What is it about horror manga that makes it so effective?
No really, I'm asking. As a lifelong horror fan, I can enjoy most forms of frights the medium has to offer. I enjoy spooky stories and creepypasta; I don't think twice before going to see horror movies in theaters; I smile through haunted houses; I can even walk across my room in the dark without being scared a hand is going to grab my ankle from under the bed!
But manga gets to me in a real way–a serious skin-crawling, spine-shivering way. Maybe it's the chiaroscuro linework that renders texture with such horrible, loving detail. Maybe it's how often the books seem glad to cross any boundary of cruelty we'd expect such stories to respect. Maybe the horror manga industry is built on a pact with the devil, and their books offer mankind its nearest contact with hell before death.
Who knows? Still, I'm incredibly insecure, so I've gathered a list to go along with my confession. In no particular order, here are 11 of the most mind-breaking manga ever printed.
You show me someone can read them and still think I'm being unreasonable, and I'll show you a goddamn liar.
Parasyte (寄生獣 セイの格率; Kiseijuu)
Published in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine from 1988 to 1995, Hitoshi Iwaaki's classic manga continues to terrify today, having been adapted into an anime just 2 years back. The story is a classic tale of paranoia, as Earth is being invaded by parasitic worms that crawl into people's ears and noses, making a home of their brain. Anybody could be turned already, their mind wiped clean by the parasites, and there'd be no way to tell.
Until the infected go all The Thing on you, and eat your head off.
So that's a pretty clear indicator someone's been taken over. When one worm tries to assimilate Shinji Izumi, an unassuming high-school student, it is thwarted by Shinji's headphones and has to go in through his arm. Unable to make it to Shinji's brain, the parasite finds it can't erase its host's mind, and the two are forced to share the body.
The series follows Shinji and his new companion – his left or right hand depending on the translation you're reading – as the two attempt to navigate their unprecedented situation. While there's more humor in this book than in some of the others on this list, rest assured there's more than enough guts, blood, and general grotesquerie to appease even the most hardcore gorehound. Heads explode, bodies are shredded, and all of it looks gooey and gross.
Aftermath Radio (後遺症ラジオ; Kouishou Rajio)
This ongoing series by Masaaki Nakayama's latest collection of ghost stories has been running since 2014. A collection of seemingly disparate horror stories at first, each of these short tales soon establish that they are indeed not only part of the same world, but part of the same story. As patterns emerge, Masaaki's unnerving vignettes – some barely three pages long – come together to reveal a grander mythology involving the mysterious origins and violent grudges of a spirit known only as the God of Hair.
It's an apt name, too, as hair is a major focus of many of Aftermath Radio's stories. In the first story, a woman cuts her granddaughter's hair, assuring the child that it must be done. Has always been done. And the child weeps. Things continue to get worse from then on, as the series explores ghosts made of hair, hair obsessed ghosts, and just general creepy Japanese hair shit all around. On top of all that, people are haunted by visions of hairlessness, seeing themselves as bald in reflections out of the conrners of their eyes. If that sounds mild, just look at the banner image at the top of the article and try to say you wouldn't shit yourself seeing that grinning at you from the mirror.
