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Junji Ito's Japan Campaign Idea

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crazon:
So a recent email I received for Al Dente Rigamortis sparked some game fodder involving Junji Ito's manga works. I'm thinking of running a Call of Cthulhu campaign but instead of the Cthulhu Mythos, using the world of Uzamaki, Tomie, Gyo, Etc. and instead of New England, place it in a Japan plagued by those horrors. I'm guessing it will turn out plot wise to how I figured the DnU's Ichor Falls game would have played out, combining elements from the the different stories and building connections.

I've already sort of figured out how to start. Character s are investigating/hunting for a missing transfer student/clients kid who went missing, and follow a string of clues hinting that he met "a girl" and leading toward the small coastal town of Kurôzu-cho. And then just keep building the set pieces from that. Luckily I have a fair sized collection of Ito's work and anthologies to pull for references.

The investigators can be (I figure based on the preferences of my Live crew if I run this) either detectives from Japan or from North America (read Vancouver) who go overseas to track down the missing kid.

Just thought I'd toss this up here if anyone wanted to suggest some ideas or opinions? I know a few here are familiar with/fans of Junji Ito and I'll probably post updates and recordings if this actually gets off the ground.

Juju-Monster-Man:
*Making a placeholder for more context later*

This is similar to the  "Jojo's Problem": it can be done but probably not well. Ito's work is VERY, VERY JAPANESE. The cultural horror of Japan is possibly more impersonal than Lovecraftian Horror. It is almost a force of nature nothing can stop it (or a placeholder for literal natural disasters). You are destroyed by it either physically, mentally, or emotionally. Unless you plan to make a meat grinder of a game where there is a new character every session or two I don't know if you can truly capture Ito's work. I'll try to expand on this more after I get back from work.

Inspired? Yes. Directly Channelled / Copied? No.

Sabwones:
I have to agree - Ito's stuff is inherently horrifying, yes, but it's also very focused on short-term personal horror that would make a difficult transition to a long-term campaign. One shots I could see happening without a problem, though.

JuJu is bang on the money - draw themes, but a direct transplant into a game system is unlikely to make it intact.

crazon:
So, alternatively a Delta Green type situation of dealing with the incidents that arise out of the stories? Perhaps a Department of Disaster Assessment or Investigation? A group to just send agents out to investigate these odd accidents and incidents? 

I suppose Im trying for bricolage, to refer to a recent episode of Ugly Talk. It's definitely of interest to me, even before I knew the term. I'd like to take the stories or horrors from them and just play with them for a fun set of horror games. Ultimately, it'd probably end up as a meat grinder yes, bordering on probably scary canary levels of weird horror.

Using the stories more as inspiration rather than using the material at hand isn't entirely what I have in mind for my treatment of it. Though I'm totally open to discussing it as fodder for game ideas. Discussing ideas deriving inspiration from it's concepts rather than directly pulling from the material is always cool. While I may not be going in that direction, this has already had me thinking on how to adapt my desire for this campaign to fit a formula more suited to it.

Also with regards to an off interpretations, I'm reminded of "Uzamaki" the film, where the Spiral was more or less summed up to a snake cult... for some reason.

Capman:
With regards to bricolage I think definitely taking elements and smashing them in can work, but it needs to be in moderation and with reason.  Remember again my example in that episode about starting with magical singing animals (because of the stupid Chipmunks movie) and ending with the discovery of a dying forest spirit whose powers were just kinda leaking into the woods to grant these animals the powers of terrible singing.

Like you mentioned in the Uzamaki film there was a snake cult because afaik there's no explanation in the Uzamaki comic and I'm guessing they needed a more conventional kind of story to build a motion picture around.  Maybe this explanation wasn't a good reason for why a bunch of spirals just showed up everywhere but an effort was made.

Similarly, unless you're going for a Shane Ivey styled "you're fucked" DG game, the Ito stuff needs to follow some kind of rules and ideally have an ending the investigators can reach.  Amigara Fault is cool but playing a game about being compelled to walk into a hole and getting sealed in there is less so.

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