GYO by Junji Ito

“The death-stench creeps.” “There’s something rotten in Okinawa.” These cover blurbs from today’s book discussion subject should tell you that we’re not talking sweetness and light this week. Mike & Greg go fishing with horror master Junji Ito and the brand-new hardcover collection of his 2001-2002 horror story “Gyo”. How terrifying can a horror story about fish be if 99% of it takes place on land? Ito’s got that covered. Serving up a tale equal parts dread and nihilism, Ito knows what buttons to push in his readers to be effective as a horror master, and he jams them hard here. Find out who Ito took cues from and used as a benchmark to surpass in his story, what the difference is between shonen and seinen manga, how similar “Gyo”’s adaptation into other media is to “Watchmen”’s translation, why a circus can be scarier than a great white shark, which things make the human mind flash ‘DOES NOT COMPUTE’, and much more in this week’s episode! Robots From Tomorrow is a weekly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also follow Mike and Greg on Twitter. This episode is brought to you by Third Eye Comics. Enjoy your funny books.