Apparently Dazai’s style was autobiographical fiction and I’ve never read the original book (nor ever will) so I can’t say how much of this is directly taken from the book or whether Ito added in biographical elements from Dazai’s life. But the book opens with an alcoholic writer and his young girlfriend committing suicide by drowning, which is really how Dazai died. In this version, Yōzō meets Osamu Dazai himself during an asylum recovery, thus giving him permission to tell his story in his next book. The manga includes a retelling of Dazai's suicide from Ōba's perspective. 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.

a b 人間失格 ３ (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. Originally I read Junji's piece first, not even knowing that it was a version of a Japanese classic book. After finishing it, I decided to read the original and give Dazai his dues. I would also suggest reading into Osamu Dazai's biography as well to get a better picture of what exactly all these pieces mean. Even subtle changes in the adaptation seem to shift more blame and awfulness to the women. A box of sleeping pills Oba uses to overdose on, is, in the novel, one he hid from her in case he wanted to use them. In the manga she bought and hid them. And thus Ito adds a whole storyline just to have more women being crazy and awful. And that is not the only time it happens in the adaptation. In general Ito reaches for the crazy woman trope.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. But Ito, apparently, did not want to really take on the challenge of the adaptation as it was. He changes the plot heavily in places, adding death, gore, more sex and ghosts (or at least visions of the dead). And more importantly, he makes the story even more misogynistic, adding plotlines for various women characters that are even more awful and prone to offensive stupid tropes than the original. It didn’t help that almost nothing that happened was remotely interesting. In addition to being tedious, some episodes were simply baffling. Like when Oba, as a defence mechanism, becomes the class clown, purposely making an ass of himself for the amusement of his classmates. But the grotesque friend Takeichi says that he knows Oba is making a fool of himself on purpose, which is apparently a terrible secret that sends Oba on a mental spiral where he contemplates murdering Takeichi to protect this “secret” - what?!? Yeah, he’s being an ass on purpose - so what?! Maybe it’s a cultural thing or has something to do with the era but I totally failed to grasp the significance of this.

It happens with Oba's wife later in the story, in another change from the novel. In the novel Oba's wife Yoshiko is, it is heavily implied, raped by a casual acquaintance. Oba (despicably) sees it happening and runs away, then gets all messed up about it, on his own behalf (he seems mostly unconcerned about his wife's trauma). In the manga, the scene he observes is much more heavily implied to be an affair (at least it is not at all implied it is not consensual) without any logic, but then the wife, you guessed it, goes crazy (cue bulging eyes and darkened forehead). El estilo inquietante y turbador de las ilustraciones de Junji Ito, aunque aquí parece algo más controlado y realista, es en el fondo el de siempre; convierte al protagonista de la novela de Dazai, Yozo Oba, en un artist manga también, y de alguna forma Junji Ito se implica de la misma forma en que lo hizo Dazai en su novela: obras semiautobiográficas donde los autores se retratan si mismos y se se desnudan emocionalmente.I didn't like the character. I despised him. I felt sorry for him, though. I continuously hoped he would change, but eventually I realized he couldn't.

Jones, Grant (December 16, 2019). "No Longer Human Hardcover Manga Review". The Fandom Post. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. 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. in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021 . Retrieved December 25, 2021. This graphic novel is a departure from Ito's trademark narratives, interpreting as it does a Dazai classic that stands as one of the best-ever selling books in Japan. While the original seems to have focused on the sadness and pathos that marked the existential crisis that our lead (who seems to have been patterned after Dazai himself) labored under, true to Ito's style this book lets the horrors and absurdities of his experiences take the limelight.What a bizarre and boring book! Horror manga artist Junji Ito adapts Osamu Dazai’s 1948 novel No Longer Human into comic form with mixed results. Ito’s art is fantastic as always but the story, etc.? Yeah, all of that is utter rubbish! I never read the original, so can't say for myself who Dasai is in this work, but the story is of Yozo, an artist, rendering his soul on canvas such as other tortured artists like Van Gogh or Munch, though most of the time Oba draws manga. He plays the clown but is profoundly depressed. He is handsome and popular with many women, but he has fears and social anxiety about people. Oba, like Dasai, was sexually assaulted by male and female servants. He had a childhood friend commit suicide that seems to have haunted him all his life.

However! Let the record show that this is a book that demands some form of self-blitzing (read: weed) to be even bearable, especially if you're a queerdo with complicated lady feelings, because Ito loves a booby and I do, too, but he also loves charring that booby and drawing the emaciated toothy corpse or drowning it and drawing it bloated and tongue-slugged, so. The latter part was different from the novel with the appearance of Dazai as a character, I think its unique. It gave me sadness as i read this part, i was emotional because of it. Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga. Junji Ito is an absolute master when it comes to his artwork and graphic novels. If you pair this with No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, you have the perfect piece.Still I can't help but root for him. If you've undergone a spiritual malaise just like our lead, you'd understand the prodigious effort it takes to rise from all that weakness and pain. There's one point where it seems like he really had a chance. Question is - will his Beatrice be able to save her Dante?