Junji Ito’s No Longer Human Manga — A 616-Page Adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s Novel
If you’ve been searching for the Junji Ito No Longer Human manga, here’s the short version: this is Junji Ito’s manga adaptation of No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku), the famous 1948 novel by Osamu Dazai. It was serialized in Big Comic Original (a Japanese manga magazine) from May 2017 to April 2018 and originally collected in three volumes by Shogakukan, one of Japan’s largest publishers.
The English edition, published by Viz Media on December 17, 2019, combines all three volumes into a single hardcover book — 616 pages in one binding. The ISBN is 978-1974707096.
Here’s the important thing to know upfront: this is not a horror manga in the typical Junji Ito sense. If you’re coming in expecting something like Uzumaki (his horror story about spirals consuming a town) or Tomie (a series about a supernaturally beautiful woman who keeps returning from the dead), you’ll be surprised. This is a literary psychological drama with horror elements woven throughout. Ito uses his signature nightmarish imagery to visualize the inner torment of the main character, but the story itself is a faithful adaptation of Dazai’s novel — slow, introspective, and deeply sad.
That’s not a warning against reading it. It’s just worth knowing what you’re picking up.
A note before going further: No Longer Human deals directly with suicide, self-harm, addiction, and deep psychological suffering. These aren’t background elements — they’re the core of the story. If those topics are difficult for you, you may want to skip ahead to the catalog section for alternative Ito recommendations instead.
No Longer Human (Junji Ito)
The Novel Behind the Manga
To appreciate what Ito does with this manga, it helps to understand the source material — even though you absolutely don’t need to have read the novel first.
Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human is one of the best-selling novels in Japanese literary history. Published in 1948, it tells the story of Oba Yozo, a man who feels fundamentally disconnected from the rest of humanity. From childhood, Yozo cannot understand other people’s emotions or motivations. He survives by wearing a “mask” — playing the clown, performing exaggerated cheerfulness to hide the void he feels inside.
The novel follows Yozo through his life as he spirals through failed relationships, addiction, attempted suicide, and deepening alienation. It’s semi-autobiographical — Dazai drew heavily from his own life, and he died by suicide shortly after the novel’s publication.
The themes are heavy: alienation, self-destruction, the exhausting performance of pretending to be “normal,” addiction, and the question of what it means to be human when you feel like you aren’t one. These themes have resonated with readers for over 75 years, and they’re a big part of why this novel keeps selling.
If you’re coming to the manga with no knowledge of the novel, that’s completely fine. Ito’s adaptation tells the full story. But knowing that this is one of Japan’s most important literary works adds context to why Ito chose to adapt it — and why the manga reads so differently from his other work.
How the Junji Ito No Longer Human Manga Differs from the Novel
This is where things get interesting — and where Ito’s adaptation becomes more than just “the novel with pictures.”
The narrative itself stays faithful to Dazai’s text. Ito follows the novel’s structure closely: the three notebooks that make up Yozo’s personal confession — his account of his own life written as if explaining himself to an unseen reader — along with the key relationships and major turning points. If you’ve read the novel, you’ll recognize the story.
What Ito adds is a layer of supernatural horror imagery that doesn’t exist in the original text. Characters see visions. Bodies warp and distort in nightmarish ways. The internal psychological anguish that Dazai described in words, Ito renders as literal visual horror — grotesque transformations, shadowy figures, faces dissolving into something inhuman.
Some of the manga panels — the individual illustrated frames that make up each page — stand among Ito’s most atmospheric and detailed work. The ink work is dense, the page layouts feel tight and suffocating, and there are pages that genuinely unsettle you — not because something jumps out, but because the art makes you feel the character’s disintegration.
That said, the tone is very different from Ito’s horror collections. Here’s a quick comparison:
| Aspect | No Longer Human vs. Typical Junji Ito |
|---|---|
| Pacing | Slow, literary, meditative — no quick shocks or twist endings. Most of Ito’s horror stories deliver their scares in compact 20–40 page chapters. This story builds gradually over 616 pages. |
| Horror type | Psychological and existential. Typical Ito horror involves supernatural curses, body horror, and monsters — things that happen to people from outside. Here, the horror comes from watching a person fall apart internally, visualized through Ito’s surreal imagery. |
| Story structure | A single continuous narrative following one character’s life. Most Ito works are either short standalone stories collected in anthologies or series like Tomie where each chapter is a self-contained episode that works on its own. |
| Art style | Dense, detailed, heavily shadowed — consistent with Ito’s usual level of craft. Some reviewers have noted that the art in later sections can feel stiffer compared to the early chapters, though the atmospheric panels remain striking throughout. |
The manga has received a mostly positive critical reception, though opinions aren’t unanimous. The atmospheric artwork and the ambition of the project are widely praised. Where opinions diverge is on how well the horror and literary elements fit together. Some readers and critics have pointed out that certain sections feel stiff, and that Ito’s horror additions — while visually impressive — don’t always integrate smoothly with Dazai’s quieter, more internal narrative. Others feel the horror elements are exactly what makes this adaptation worth reading: they externalize what Dazai could only describe in words.
Both perspectives are valid. This is an adaptation that takes real creative risks, and whether those risks land for you depends a lot on what you’re looking for.
Is No Longer Human the Right Junji Ito Manga for You?
This is the practical question, and it depends entirely on what you want out of the reading experience.
