Interesting Short: Fashion Model

From renowned Manga horror artist/storyteller Junji Ito comes this short, first published in 1992 and found, translated, in the collection entitled Shiver. I must admit it is early days in my exploration of his work but what I have read and seen I utterly adore.

This particular story might have been presented to you as a “Use of Tropes” blog and it is true that the artist has not suggested that central character Miss Fuchi is a vampire and describes her as a “shark woman” (or at least carrying an element thereof). Nevertheless, there are aspects of the vampire here, enough for me to class it as such and a further aspect comes into another story featuring Miss Fuchi, which I’ll look at separately.

The story starts with Iwasaki having a premonition that something bad is going to happen. He goes to a café and is flicking through a magazine when he spots a model within the pages (Miss Fuchi, though he does not know this). In contrast to the pretty, young starlets otherwise featured, the model has a singular look (one might say almost Addamsesque). Her image disturbs him so much that she invades his dreams and he is so pre-occupied he almost fails to write the screenplay that he and his student filmmaking buddies need.

read right to left

As it is, he manages to start to forget her image, writes the script and the film wins a competition. With that success they are going to make a second film and decide to audition non-school actresses. Iwasaki’s sense of dread returns and, after identifying Tamae Mori as their likely lead, they open another application and it is from Miss Fuchi. Despite Iwasaki’s sense of dread the others decide to hire her as well as Tamae Mori because she is a professional model and so might raise the film’s profile.

They meet their stars, Miss Fuchi is hugely tall, monstrous in feature and, given the sense of dread that accompanies her (for Iwasaki, at least), I think we could describe her as unhomely, in a Freudian sense. Her career seems anomalous (and Junji Ito was clearly commenting on a monstrousness at the heart of the fashion industry, made manifest). As they drive to location she laughs, revealing a maw of wicked looking fangs. When the crew concentrates on the pretty lead, she deals with her in a particularly cannibalistic way (assuming she is human).

It is that flesh and blood diet and her teeth that made me push this into the vampire realm – though her singular looks (and the uneasiness they engender) are also quite vampiric. The Shiver collection has a further bonus story featuring Miss Fuchi becoming jealous of a new, pretty model at her agency and eating her. This is entitled Fashion Model: Cursed Frame and was previously unreleased, dating it to the year of the collection, which was 2015. My thanks to Ian who got me the Shiver collection.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK