Review: Octopus Girl

Octopus Girl Vol. 1
Written and Drawn by Toru Yamazaki
Published by Dark Horse Comics. $12.95

The great thing about J-horror is discovering new things that creep you out that you'd never thought about before. In this collection of nine shorts, insanely chipper schoolgirl Takako is tortured by female classmates and almost drowned, but it quickly turns back on them as she somehow becomes a head with eight small tentacles in place of her body, and though they're small, they're strong. After taking her revenge in this first story, Yamazaki keeps the plots and the logic very loose, making Takako look like a normal girl again for a doomed romance, and then there are a series of stories where she has a love/hate relationship with a girl who has a human head and moray eel body. They try to kill each other but eventually come to an uneasy friendship. Sprinkled among these are stories with Takako entering a talent show and eliminating her competition in gruesome ways, and tangling with an elderly female vampire, foiled by Takako's black ink blood. Yamazaki often uses tons of hatching to create sickening textures and oppressive surroundings, though occasionally he will switch to a painted look that has its own eerie beauty. The stories are often funny and always well-drawn but their randomness and overreliance on gore may put many readers off from continuing beyond the one volume.