Junji Ito is easily one of the most popular mangaka working today, and probably the biggest name in horror manga specifically. His collections are horror masterpieces with an art style that looks like nothing else out there, and a copy of his manga is basically a little piece of horror art you can hold in your hands.
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So you’re ready to jump into Junji Ito’s world? Here are ten great starting points, covering his most iconic characters and some of his best stories.
10. Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: You & Mu
This one is not horror, it’s an autobiographical comedy, and that alone makes it a fun surprise on this list. Ito, drawn as “J-kun,” moves into a new house with his fiancée A-ko, who brings her cat Yon along and later adopts a kitten named Mu. The chapters cover cat escapes, vet visits, cat wand battles, and Ito slowly falling for two cats who barely seem to notice him. He draws every small moment, even a hairball, with the same dread soaked linework he uses for his scariest stories, which somehow makes it hilarious, and you can pick it up through Kodansha Comics.
9. Soichi: Junji Ito Story Collection
Soichi is one of the few characters Ito brings back again and again, and this collection is where you meet him properly. He’s a spiteful, curse obsessed kid who shows up in stories like “A Happy Winter Vacation,” “Soichi’s Home Visit,” “Teacher of Cloth,” and “Soichi’s Petty Curses.” The stories mix real unease with dark comedy, since Soichi treats cursing his own family like a fun little hobby. It’s a great pick if you want to see Ito be funny and unsettling at the exact same time, and you can find this Viz Media edition wherever manga is sold.
8. Dissolving Classroom
This story follows Yuma Azawa, a new transfer student who apologizes for absolutely everything, which gets him bullied by his classmates. He becomes close with Keiko Arisu, and together they end up caught in something much darker tied to Yuma’s sister Chizumi. Underneath the horror, Ito is quietly poking fun at the ritual of public apology in Japanese culture. It’s a bit less iconic than his bigger hits, so it works best once you already know his style, and you can grab it from Vertical Comics.
7. Remina
Unlike a lot of Ito’s short story collections, Remina is one long, complete story from start to finish. Scientist Dr. Oguro discovers a new planet and names it Remina after his teenage daughter, instantly turning her into a celebrity, until the planet starts eating stars and heading straight for Earth. As panic spreads, the public turns violently against the girl who just happens to share the planet’s name. If you want a full horror story with a real beginning, middle, and end instead of loose short tales, this Viz Media release is the one to grab.
6. Black Paradox
Four strangers meet through a suicide pact website, each one haunted by some kind of double, like a doppelganger, a robot clone, or a birthmark they can’t stand. Their plan to end things together goes sideways fast, leading them to a doorway into a strange alternate world. What starts as a bleak premise turns into a story about greed, as the group discovers something valuable and dangerous on the other side. It’s a strange, pulpy mix of heavy themes and sci-fi payoff, and Viz Media has this edition ready for anyone curious enough to pick it up.
5. Gyo
The main story here is as gonzo as Ito gets, fish and sea creatures sprout mechanical, spider like legs and start crawling out of the ocean, pushed along by a bacterial “death stench” engine. It starts almost silly and turns genuinely nightmarish the further it goes. The book also comes with two bonus chapters, “The Sad Tale of the Principal Post” and “The Enigma of Amigara Fault,” the latter often called his single most iconic story. Honestly, those bonus chapters alone make this Viz Media release worth the price of admission.
4. Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories
This collection is Ito’s own personal best of, handpicked by the man himself, with stories like “Used Record,” “Shiver,” “Fashion Model,” “Hanging Blimp,” and “Marionette Mansion.” It comes with his own notes and commentary tucked in alongside the stories, so you get his personal take on why each one works. Since he built it specifically as a highlight reel of his career, it’s one of the most efficient ways to sample his range in a single book. If you only want one anthology to test the waters, this Viz Media edition is a strong bet.
3. Sensor
Reporter Wataru Tsuchiyado goes looking for Kyoko Byakuya, a mysterious woman with golden hair and powerful clairvoyance who survived a volcanic eruption that wiped out an entire village of psychics. His search pulls him into a cult chasing the secrets of the universe, mixing cosmic dread with Ito’s usual body horror. It’s often called his most ambitious cosmic horror story, tying together nearly every theme he’s known for into one saga. Reviewers have even called this Viz Media release one of the best entry points into horror manga in general, not just Ito’s work.
2. Tomie
Tomie is the story that put Ito on the map, following an immortal girl whose beauty drives the men around her to murder her again and again. The twist is that she regenerates from any leftover fragment, spawning new versions of herself across stories like “Photo,” “Kiss,” “Mansion,” and “Hair.” It’s a simple horror idea stretched across dozens of variations without ever feeling repetitive. As one of his two signature works, published by Viz Media, it also gives you the background for understanding obsession driven characters that show up later, like Kyoko in Sensor.
1. Uzumaki
Uzumaki follows the people of Kurouzu-cho, a small town cursed by an obsession with spirals that slowly consumes everything around it. Across three volumes and chapters like “The Spiral Obsession,” “Jack-in-the-Box,” and “The House,” the curse spreads from odd behavior into full blown societal collapse. Ito takes a shape most people see as harmless or even pretty and turns it into the source of total dread, all while his characters fight a force way bigger than themselves. It’s widely seen as his magnum opus, published by Viz Media with even a hardcover omnibus edition for the deluxe treatment, and it earns the top spot by showing exactly what makes his horror so hard to shake off.
If this list leaves you wanting even more, Venus in the Blind Spot and Smashed are two more great collections packed with his short stories. Frankenstein is another one fans keep coming back to. For something a bit more challenging, No Longer Human is his manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s classic novel, adding his own twist without losing the heart of the original. Once you start reading Junji Ito, there’s really no shortage of nightmares left to find.
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