English Dub Review: Junji Ito Collection “Boy at the Crossroads /Slug Girl”

Will your love come true?

Overview:

Crossroads fortune telling becomes very popular in a small town. Everyone is into it, except for Ryuusuke.

Our Take:

This story is a lot more tragic than horrific since it doesn’t rely too much on Junji Ito’s signature monsters. Instead, the horror comes from human insecurity. Crossroad fortune telling is when people stand at a crossroad, waiting for the mysterious crossroad pretty boy to tell them their fortune on their love life. All these people are so desperate or want reassurance that they’re willing to put all their hopes on a stranger. When they are rejected, they become so down that they feel compelled to take their own lives. The fog, masking everything, preys on uncertainty and doubt and turns everyone’s’ reactions extreme.

Reishi is the most obvious case. She started crossroad fortune telling initially to help her friends, but upon meeting the pretty boy, she realizes that she’s in love with Ryuusuke herself. Finding the courage to pursue him, she devotes her all to him— up to the point of neglecting her health and taking her own life. She started out with good intentions, but upon hearing the pretty boy’s words, she became obsessed and extreme. The words of an outsider gave her courage, but almost too much courage. She loses control of her inhibitions, and in the end, takes her own life once Ryuusuke rejects her.

It also reflects past sins, especially with Ryuusuke. He accidentally started the killings as a child by angrily blowing off a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown that her love life would never happen, and is still pursued by that guilt as a teenager. Even worse, it turns out that the woman he encountered as a kid is the aunt of his love interest. Like the fog in town, his guilt pursues him in every part of his life, enough that he feels he’s not worthy to interact with Midori. Once Reishi takes her own life, he becomes determined to atone by reversing everything the pretty boy has done, which includes giving his own love advice. It’s not much, but it’s all he can do.

Ryuusuke’s guilt takes physical form with the dead returning to life to get their fortunes told him. Since he was the first one to start the suicides, he is the most heavily affected by the fog. When he encounters Midori’s aunt again, he’s consumed by guilt and tearfully apologizes. This seems to be enough to sate her ghost, as she kindly points towards where Midori is, allowing Ryuusuke to rescue her before she becomes tempted by the pretty boy.

In the end, we never find out what exactly the pretty boy from the crossroads is, or where he came from. We don’t know the origin of the fog or what brings the dead back to life, but regardless, it’s still something very human that drives people to put themselves in danger. Love is hard normally, especially as a teenager, and it’s easy to want to shrug off responsibility and leave it to an outside party. But as this story warns, that can easily invite danger as well.

Slug Girl is a fairly straightforward story, of a girl somehow transforming into a slug. It’s less horrific than it is absurd but sadly isn’t as strong as Crossroads. Crossroads ended up being a rarity in the collection: more of a ghost story than a monster story, but one that’s fundamentally about human weakness.