No Longer Human

No Longer Human by Usamaru Furuya is a manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai's book with the same name. There is another more popular manga adaptation by Junji Ito, which I've partially read a long time ago, but stopped because I couldn't find it online or something like that. Regardless, I remember it decently well so I'll be mentioning it here too. Furuya's adaptation is set in the early 2000s as opposed to post ww2 Japan but other than that I believe it was adapted very faithfully and modernized in a good, non-jarring way. I love Usamaru Furuya and his type of horror and society commentary so I think this adaptation was right up his alley. One thing that this manga misses, naturally, is Yozo's inner monologues which I believe help portray him as more anxious, confused and vulnerable compared to the manga so he ends up seeming more calculating and a bit sociopathic in Furuya's version.

On the other hand, a lot of his misogyny is exempt from the manga so this dynamic he has with women is left incomplete. Ito did a better of making Yozo seem anxious and I always love the way he draws nervous expressions in general but this too changes Yozo up a bit as he doesn't come across that nervous in the book.

However I feel like both of them ended up portraying Yozo in ways they find more relatable and comfortable as Ito's Yozo is in line with some of his other male leads, same goes for Furuya's portrayal of Yozo. Furuya and Ito portray horror differently so it's definitely worth reading both for the horror art aspect. Ito's manga is set in the same time period as the book but from my memory, the plot was quite different. Namely Yozo's first "friend" Takahashi, appeared more in Ito's manga than he did in the book, while he was completely gone in Furuyas version. This is why ultimately, all 3 versions are worth reading. Done by some of the best horror and ero-guro authors I believe both Ito and Furuya did a good job in their own respective ways.