Soichi: Junji Ito Story Collection

Soichi is the second son of the Tsujii family, and he is not well. He chews nails until they clatter between his teeth, then spits out curses that set strange things in motion. A summer holiday or a birthday party is enough for him to turn the day into a nightmare.

His older brother Koichi bears the worst of it. Worn down by years of pranks, he has a soundproof room built, though the room has a series of four doors, and the reason for that is part of the mystery.

Elsewhere in the family, a handmade casket left behind by their grandfather brings on a strange phenomenon. What the family sees there is left for the reader to find out.

The book is a horror manga collection of ten tales, each built around Soichi as a recurring antihero. The tone mixes the sinister with the comic, so the dread often arrives alongside absurdity.

The secret of Soichi's origin hangs over the whole run. The stories are short and self-contained, which makes the collection easy to dip into, with curses, grotesque escalation and domestic settings that go wrong fast.