Best Horror Mangaka Who Are Not Junji Ito

Key Takeaways

• Not all horror manga comes from Junji Ito; other mangaka like Umezz, Mizuki, and Hino excel in inducing terror.
• Be it gothic horror from Kaori Yuki, or brutal body horror from Shintaro Kago, the genre offers diverse styles.
• Rising stars like Tomoki Izumi and Sui Ishida bring fresh, unique takes on horror manga, showcasing modern terrors.

With short stories like The Enigma of Amigara Fault, and longer works like Uzumaki and Hellstar Remina, Junji Ito has become synonymous with horror manga. Anyone who’s gotten into the genre in the past decade or more likely did so via Ito’s work, or inevitably came across it online.

However, Ito didn’t create horror manga, and he isn’t the only one in the field. As great as he is, there are other artists whose work rivals his in invoking terror and might even exceed it for some. But fear lies in the beholder. If anyone wants to test their nerves, here are some great horror mangaka who aren’t Junji Ito.

Updated November 10, 2024 by David Heath: Junji Ito hasn’t had much luck with adaptations of his work. The recent Uzumaki anime came close to being the first, truly decent Ito-based animation. That is, until its production woes came to light, which explained why it ended up being fantastic for some scenes, and a fiasco that makes the Junji Ito Collection series look like Redline for the rest. Still, that first episode is still gold compared to spottier examples like the Gyo and Tomie movies.

Still, he isn’t the only horror mangaka out there. Others have also made a splash in the genre, from old school pioneers who inspired Ito himself, to contemporaries who tell spooky stories in their own, unique ways. If anyone’s already checked out this list’s original entries, it’s now been updated with a few more top mangaka who’ll keep them busy with their works.

1 Kazuo “Umezz” Umezu

The Godfather Of Horror Manga

• Debut: 1955
• Notable Works: God’s Right Hand, Devil’s Left Hand, Orochi, The Drifting Classroom

Perhaps one of the more obvious alternatives to Ito is the man who inspired him in the first place. Kazuo “Umezz” Umezu practically invented the genre when he began adding paranormal horror elements to his shojo stories. It resulted in his monster tales Reptilia and Nekome no Shojo. His most iconic horror story, The Drifting Classroom, saw a school sent through time to the post-apocalypse, where the students fight to survive Lord of the Flies-style.

Nearly every horror manga today can trace its stark, dark artwork to Umezu’s style, including Ito. He got his start reading Umezu’s Mummy Teacher comics, which eventually led him to submit his debut work, Tomie, for Monthly Halloween magazine’s Kazuo Umezu prize for horror manga. Umezu himself, alongside other judges, deemed it worthy of an honorable mention and ran the story in full in the magazine.

2 Shigeru Mizuki

Yuks with Youkai

• Debut: 1957
• Notable Works:GeGeGe no Kitaro, Akuma-kun, NonNonBa

Shigeru Mizuki sticks out a bit from the crowd compared to Ito, Umezz, Hino, etc, as his work is unlikely to tingle spines or churn stomachs like Umezu and Hino. Not unless they were checking out his starker historical stories like Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths. However, if any manga reader enjoyed stories about the youkai, ghouls and ghosts from Japanese folklore, they have Mizuki to thank for popularizing them.

His most famous work, GeGeGe no Kitaro, followed Kitaro’s quest to bring peace between humanity and youkai is more like The Addams Family than the Manson Family, but it brought Japan’s classical creatures back into style in an age when sci-fi and robots were all the rage. As (relatively) lighthearted as it gets, it would inspire later creators to use his youkai for darker works, with Berserk‘s Kentaro Miura and Ito himself referencing them for their own tales.

3 Hideshi Hino

Master Of Monstrosities

• Debut: 1967
• Notable Works: Panorama of Hell, Town of Pigs, Hino Horror series

Umezz’s work could get bloody and terrifying, but Hideshi Hino made his name illustrating deformed monsters and out-and-out gore. Whether it’s armed creatures murdering and kidnapping villagers in The Town of Pigs, or an evil demonic twin with a taste for claret in Hell Baby, Hino isn’t one for the squeamish.

