Zoo

Contemporary Japanese horror fiction never holds its own for me when put up against Japanese horror films or manga. The stories, like Otsuichi's, lack the literary quality of the best Western horror writing, or Japanese writing works on a level that fails to engage me.His best story, "In a Falling Airplane," brings deadpan humor to his outrageous situation, but what distinguishes Otsuichi's stories is their bleakness. Many of them focus on the fates of children, and what happens to these kids makes the direst tales of the Brothers Grimm come off as episodes of Leave it to Beaver.