10 Most Messed Up Junji Ito Moments

3. The Belly Of The Beast - The Thing That Drifted Ashore

Junji Ito Snail Girl
Asahi Sonorama

The ocean is home to a whole host of frightening and strange creatures; and with so much of its depths still unexplored, we can only imagine some of the horrors that could be lurking in the deep.

In The Thing That Drifted Ashore, which you can read for yourself in Volume 7 of The Horror World Of Junji Ito, is a small and contained tale that sees such a monstrosity drift ashore.

The design of the creature itself is as strange and disgusting as you'd expect from Ito, but events are only going to get stranger. While examining the creature it becomes apparent that there's something inside it, visible through its translucent skin.

Further inspection reveals the contents aren't other strange ocean animals but hundreds of human bodies.

As the corpses are cut out, one of the onlookers recognises a body as being her fiancé who vanished along with a ship crew several years prior. With the assumption that these bodies are all part of the the missing crew, the horror escalates when the people are revealed to still be alive.

How did these people survive? That is, if they're still even human. Actually, we'd rather not know.

Contributor
Contributor

Glasgow-based cinephile who earned a Masters degree in film studies to spend their time writing about cinema, video games, and horror.