Why Junji Ito’s Earthbound is a deep dive into guilt

This story was a different twist on guilt. It’s ironic that Junji Ito is known for grotesque horror and this is one of those rare stories that he does without intense amounts of horror and focuses on the impact.

The story of earthbound starts with the narration that there are people standing in one place, and at first it’s hypothesized that it’s just a performance. But the people don’t move. As much as some of the towns folk are dragged away from the location, they’re back in the same place the very next day. People thought that it was funny, and then the humor was replaced with alarm.

It baffled the townsfolk as to how someone can stand in a position for so long without food or water. After these people stayed in the same place for such a long time, they began to be referred to as earthbound.

And with any change happens, people are afraid of something would rather run away from it than to wonder what it is. Many towns folk thought that these people standing were contagious. Because it doesn’t make sense, it was easier to be afraid than to learn the truth.

The story follows a young woman named Asano, A volunteer for a organization called The blue sky society. She travels around town to each of the earthbound people to offer relief and want to understand her story. She starts to put some connections together to these various cases of the earthbound people.

There are people like Asano in the world that want to make a difference. Her character never came off as naïve or clueless. Asano approaches these cases to talk to the earthbound people despite not getting an answer, but she understands there’s some level of guilt in them. She also comforts the loved ones that are affected by the earthbound cases that they don’t know by their loved one is standing in one place. Everyone has been affected by this in one way or another.

Asano tries to put the pieces together, She stays on the case to continue working with a young boy that is tied to one spot. But her own life changes when she finds someone in her apartment. Someone who works in the organization with her. Now she has a case herself or she’s trying to figure out why this person is standing in her apartment and what could it be?

When we go through life, we have to live with the fact that we might not get answers about why people leave us, or why people die, or why people change. Sometimes it has to be accepted that we might not get answers to that.

In times of tragedy or confusion, no one really knows what to do but it always helps to have someone who’s willing to understand and to listen to something that they don’t know about. Even though Asano has no idea who these people are, she’s willing to want to understand to make the world a better place, or to make the world a better place for someone. She sees that it’s a alarming case going on, but she doesn’t see this as terrifying, she sees this as tragic.

But now that Asano is the one who hast to figure out what the connection is to her, she does end up finding out a answer she didn’t think she was ever going to find.

Asano ends up finding out that guilt is the reason why people are staying in one place, they’re bound to the place that they committed a crime, or committed to a inhumane act. The same goes for the person in her apartment.

This is a great story about guilt. It’s rare that we see a story about guilt without vengeance or violence or justice. This is one of the stories that you have to sit and just take it in. To wonder what’s going through someone’s mind as to why they are so guilty. We often wonder how do people live with guilt every single day, and what becomes the pinnacle of the breaking point.

The way guilt is portrayed in horror stories is usually very terrifying because it’s an extreme amount of karma coming back to get someone. In stories like I know what you did last summer, or the second season of Slasher you observe characters that have done a bad thing and you wonder how is that going to come back to get them.

Guilt is something that comes back to bite you in the ass. In a way guilt comes back onto these characters. This was a different kind of guilt story that you didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing justice, sometimes people don’t get satisfaction out of justice because they still have to live with what they did and just like the people that had something terrible happened to them they also have to live with what happened to them.

There is still a sense of unease that dwells within someone that might get their answer, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to move on. Guilt is different for many people.

Earthbound is a story that is rare to find about guilt without it going to an extreme. Guilt easily has a place in horror movies for the karma that will happen to someone. Sometimes the truth has a different way of showing itself, and that truth doesn’t necessarily bring comfort. The characters in the story perfectly encapsulate all of the reactions and feelings to how guilt can affect oneself and affect others.

For someone like Junji Ito that creates scary stories, this is one of those rare stories where he does deep dive into humanity without horror.