NOTE: Mimi’s Tales of Terror has been officially translated since I originally read and reviewed it. I may very well revisit it and read the official translation to see if it enhances my experience.

Review

Mimi’s Tales of Terror sucks. There’s somewhat of a reason for that, because Junji Ito adapted these stories from a book with different authors. Ito claims he took creative liberties with the stories, but the extent to which he did is never made clear. Whatever the case, he should’ve gone further, because this is the worst horror collection he’s made.

Somewhere, I read a review that claimed these stories were “grittier” than the usual Ito fare, but I would describe them as the polar opposite. There are almost no serious consequences or threats in any of these stories; a complete foil to Ito’s usual cruelty towards his characters. The shock panels are frequently weak, often just being rotted corpses or spooky wisps with faces. The stories do feature recurring characters such as the titular Mimi, but they’re completely generic, and the lack of interconnection between the plots makes this basically irrelevant. Skip this one completely.