If You’re New to Junji Ito
No Longer Human is probably not the place to start. It’s atypical of Ito’s work in almost every way — the pacing, the tone, the source material, and the type of horror. If you pick this up expecting the Junji Ito experience people talk about online, you might bounce off it hard.
For a first Ito book, Uzumaki or one of his short story collections (like Shiver, which collects nine standalone horror stories) will give you a much better introduction to what makes his work distinctive.
If You’ve Already Read Other Ito Works
This is where No Longer Human gets really interesting. If you already know and enjoy Ito’s art style and visual language, seeing him apply those tools to a literary classic is fascinating. You know what his horror imagery usually does, so watching him use it to visualize psychological deterioration instead of supernatural terror adds a whole new dimension.
Think of it as Ito stretching into a different mode. It’s not his scariest work, but it might be his most emotionally heavy one.
If You’re a Fan of the Novel
If you love Osamu Dazai’s original novel and you’re curious how it translates to visual storytelling, this is worth picking up. Ito treats the source material with clear respect — the adaptation is faithful to the narrative — and his added horror imagery gives you a new way to experience a story you already know.
Just be prepared: some of the horror additions may feel jarring if you’re attached to the novel’s quieter tone. That’s a feature of the adaptation, not a bug, but it’s worth knowing going in.
If You Want Something to Read Slowly
At 616 pages, this isn’t a quick read. The pacing is deliberate. The emotional content is heavy — themes of addiction, alienation, self-harm, and suicide run throughout the entire book. This is the kind of manga you read in chunks, sit with, and think about between sessions.
If that sounds appealing, you’ll get a lot out of this book. If you prefer manga you can tear through in an afternoon, this might feel like a slog.
Quick Recommendation Guide
| You might love it if… | You might want to skip it if… |
|---|---|
| You enjoy literary manga or Japanese literature | You’re looking for traditional horror scares |
| You’ve read other Ito works and want to see him try something different | This is your first Junji Ito manga |
| You’re a Dazai fan curious about a visual adaptation | Slow-paced, emotionally heavy stories aren’t your thing |
| You appreciate detailed ink work and atmospheric art | You want a fast, punchy read |
Edition Details and Where to Read the Junji Ito No Longer Human Manga
The English edition is straightforward — here’s what’s available and what it includes:
- Format: Hardcover collecting all 3 original Japanese volumes in one book
- Publisher: Viz Media
- Release date: December 17, 2019
- Page count: 616 pages
- ISBN: 978-1974707096
- Price range: Typically $20–$28 USD (price varies by retailer)
- Digital: A Kindle edition is also available (ASIN: B082BJH6QZ)
- Reading direction: Right-to-left — you open the book from what looks like the “back” to a Western reader, and read each page from the right side to the left. This is standard for manga published in its original format.
The hardcover format is solid — Viz’s Junji Ito hardcovers generally have good build quality, and this one is no exception. At 616 pages it has real heft to it. The larger format also lets Ito’s detailed artwork breathe, which matters a lot for a book this visually dense.
There’s no separate volume-by-volume release in English. It’s either the single collected hardcover or the Kindle digital edition. You can find the physical book through major retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most comic shops. If you’re looking for a legal way to read it digitally, the Kindle edition is your option — there is no free legal source for the full manga online.
A Note on the Subject Matter
No Longer Human deals with suicide, self-harm, addiction, and deep psychological suffering. As mentioned at the top of this article, these aren’t background elements — they’re the core of the story. Dazai’s novel is essentially a long confession of a man who cannot find a reason to keep living, and Ito’s adaptation doesn’t soften any of it.
If those topics are difficult for you, it’s okay to skip this one. There are plenty of other Junji Ito books that deliver incredible horror without this specific emotional weight.
If you’re comfortable with heavy subject matter and you’re drawn to stories that explore the darker side of the human mind, this manga handles those themes with real care. It’s not exploitative — it’s genuinely trying to understand its main character’s pain.
Where No Longer Human Fits in Junji Ito’s Catalog
Ito has a large body of work at this point, and No Longer Human occupies a unique spot. It’s his most literary project — an adaptation of a canonical novel rather than an original story. It’s also one of his longest single works.
Here’s roughly where it sits:
- Want pure Ito horror? Start with Uzumaki (a horror story about a town consumed by spirals), Tomie (a series about a supernaturally beautiful woman who cannot stay dead), or Shiver (a collection of nine standalone horror stories).
- Want Ito as a visual storyteller interpreting someone else’s work? No Longer Human is the main one. His adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein also falls into this category — it’s a shorter, more straightforward horror adaptation that runs closer to 300 pages, making it a lighter commitment if you want to test whether you enjoy Ito working with existing source material before diving into the 616-page No Longer Human.
- Want shorter, punchier Ito stories? His short story collections (Shiver, Smashed, Venus in the Blind Spot) are great for that. Each collects several standalone stories you can read one at a time.
No Longer Human is Ito doing something ambitious and different. It’s not going to be everyone’s favorite Ito book — and that’s fine. But for the right reader, it’s a genuinely powerful combination of two distinct artistic voices: Dazai’s unflinching prose and Ito’s nightmare-fuel artwork, working together to tell a story about what happens when someone feels like they’ve lost the ability to be human.
If that description hooks you at all, grab a copy and see for yourself.