(1/18) A little while ago, Viz contacted me about talking a little bit about their newest Junji Ito release, "Lovesickness"! I think it stands out as one of the strongest collections to date.

(2/18) While containing some of Ito's more bizarre stand-alone shorts, the star attraction here is a grouping of five short stories all dealing with obsession, despair, and a ghostly creature known as the Beautiful Boy of the Crossroads.

(4/18) The protagonist we follow through these stories is a boy named Ryusuke, who returns to his ominous and perpetually foggy hometown after many years away. Lately, rumours have been circulating about a rash of suicides of teenage girls.

(7/18) It's not long before the entire population of the town is obsessed with crossroads fortune-telling, with Ryusuke targeted as the supernatural entity plaguing the town.

(9/18) What starts as a fairly straight-forward (if exceptionally bleak!) ghost story from Ito, grows with each story, into a minor saga of a cursed town with its own deeply compelling mythology. The stakes grow with each tale until the body count is rising at a staggering pace..