Is Horror Fiction the New J-Horror? Three Reasons Why Masked Author Ameana’s Works Are “Just Scary”

Appearing before the foreign media

“Nice to meet you, my name is “Uketsu” ……”

This was one of the highlights from a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo on January 16.

Ameana made her debut as an author in 2009 with her novel “Weird House,” which was adapted from her YouTube video “[Real Estate Mystery] Weird House. The book became a bestseller, selling more than 2.24 million copies. His second novel, “Hen na E” has sold a total of 1.2 million copies, including comics and paperbacks, and has been translated and published in 30 regions around the world (285,000 copies in total). It has already been released in some Asian countries, and will be released in the U.S., U.K., and other countries after January.

Horror novels have been enjoying a boom in recent years amid the “book sales slump. One of the writers who has ignited this boom is Ameana. What is unique about Ameana’s works is that many of his readers are young people, who are often thought to have no interest in novels. Some of his readers are children, even elementary school students. Why are Amenana’s novels read by young readers? At the press conference, Mr. Ameya explained three reasons.

The first is “readability. Compared to most novels that contain only words, Ameana’s works combine text with pictures and diagrams as appropriate. He often uses diagrams to explain complex tricks and story points. Moreover, the text explaining the illustrations is always contained within the spread. Ameana describes the style of his work, saying, “I call it ‘comic-style fiction’ or ‘manga-style fiction. I love reading manga too. So I wanted to fuse manga and novel,” he also said.

Second, in order to convey the fun of books on YouTube, every time a new book is released, he acts out the book himself, edits it further, and posts it. In addition to horror and mystery videos, Ameana’s YouTube channel also posts dance videos of his own compositions. His channel has more than 1.7 million subscribers, and the total number of views has exceeded 190 million.

Third, according to him, “My books are just scary. The third reason is that my books are just scary,” he says. “Nowadays, many Japanese people seem to like stories that are quiet, eerie, and make them feel uneasy,” he says. He analyzed that writing about such “fears” may be the main reason why his books are popular among young readers.

The Scare of “Stories That Make You Feel Somewhat Uneasy

The traditional Japanese style of horror used to be stories featuring scary ghosts and terrifying monsters. Movies such as “Ring” (1998) and “Ju-On” (’00) pioneered the “J-horror” genre, which has become a cult favorite in the West. The horror of “Ring” was only possible because of the strong character Sadako, and Toshio-kun in “Ju-On” was no different.

However, what is popular among young people today are stories that are “quiet but eerie and somehow unsettling,” that exist like air pockets in the casual moments of daily life. Amenana discussed the reasons why young readers are attracted to such stories: “The world today, including Japan, is a very different place.

The world today, including Japan, is in a very sad and difficult time. Perhaps young people and children can sense such an atmosphere of anxiety and turn to such unsettling stories to cope with it. It is very sad.

I wish all children could grow up without having to worry about anything, but I don’t have the power to make that happen. So instead, I want to write good stories for young people to enjoy.”

The “mockumentary” technique of presenting fiction in a real-life style, such as Ameana’s “Strange House” and “About a Place in the Kinki Region” (KADOKAWA), also a hit, by Spine, has become a boom and has led the Japanese horror fiction scene in recent years. This style of fiction combining images and text is said to be rare overseas, but is it really readable?

I have always been a web writer, and I think that this style of combining images and text is unique to the Japanese web media. In recent years, Asian horror, including Japanese horror, seems to be attracting attention around the world, and I hope that people overseas will enjoy Japanese culture and Asian values as much as I do.

Will Ameana’s “quiet but eerie and unsettling stories” be able to create a movement like the J-horror films that shocked the world in the past?