Thank you to NetGalley and Viz Media for my arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

"Betwixt" is a horror and weird fiction manga collection that brings together American and Japanese horror comic and manga writers. This collection of international horror also comes with a foreword from horror mangaka, Junji Ito. One thing I want to note is the reading order; for the American stories, they read left to right and then for the Japanese stories, you're prompted to flip the book and read right to left. In my digital arc, this was kind of confusing but I thought it was a cool indicator for which country the stories were from.

This isn't a huge collection and if I'm being honest, it wasn't my favorite. Most if not all of the stories were pretty forgettable and even now, I'm struggling to remember any of the stories. On top of that, I wasn't a huge fan of most of the art styles featured. Overall, I was left pretty underwhelmed.

A fun collection of short horror manga that touches on replacement, otherness, and unfamiliar space. Some of the stories in the arc read left to right, and others right to left which was a bit confusing. Never Left was my favorite.

Very good horror Manga! The art, the variety, the strangeness. I love everything about it! You should read it!

3.5 rounded up.

To be perfectly frank, I would buy this book on the sheer strength of it including a story by Shima Shinya alone. Shima's <i>Lost Lad London</i> was an excellent story making a point through the medium of mystery, and now "The Window" does the same, this time making a point about the feminization of ghost stories and fear through the medium of horror. The idea that every ghost is a woman killed or wronged by a man is quietly explored, and the tale gives you plenty to think about.

The rest of the anthology is a bit more mixed, but still very interesting. Containing three stories by American creators and three by Japanese, you can clearly see the difference in sensibility, with the closest to crossing the border being "Shadow" by Huahua Zhu, which is my second favorite; it also has the most distinct art style. "Kamei" by Ryo Hanada is the saddest, and it's interesting to see the same basic theme - what we owe the dead - used by "Never Left" on the U. S. side of the anthology. Junji Ito's introduction encourages us to make these comparisons and to really think about what scares us. On the whole, the book succeeds in doing just that.