>>279759597
There's something that Ito is really good at, and that's weaponizing page turns.
This is lost a little bit when reading digitally, especially in a storytime format because you can see the thumbnail, but when you read his stories physically, you might notice that before he does one of his big scary pages, there's almost always a buildup on the left page, usually with the character seeing the scary thing and reacting to it before you can, and when you turn the page, the first thing you see on the right page is the scary thing taking up the whole page.
Manga doesn't have hard timing, but it does have soft timing. More panels makes things, feel slower, fewer panels makes things feel faster, and having one big panel right after a page turn gives a sense of immediacy. Like what's happening in that page just happened right as you turned the page and you didn't have time to prepare for it.
When buildup comes before that, you get the closest manga equivalent of a jumpscare.
And I'm saying all of this because here, Ito subverted his own formula. Buildup, anticipation, and then you turn the page and it's absolutely nothing. Which makes it even more haunting because if you've been reading Ito's work for a while, you're conditioned to expect something scary.
