Soichi: Junji Ito Story Collection

Characters: ★★★★ Atmosphere: ★★★★★ Writing Style: ★★★★ Plot: ★★★ Intrigue: ★★★★★ Relationships: ★★★★ Enjoyment: ★★★★Rating: ★★★★½I kind of hate Soichi, but I also feel a lot of sympathy for Soichi.This collection of short stories features the misadventures everyone's least favourite preteen boy as he navigates social settings. Spoiler: he's creepy and weird and horrible to everyone. He's the little imp popping in from the ceiling to spit nails at you and gloomily say he never wanted to be invited anyway. That's where I feel an ounce of sympathy for our sweet, horrible boy. Although he earns everyone's disgust, it's hard not to see how he's affected by the alienation he's receiving in every social situation. He's a disturbed boy, seemingly cursed from birth to be a 'demon', but is he really THAT evil? Unlike a lot of other Ito series, there's no death in Soichi (from unnatural causes). There are a heck of a lot of hospitalizations, but everyone in the end is no worse for wear. He also doesn't ever really hurt his immediate family, and you kind of get the sense that his immediate family isn't scared of him at all. It makes me wonder just how reliable the narrators are in this story—is everything real or are these just terrified misrepresentations of a mischievous oddball boy who's got a strange fascination with the occult? In conclusion, I guess pretending to be a cat won't get you out of every situation, but you might as well try it anyway.

Anyone who's been following my reviews for a while knows that I have a convoluted relationship with Junji Ito's works: I either obsess over them and find them to be absolutely flawless, or I spend most of the book bored out of my mind. Unfortunately, the latter was more frequently the case with Soichi (though I did find it to be unique enough to be worth 3 stars instead of the 2 I initially planned on giving it). I didn't care a lot for Tomie, either, so maybe I just don't mesh well with these collections Junji Ito does revolving around a single character. That said, there was some genuinely creepy imagery in here (I never got over being chilled a bit by the shots of Soichi with his mouth full of nails), and I loved the Easter egg of the famous model from another of Junji's works.The whole collection is really over the top and definitely one of Junji's sillier works, but I think a lot of his readers are going to love it. It wasn't a new favorite for me, but I'm still glad I read it.Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.✨ Content warnings for: violence, gore, body horror, curses, abuse, blood sucking, necromancy, animal abuse/neglect, animal death ———twitter booktok bookstagram blog