If you have read any of my previous posts, then you should already know that I love anime and manga. If you have read my previous post “Morality and Literature Part 1,” then you know that I have dissecting how morality is taught in Western culture through multiple genres, including horror.
While morals can also be found in some Japanese horror stories, the scariest Japanese stories, including The Grudge and The Ring, have nothing to do with morality. In fact, that is what makes them so terrifying.
In the novel version of The Ring, a man watches a video and watching this video will eventually lead to the audience suffering a horrific death. Later on, the man’s wife and infant child also watch the movie. While some might argue that the wife should have controlled her curiosity, the infant daughter does not deserve to die by any measure because infants are incapable of really doing anything (let alone a crime warranting the death penalty).
In the manga (Japanese comic book) of “The Grudge,” a family moves into a house that has been cursed by the violent deaths of its previous occupants. Now according to horror movie law: if you knowingly move into a new house where the previous occupants were murdered, then you deserve whatever death befalls you. However, this house is not simply haunted, it is cursed. Anyone who steps in that house will either go insane, go insane and die, or simply die. A tutor comes over to help one of the kids with their homework, she goes looking for a blanket because she’s cold, and…she’s spirited away to who knows where. A delivery man takes a package to the front door, because that’s his job. He gets into a very violent car accident a few minutes later and dies.
Both of these stories are terrifying, because there is no way to escape or justify the person’s demise. It is serendipitous and chaos in action.
Ugh, just thinking about it sends shivers down my spine.
