100 Ghost Stories Will Cause My Own Death Volume 1
Story and Art: Anji Matono
Publisher: Seven Ocean Entertainment (Print and digital)
translate: John Neal
Lettering: Kai Kyou
Publication date: December 10, 2024
grade: Older teenagers
type: Comics, horror, super natural
I am a fan of horror comics and it is also the premise of this person. A primary school boy Yuuma tries to kill himself by jumping out of a window, and his classmate Hina tries to save his life by telling him the legend of 100 ghost stories (if you tell 100 weird stories), then you see the ghost, you see a ghost. This made Yuuma interested in extending his lifespan and he began the ritual. Every night, he tells a new ghost story to the camera, photographs himself, and plans to achieve his goal of 100.
Readers accompany Yuuma’s adventures, sitting behind the camera and observing the telling of each story. The story is short: Ten different stories fit this volume. They range from terrible and weird to weird and funny weird.
The artistic style of the comic varies according to the emotion of the scene. Yuuma has too many all-black eyes on the cover – I often see this subject in horror comics where the eyes look like solid students. This often happens in horrible situations, while supernatural creatures have weird eyes, or are victims. It usually indicates the idea of dying inside or approaching death.
Yuuma doesn’t always have these eyes in the comics. His eyes are still big, showing innocence and emotion, and sometimes wondering, but they look more balanced and creepy. When you get to Yuuma in front of the camera, he looks less amazing and more like a normal boy, a little cute, I dare say.
The art of characters in the story Yuuma tells also changes. Art reflects this when characters are in everyday situations and their lives are relatively normal. But when emotions start or involve supernatural emotions, the face becomes more exaggerated and the lines in art become more obvious and detailed. The eyes are the main focus of this to point out when a huge error occurs, for example in this scenario.
This is another one. The eyes are more realistic here, but still bigger – her eyes aren’t completely covered, so we know she’s not a supernatural character – but still keeping up with something unsettling and mysterious.
The story here is very primitive to me. Some of them feel they may be urban legends, passed over time, while others seem to have invented the author completely. Matono is very talented in this regard – the story is different, making their origin unclear. The effect of this is that the stories feel more real, as if the storytellers are really there to share what they know, whether they have heard it before or make up for it as they go.
Some stories follow the terrifying informal rule, that there is a moral lesson in this story. In other words, if someone does something wrong or taboo, there will be rewards, or at least warnings. For example, in one of the stories, a man is trying to deceive an old woman and his company is terrible.
One of the stories even resonates with Junji Ito, especially the ones involving sl shots in the ears. That was one of my biggest fears, where I climbed up a living creature. When I lived in Japan, I heard that cockroaches crawled up their ears while sleeping and I lost many hours of sleep trying to figure out how to protect my head. It may or may not be true, but it scares me. So when it comes to Slug’s story, my belly fell off and saw an image like this.
Of course, things got worse and more disgusting than this picture.
Overall, this is a great addition to the horror comic genre, with a wide variety of stories and many troublesome images to get your imagination running away with you. The title of the comic, 100 Ghost Stories That Will Cause My Deathsuggest that when all this is done and done, the ending of the little Yuma won’t be very good. He is a sick little boy and we don’t know why he tried to commit suicide (at least not yet), but he is still the same child…and is perfectly capable of scaring himself when he shares his story.
Maybe you should leave light as well when you read it.
Volume 1 100 Ghost Stories That Will Cause My Death Now available from Qihai and anywhere for sale in Manga. Volume 2 is about to be released, with a release date of April 8, 2025. You can learn more about the comics and buy them here.
