(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..

(11/18) The attention to detail in these stories, especially the exceptionally gruesome and rotting teenage revenants that begin to populate the town, are wonderful. Junji Ito is as well-versed in rendering the ever-present fog as he is a putrid skull or gouged neck.

(12/18) While initially carrying over some of the same themes of obsession and suicide as the "Lovesickness" stories, the "Hikizuri Siblings" stories slowly mutate into a strange and wonderfully goofy riff on tales of morbid families.

(13/18) The "giant cloud of amorphous horror" is a Junji Ito staple that pops up often, and I'm always overjoyed to see it! It never stops being an effective show-stopper. The use of it in this story, showing the undiscovered supernatural powers of a little boy, is a great one!