No Longer Human Vol. 1

Product Information

a b Douresseaux, Leroy (December 18, 2019). "No Longer Human manga review". Comic Book Bin. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021.

For fans of Dazai, or newcomers to the narrative, Junji Ito’s No Longer Human is a truly engaging and unnerving experience.the other world and ends up going from tragedy to tragedy. It’s an immensely depressing story that’s even a bit scary in how it explores the human psyche to show how things can so easily go terribly wrong. But at the same time, it’s not horror, it’s a psychological drama. And that’s the core of why I think this adaptation isn’t very good. This story relies heavily on seeing the world through the eyes of the protagonist, particularly in how he sees others and how his viewpoint affects how interacts with them. Oba is a complex character that sees the world in a very twisted way and that changes over time, but he isn’t insane. His thought process makes sense but from a broader view it’s clearly screwed up in such a way that will hurt him. Conveying Oba’s viewpoint in such a way that the reader can understand it but can also see the flaws in it is the essence of this story. This adaptation simply isn’t able to do that very well. The way Oba is basically portrayed in this is as a suffering artist type, which is a vast oversimplification. It also doesn’t feel like it fleshes out the people around Oba much at all and thus it’s really hard to see the effect they have on him. Thus, the majority of the manga just feels like it revels in his flaws and mistakes, without really putting proper effort into conveying where they came from. All it really feels like is the story of a character who is suffering, which kind of misses the point I feel. No Longer Human is told in the form of notebooks left by one Ōba Yōzō (大庭葉蔵), a troubled man incapable of revealing his true self to others, and who, instead, maintains a facade of hollow jocularity. The work is made up of three chapters, or "memoranda", which chronicle the life of Ōba from his early childhood to his late twenties. This is a hard read. I have an immense affection for the original novel by Dazai particularly for how it made me feel. Junji Ito really shined here with his interpretations of Yozo Oba's demons and fears. They were potrayed in these vivid, cruel horrible, disgusting and disturbing images that came to life so extravagantly. I felt dread creeping all over my body, I was very much uncomfortable with all of the horrific and traumatising visuals. it showed the rawness of human. Rather than the grim, bleak and depressing prose by Dazai, Ito made the story seems more horror than sad.

I think I’ve finally accepted that this isn’t so much an adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human as it is Dazai’s plot and Usamaru Furuya’s Yozo. Although I still end up comparing the two works a lot in this review. Sorry. No Longer Human by Usamaru Furuya is the first of four manga adaptations of the 1948 novel by Osamu Dazai, which I haven’t read yet. For years, this manga has been out of print, until November 2022, when Kodansha released a 3-in-1 omnibus volume containing the entire series. How does it fare? Find out here.

No Longer Human (Junji Itou) Chapter 1: Oba Yozo

Oba's Second Memorandum focuses on his college days. Increasingly paranoid about keeping up appearances he begins to neglect his studies and his ambitions of becoming an artist are now a thing of the past. He is spending money left and right. And soon finds himself in a destructive cycle of drinking and self-loathing. Spurred on by a fellow aspiring artist, he begins to take advantage of his family spending money like water to maintain his bad habits.

Badman, Derik (January 29, 2020). "No Longer Human". The Comics Journal. Fantagraphics. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. He inadvertently(?) caused the demise of a few people, whose ghosts haunt him at the most inopportune times. It seemed like death and the love of women came to him easily, like a song that broke the monotonous buzz of despair and dread that continually consumed him. With such a fair face, he can't help being a lady's man. It may have served his women better if they took a more critical peek at his art, if only to see the demons he was harboring within. This is one of the exceedingly few works I've read that deal with a Grade A homme fatal. Occasionally, Yozo’s worldview will leak into the art: he’ll be depicted as a helpless marionette, or the people around him will be depicted as faceless beings incessantly staring at him; and one standout sequence shows Yozo drawing a manga, filling it with grotesque and horrifying images, venting his feelings through his art, clearly expressing exactly what’s going on that we don’t see the rest of the time. Although the manga’s artwork becomes more expressive as the story goes on, it is ordinary for the most part, and the occurrences I’ve mentioned are the exception rather than the rule, and arguably a case of too little too late. The artwork doesn’t do quite enough to communicate Yozo’s thoughts and emotions, leaving the rest of the job up to the writing.

Comment

I couldn’t roll my eyes enough at how Oba gets punished: his wife being raped in front of him. women do not pay for the crimes of men. It’s supposedly karma for him using women for their bodies and a place to stay. A temp worker does it as Oba had once slept with the terrorist/cult leader’s gf who he was condescending toward. it just really feels like a stereotypical man wrote this. Afflicted with an intense feeling of alienation and otherness and finding it nearly impossible to understand those who surround him, Ōba resorts to buffoonery in early years to establish interpersonal relationships. Establishing the mood of the rest of the book, Ōba describes humans as he is separate from them, describing them foolishly and always perplexed by humans. He also describes numerous times that his antics is a way to not anger humans and not to be taken seriously to avoid reprimands. He is sexually abused by a male servant and a female servant during his childhood but decides that reporting it would be useless. no longer human till this day resonated with so many people. its a story that exposed the weakness, self destruction, honesty to the point it hurts, no rationalization for all bad decision and actions and somehow we empathize with the character.