His seminal work, Panorama of Hell, even featured an artist painting pictures with his blood in between relating his brutal life story (one loosely based on Hino’s own experiences). Hino made his name with his Hino Horror short stories in the alt-manga magazine Garo. But he’s also dabbled in live-action horror, writing & directing two entries in the infamous Guinea Pig series of torture flicks.

4 Suehiro Maruo

The Ero-Guro Maestro Behind Shojo Tsubaki

• Debut: 1980
• Notable Works: Shojo Tsubaki, The Laughing Vampire, The Strange Tale of Panorama Island

Rivaling Hino is his fellow Garo-published artist Suehiro Maruo. While Hino reveled in blood, Maruo combined it with more adult content to become one of the first artists behind the revival of the “ero-guro” (erotic-grotesque) movement. His work, from his stories to his novel and album cover commissions, combined gore with suggestive figures to put it mildly.

The most notorious of which was Shojo Tsubaki, aka Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show, a story about a young girl who’s taken in by the circus when she’s left orphaned. It managed to get an anime adaptation called Midori, which was banned worldwide (bar a DVD release in France) for its depictions of physical and psychological abuse. However, he did take a break from gore to adapt the suspense mystery The Strange Tale of Panorama Island, showing how his art could be pretty while still being terrifying.

5 Ochazukenori

Murder And Death For The Josei Crowd

• Debut: 1984
• Notable Works: Zangekikan, Ankoku Jiten, Fear Infection

If Hino and Umezz made horror for shojo magazine readers, what would horror for their older josei counterparts look like? It depends on the artist, but one of the most famous examples is Ochazukenori (an alias taken from a rice dish). His explicitly gory stories rival Hino’s, with Zangekikan containing a range of short stories covering parasitic infections and water demons, to Ankoku Jiten‘s killer bees and cursed books.

His art leaned closer to Hino’s crude ghastliness than Ito and Maruo’s more refined figures, which were enough to make him a cult favorite among horror fans in Japan. Much like Ito, his stories could take unusual premises and make them horrifying. For example, Zangekikan‘s ‘The Mystery of the Vanishing Heads’ is akin to Ito’s ‘The Hanging Balloons,’ in that both tales involve inexplicable forces going after the innocent via their heads.

6 Hitoshi Iwaaki

Invasions, Infections, And Intrigue

• Debut: 1985
• Notable Works: Parasyte, Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk, Sound of Bones

Since his 1985 debut, Hitoshi Iwaaki has switched between horror and historical tales. Fans of the latter may be familiar with Historie, about Eumenes’ life with Alexander the Great, and his female samurai drama Reiri. Yet his most famous work is the sci-fi body horror tale Parasyte, where the titular aliens take over human brains and turn them into body-distorting monsters, a la The Thing. Shinichi got lucky when a Parasite got trapped in his right hand. Together, they defend themselves and others while figuring out who has the right to exist.

Sound of Bones compiled his one-shot stories that continued many of Parasyte‘s themes, like Sea of Garbage‘s look into the value of life, and Dreams That Kill‘s twist on the Freddy Krueger murder-within-dreams concept. Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk is about a man who can’t look people in the eyes, who then gets knocked out and wakes up unable to see people’s eyes at all. It’s like a neat Twilight Zone-style strip, complete with an ambiguous twist. If all readers know of Iwaaki is Parasyte, then they should check out his other works too.

7 Kaori Yuki

Gothic Shojo Style

• Debut: 1987
• Notable Works: Earl Cain, Angel Sanctuary, Boy’s Next Door

Some fans might be surprised that iconic horror mangaka like Umezz and Hino either started in shojo comics or made a name for themselves in the genre. It just shows that women have liked horror of different varieties for decades. But if their more blatant monstrosities seem like a rather blunt take on horror for readers, they might find the skin-crawling work of Kaori Yuki more their speed.

