What do you do when you discover that your favorite horror manga artist has created an autobiographical manga chronicling his struggles with sharing a home with his new fiancée’s cats? You buy it. Immediately. Without a second thought. When I happened upon a new volume of Yon & Mu at a local bookstore, I took one glance at the cover before impulsively snatching it off the shelf, giggling impishly while I gazed into the nightmare eyes of the cat illustrations on the cover. I remember saying out loud to myself, “A book about cats...by Junji Ito.”For those unfamiliar with the author, Junji Ito is largely considered one of the modern masters of horror manga (please see: Uzumaki and Tomei). His vile renderings of body horror are a thing of legend, and therein lies the greatest appeal of this book -- this is a casual slice-of-life comic illustrated by the king of disturbing imagery and, my goodness, is it glorious. It reminds me of when I found out that T.S. Eliot had written Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. How could the same brain that had produced the “The Hollow Men” also spawn a book of poetry about cat names?
The book itself is slim and contains hardly a skeleton of a plot, consisting of only ten short vignettes. The major premise is that J-Kun (Junji Ito) and A-Ko (his fiancée) have moved into a new house together, but much to J-Kun’s surprise (and chagrin), A-Ko is bringing her family feline Yon in tow. J-kun, being a dog person, believes a curse will befall their new home due to the cat’s accursed face and skull-shaped fur pattern. What follows, as one might predict, is J-Kun’s slow about-face as he warms up to and inevitably falls in love with the cat. And that’s the plot. The vignettes are effective in their simplicity, however, as the moments of cat love (and fear) ring of a cat truth that all cat owners will recognize.
The true draw here is the cat art. The human characters and their surroundings are drawn in a very basic, minimal style, while the cats are drawn in a hyper-detailed, realistic fashion, creating an unsettling and remarkably unnerving contrast. Never has the face of a domestic house cat evoked such a level of eldritch horror. Ito, at full command of panel angling and subtle action, somehow manages to make a scene of a cat exiting a cat crate the spookiest comic page I’ve seen in years. I also have to comment on the way Junji Ito draws his wife. A-ko’s eyes are pupil-less throughout the book, her face a constant mask of creepy cat obsession as she fawns over her feline babies. The effect is jarring yet hilarious.
This is not an essential manga by any means, especially for those in search of any semblance of plot or drama, but it is an entertaining distraction if you enjoy quirky stories of the everyday cat variety. This comic contains two very specific elements, cats and psychological terror, and so it will only appeal to a very specific reader. Curious to know if that reader is you? Just gaze into the dread eyes of Yon and there you will find your answer.
Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended for: fans of horror stories, cat stories, and horrific cat stories
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