斬殺！ポニーテール

ZANSATSU! PONYTAIL

ONE_SHOT

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
September 17, 2016
CHAPTERS
1

DESCRIPTION

A horror tale of two girls and a ponytail.

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
90/100
A fantastic horror one shot by Youichi Abe that teaches us the value of checking your hair everyday for parasites.

I didn't even notice it the first time I read it, but the dead end sign is such a nice little touch.

Zansatsu! Ponytail is a horror one shot by Youichi Abe. I've reviewed another one of his manga in the past and it seems like with every next one of his manga I read, I just like the fellow more and more. Like it's bizarre how well he can pull these stories off. These could just be weird and absurd stories but there is genuinely horrifying stuff and it seems like the mixture is almost always perfect.

On paper, this particular oneshot is a super simple premise but the more you think about it... it's really fucking weird? And horrifying. A parasitic monster that dwells within your ponytail and actively hunts those with inferior ponytails?

I must admit that as both a person who has long hair but also has dealt with lice, this one may or may not have genuinely gotten to me a little bit. ~~Like god damn just chop all of my hair off on the first fucking day.~~ A ponytail is probably not worth a parasite burrowing and eating its way into my brains.

But I have to give additional credit where it's due since Youichi Abe could realize that while this is a fun and disgusting little horror idea, it probably wouldn't work beyond a one shot. Parasitic ponytails! Short and quick to the point! Got it! He could have tried to drag it out but instead he didn't try to forcibly expand that idea any longer than it needed to be.

I don't know, there's just something about Youichi Abe's art. It's just wonderful. Between this, Dadai, and Vanilla Spider, it genuinely almost feels like he pulls this off without even trying. Dadai was like a full series of stories exactly like this one and almost all of them were either creepy or insanely absurd but the fun sort of absurd. Like how often has a creator of fiction demonstrated a truly genuinely unstable murderer character through a talking reindeer? And not just a talking reindeer, but one of Santa's reindeer trying to force a girl to work as replacement Santa and then attempting to murder her when she tries to back out of it? I'm going on a bit of a limb here but I'm gonna guess probably not very often.

Between that, Vanilla Spider, and this, Youichi Abe's definitely got it.

To the point where I'm almost confident in bringing up his name in the same breath as Junji Ito and Katsuhisa Kigitsu. Love his art, love the absurdity of his stories, love the genuine creepiness and grossness present throughout... I give Zansatsu! Ponytail a 9 out of 10.

Probably one of the most enjoyable ~~horror~~ one shots I've ever read. It's short and there's not much to it beyond parasitic pony tails...

and maybe the insane level of vanity the girl has to possess to force her to say she'd rather become a human killing monster rather than be forced to have short hair

...but that's okay!

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