Her specialty is gothic horror, making readers dread her story’s outcome rather than focusing on the page turn like Ito. For example, her Cain Saga sees its titular character deal with family drama on top of zombies, spiders, and torture. Her most notorious work is Angel Sanctuary, where its lead is caught at the heart of a battle between angels and demons, alongside handling a doomed romance.

8 Kanako Inuki

The Queen of Horror Manga

• Debut: 1987
• Notable Works:School Zone, Kuchisake Onna Densetsu, Be Very Afraid of Kanako Inuki!

If shojo producing ‘the godfather of horror manga’ in Umezu wasn’t enough, it also introduced the world to the genre’s queen in Kanako Inuki. Inspired by Umezu, alongside Osamu Tezuka and Moto Hagio, she got her big break when Umezu himself included her debut work, Orusuban, in a special edition of Shojo Friend. Since then, her mix of folklorish horror and wry humor has seen her work pop up in standalone releases, and in compilations with Ito, Hino, and other top names in the genre.

Many of Inuki’s stories focus on how women and girls can be just as capable of vicious depravity, if not more so. Which she can show with just her artistic flourishes, like giving her characters big eyes, but keeping the irises small so they look more demented than cute. That’s without getting into their actions, like the sadistic bullies in Big Sis Sasori and The Birthday Present. As tricky as her work can be to track down, it’s worth tracking down. Particularly for fans who fancy urbane wit to go with the skin crawling.

9 Matsuri Akino

Urbane Modern Horror

• Debut: 1988
• Notable Works: Reiken Sh ōh ō Kabushikigaisha, Pet Shop of Horrors

Speaking of urbane wit, Matsuri Akino is known for her debonair dialogue to go with her alluring, expressive artwork. Her mix of dark humor and horror helped her catch on with the older josei crowd than the younger shojo readers Yuki and Umezu wrote for. Her breakout work, Reiken Sh ōh ō Kabushikigaisha (“Psychic Business Corporation”), saw a substitute science teacher deal with the spirit world and whatever they’d inhabit.

It combined horror and mystery very well, though it was arguably perfected in her most famous work, Pet Shop of Horrors. Where the store’s owner, Count D, sells rare pets to people, provided they stick to their contract. They each come with three conditions, and if they’re broken, the consequences can be dire. Also ironic, as they’re often tailored around their personal foibles, which they often can’t overcome.

10 Shintaro Kago

Brutal Body Horror With A Satirical Edge

• Debut: 1988
• Notable Works: Fraction, Dementia 21

The ero-guro field is a busier one than people would think, as while Maruo is one of its more notorious artists, the most famous is Shintaro Kago. His use of extreme brutality, sexuality, and body modification express his satirical takes on Japanese politics and society on top of getting shocks out of people.

For example, Fraction sees a serial killer called “The Slicing Devil” deal with a copycat killer, where Kago appears as himself to inform the reader about how manga are made. Dementia 21 pushes care worker Yukie to the brink with bizarre tests as everything at her workplace is automated. Then A Lot of Sweets Jammed in the Head of a Girl is an art book featuring gut-quivering sights of depravity like someone’s head being literally stuffed with candy.

11 Nishioka Kyōdai

The Siblings Of Shock

• Debut: 1989
• Notable Works: Journey to the End of the World, Kafka, God’s Child

While most of the entries are single artists, the Nishoka Kyōdai is actually a duo. Satoru and Chiaki Nishioka got into the manga business in 1989 with Boku Mushi, an anthology of short stories that featured serial killers, bird women, and a man who developed a kangaroo-like pouch. Their work plays out like dark twists on fairy tales, with grim but whimsical artwork to match.

They especially shine in Journey to the End of the World, where a man bored with his life goes on a journey to leave it behind, only to find sights that show him how sick the world truly is. God’s Child continues the psychological horror as a sociopathic child seeks to avenge his mother’s fate.

