthology contains two brief tales. I'm going to take a guess that they were inspired by headlines or news articles that Ito read, and they are both quite thin and at the low end of the quality spectrum that we can expect from him. ("The Return" is curiously touching while "Children of the Earth" is nonsensical--not to mention covering ground that he's already trod more effectively in other stories).

The stories collected in "Dissolving Classroom" aren't among Ito's best work. They're still better than the majority of horror comics that have been published over the years, but there were were none of the moments of dread I've felt reading his previous works. In many ways, Ito has delivered a cycle of stories that felt more like standard horror comics than his usual work. Artistically, there also wasn't much that impressed--nothing was bad, but the only truly standout images were the ones where Ito drew Satan as Yuuma perceived him.

If you're familiar with Ito's work, and you've read everything else, this book is worth checking out. If you're a newcomer, "Uzumaki" is his greatest work to date. "Frankenstein", "Smash", "Shiver", or "Flesh-Colored Horror" are all short story collections that will give you a view of the range of horrors he can deliver when he is at his best.