just saw someone call junji ito lovecraftian (loads shotgun)
you know aside from the fact that calling any freaky horror "lovecraftian" is stupid (along "kafkaesque" lines) junji ito's horror is by definition NOT lovecraftian. lovecraftian horror is like, cosmic horror that preys on your fear of the unknown. you KNOW what the horror is in a junji ito story. he shows you. it's the living person inside the armchair or the unbearable desire to force yourself through an increasingly not-you-shaped hole. the fact that he places what you're scared of directly in your line of sight and renders it in loving, incredible detail is what makes his work so good. a lot of horror fails when it tries to make the threat knowable; junji ito's does not. (empties shotgun and loads it again)
Ignoring the fact Ito himself has cited Lovecraft as inspiration and the amount of cosmic and aquatic threats in both of their works for a second, let's talk about horror of the unknown.
Horror of the unknown isn't negated by artistic detail or physical form: it's a sense of dread at the unexplainable. Take The Colour Out of Space, one of Lovecrafts more well known stories. The idea of a new colour outside our human spectrum of perception that we can still perceive is one form of the unknown - both from the idea of perceiving that beyond our physical possibilities, a reader rubbing up with trying to imagine the colour and coming up short, and the mystery of where this colour came from.
Let's take those unknowns and apply them to Ito's work: bodies stretched beyond physical possibilities, readers being asked to imagine impossible ideas, and the ambiguous origins of the horrors in question. Ito undoubtedly works with all three. In my opinion, these are all demonstrated well by The Enigma of Amigara Fault which I shall use as a baseline.
There's plenty to be scared of in Amigara Fault; the final page's reveal of what happens to the sliding bodies is just the tip of the iceberg. These sections are, as pointed out by OP, lovingly drawn.
Oh god right? Hell yeah? Hell yeah! I love this story so much.
But I'd argue that a panel like this doesn't negate the idea of cosmic horror. Instead, it furthers it. These are physical impossibilities being drawn, and always in stark black and white. The fear of the unknown isn't exactly the correct term here, but the way Ito's horror figures are drawn almost always leaves room for an audience member to fill in the blanks, in the same way The Colour does.
Also I'd argue that Ito's illustrations could be compared to a cosmic horror Escher but that's for another post lol
Anyway, I think that the main issue with the point OP is making here is confusing the illustrated with the known. We know what Amigara Fault looks like, we know what it looks like on the other side and we know what it does to people. But it's missing a vital component: why?
Why did Amigara Fault appear? Why are there purposefully shaped holes? Why do people feel the need to climb in?
This is the unknown. This is cosmic horror. Unimaginable powers drawing people in to near certain death, super natural landscapes that look purposefully made for specific humans, the unknowable question of whether this was motivated or coincidence.
It's called an Enigma for a reason.
This is the essential DNA Ito shares with Lovecraft, the crushing weight of the universe being too strong and vast for humanity to properly understand. How are we supposed to comprehend the old gods? How are we supposed to rationalise Amigara Fault? Floating doppelganger heads that hang their lookalikes? Women cursed to become snails? Cities spiralling in on themselves?
We're not, because we could never. This is cosmic horror, and taking it away from Ito's work is doing him a disservice.
I do hate Lovecraft tho lol