12 Kei Tōme

Combining Horror And Drama With Aplomb

• Debut: 1992
• Notable Works: Lament of the Lamb, The Hour of the Mice

Unlike Hino, Ito, etc., Kei Tōme isn’t strictly a horror mangaka. She has dabbled in a variety of genres, from her historical samurai strip Kurogane to the coming-of-age tale Sing “Yesterday” For Me. But her knack for dramatic storytelling has worked in her horror stories well, with Lament of the Lamb acting as a more grounded take on Kaori Yuki’s Cain Saga and Angel Sanctuary.

Like Cain Saga, it follows a young man, Kazuna, who turns out to be a vampire. Then, like Angel Sanctuary, he’s in a cursed romance born out of isolation and his supernatural status. Unique to Lament of the Lamb, it treats vampirism like a disease or a condition Kazuna and his estranged sister Chizuna have to adjust to, along with coming to terms with their parent’s deaths. It’s a good story for readers who fancy a more grounded, melancholy kind of horror.

13 Daisuke Igarashi

Spiritual Spookiness

• Debut: 1993
• Notable Works:Witches, Children of the Sea, Saru

Browsing through Daisuke Igarashi‘s work might be perplexing for a horror fan, as he’s just as famous for making iyashikei stories like Little Forest. But the bulk of his work deals with the supernatural, where they pull readers along for perplexing mysteries. Like in Children of the Sea, where a bullied child finds friendship with a boy raised by dugongs, and how they might be connected with a crisis where the sea’s fish are going missing.

Witches is more overtly horror-inspired, where a spurned woman learns magic to get revenge on her unrequited love. While Saru reinterprets Journey to the West as a demonic possession story where a girl is possessed by a powerful ape spirit. His works would be a good choice for readers easing into supernatural horror, as they don’t offer outright shocks, blood and murder ASAP, but capture the eerie appeal of magic and mysterious phenomena, which are equal parts attractive and dangerous.

14 Masaaki Nakayama

Making The Natural Unnatural

• Debut: 1994
• Notable Works: Seeds of Anxiety, PTSD Radio

While googling Masaaki Nakayama’s name won’t bring up the kind of gore Kago, Maruo, or Hino’s names would, the results would still likely keep viewers up late at night. After making his name with crime stories like Toppamono Taiyouden, he used his sharp skills and realistic art style to freak readers out with a combination of deformed figures straight out of the uncanny valley and unsettling framing.

The freakiest examples of his skill usually come from Seeds of Anxiety, his collection of short stories that feature ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. They also turn up in PTSD Radio, a similar collection where the fates of its characters are connected by Ogushi, a malevolent spirit that resides in human hair. While Seeds of Anxiety occasionally gets new volumes, Nakayama put PTSD Radio on indefinite hiatus after, on top of health issues, its horror became all too real for him.

15 Usamaru Furuya

Taking Horror In A Surreal Direction

• Debut: 1994
• Notable Works: Lychee Light Club, Suicide Circle, No Longer Human

While every artist here, and in general, has their differences, Usamaru Furuya’s work might be the closest in comparison to Ito’s work. The two are often brought up together as counterparts to each other. This is interesting as Usamaru originally made comedies like Palepoli. But its supernatural subjects and psychological shivers would be developed further as he got more into horror.

For example, Plastic Girl saw him depict a young girl’s entry into adolescence as a violent, bloody affair. Lychee Light Club has the titular club create an AI-driven robot that kidnaps girls for them. Most interestingly, he adapted the 1948 horror novel No Longer Human eight years before Ito himself gave it a go in 2017. So, readers can compare and contrast the two artists’ different approaches to the same tale of one man’s fall from grace.

16 Yuki Fujisawa

Survival Biohorror

• Debut: 2000
• Notable Works: Biomeat: Nectar, El El, Umigui.

Yuki Fujisawa isn’t the biggest name in horror manga, but he’s an artist to look out for. He’s got a flair for survival horror tales, where people in desperate situations try to survive against horrible monsters or some other threats. His first story, Biomeat: Nectar, has a delinquent and his friends trying not to get eaten by the titular Biomeat, a biologically engineered organism that eats anything (bar glass or vinyl) and turns it into something edible.

Likewise, Metro Survive sees a spineless salaryman learn to stand up for himself and others when they’re trapped underground after an earthquake. El El has a delinquent and a university professor get more than they bargained for when they investigate some ruins in the Amazon. His latest work, Umigui, sees Naomichi and his classmates fending for themselves when a giant sea monster crashes into their ferry. Whether they or Fujisawa’s other protagonists succeed in surviving is another story.

17 Shūzō Oshimi

The Modern Master Of Psychological Horror

• Debut: 2001
• Notable Works: The Flowers of Evil, Blood on the Tracks, Happiness

There’s no shortage of great horror mangaka, but Shūzō Oshimi is arguably one of the best if not at the top of the tree. Even if the name isn’t familiar, readers may recognize works like The Flowers of Evil, and Blood on the Tracks, popularized by media critic John ‘Super Eyepatch Wolf’ Walsh as “the manga that breaks people.”

Blood on the Tracks twists the family dynamic as the lead character, Seiichi, is caught between escaping from or protecting his psychotic mother. Then The Flowers of Evil goes into horror territory as its leads gradually expose how violent and twisted they truly are as they navigate the depraved love triangle they’re stuck in.

18 Ryukishi07

How Murder And Paranoia In A Small Town Became A Franchise

• Debut: 2001
• Notable Works: Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko When They Cry, Higanbana no Saku Yoru Ni

Not everyone who makes manga started off that way. Artists like Karin Suzuragi and Yoshiki Tonogai have brought Ryukishi07‘s seminal series Higurashi When They Cry to print, following his words and stories. But he made his debut in visual novels after his first attempt to get into games development stalled. That gave him time to check out the Tsukihime series and, with his brother, Yatazakura, put together the original Higurashi When They Cry story.

It saw Keichi move to a village in the countryside, only to get caught up in a mystery surrounding a series of murders that occur each year around the time of their annual festival. However, instead of solving everything Scooby-Doo style, he and his friends can end up either becoming the next victims or twisted into killers themselves. It’s since expanded into manga, anime, and other media, but Ryukishi07 has made manga himself, like Higanbana, which has school bullies and their victims get confronted by ghouls from urban legends.

19 Masasumi Kakizaki

Hard Boiled Horror

• Debut: 2001
• Notable Works:Hideout, The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui

If the gentler touch of mangaka like Igarashi isn’t up people’s alleys, they may prefer the harder style of Masasumi Kakizaki. Best known for creating the prison drama Rainbow, his works are all about rough people getting through rough times. Whether it’s Rainbow‘s leads getting abused in postwar Japan’s equivalents of juvie, gladiators fighting for their lives in Bestiarus, or Green Blood‘s poverty and crime in 1920’s Manhattan.

Those are more general drama tales though. He’s only dabbled a bit in horror, though those dabblings caught on just as well with their tense narratives and brutal, detailed artwork. For example, Hideout is a short story that packs a lot into its chapters, as a husband’s plot to murder his wife while on vacation gets interrupted by a depraved cannibal. While The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui has its vengeance-seeking cop gain immortality and monstrous powers after he eats the fruit from the titular tree in the underworld.

20 Tomoki Izumi

Horrors In Plain Sight

• Debut: 2006
• Notable Works: Mieruko-chan, Gemini

Tomoki Izumi is one of the newer horror mangaka to make an impact, as he spent a good chunk of his career assisting other mangaka like ecchi illustrator Masuda Tsuyoshi. But things took a turn for him in 2018 when his webcomic about a girl who could see monsters began to catch on beyond his Twitter account.

Mieruko-chan was, in a way, a more passive take on his earlier story Gemini. In that story, a young girl in a gas mask had to fight off the horrors of a post-apocalyptic setting. In Mieruko-chan, Miko has to live her life as normally as possible in the real world, despite having the ability to see dead people and other deformities that others can’t. As much as she tries to ignore them, they’re more than willing to get her attention and threaten her friends.