Meet the PTSD Radio horror manga, which made its author give up to keep his sanity
Manga artist Masaaki Nakayama quit his PTSD Radio horror manga because of its horror material. Nakayama’s manga is a horror anthology series, with each chapter and volume going back and forth between stories. It’s not just the visuals that scare, but also the subject matter of the manga.
How is the horror manga PTSD Radio?
PTSD Radio’s story is inspired by real events experienced by Nakayama. It is an anthology of horror manga around an ancient legend of a being known as Ogushi, or the ”God of Hair”. The manga focuses on a strange source of terror: human hair.
The chapters have radio frequencies accompanying them. Like a radio signal going in and out, with some frequencies being revisited to pick up where the story left off. Some are in WWII and some are in the modern day.
In the PTSD Radio horror manga, everyone deals with various gruesome material surrounding a hair god named Ogushi, whose curse ritual was stopped in WWII.
This is the summary of the PTSD Radio horror manga that the public finds when searching the Kodansha website. Each volume’s summaries clipped words and seemed to stutter like a bad radio signal before ending with the catchphrase: ”This is AERN-BBC, PTSD Radio. No tune… required”.
And what about the manga body horror covers that have human eyes, mouths and skin in places where radio dials are normally placed.
The horror manga stories PTSD Radio
The PTSD Radio horror manga chapters are short vignettes, each turning on and off like a radio signal for different shorter stories. For example, a man out for a walk on a pitch-black night receives a visitor from the dark as he lights a cigarette.
Or a woman sees a black figure jump onto the subway tracks and onto a train, or two men have a seemingly normal conversation on a rooftop and suddenly hands reach out to grab them from the street. A man tries to break a ritual totem with a hammer and ends up with his head bashed in. A woman breaks up with her boyfriend for stealing her hair and her face contorts…
The terror only escalates from there, gruesome deaths and just plain weirdness continues to plague the city. Even random everyday objects like lamp posts, mirrors, bathtubs and other things seem to contain some creature or nightmare thing to terrify someone.
The PTSD Radio horror manga chapters have radio frequencies attached to them that end quickly, only to return to that particular story and have recurring elements.
One is crows that followed a man after he hit one of them with a rock, they turned out to be lesser demons, cursed after they ate some hair from the cursed shrine in frequency from volume 2 chapter 22: 52.71nhz.
These stories may seem random, but they all begin to make sense as the hair totem and the Ogushi myth begin to take shape.
Long story short, a city in Japan had a shrine to Ogushi who was honored with human hair. A curse fell on the city after World War II when a Japanese soldier failed to bring the hair of one of his deceased friends to the shrine.
Since then, many supernatural and horrible things have happened in the city. From demonic possessions to nightmares, to the aforementioned crows arriving and being transformed into demons. Everything is connected with the ritual doll and the presence of Ogushi throughout.
One of the first stories involves a girl who has her hair cut by her grandmother in PTSD Radio volume 1, chapter 1: 89.27nhz. It continues into Volume 1: Chapters 3 and 5 and does not resume until Volume 2: Chapter 28 with increasing frequency as the girl is haunted by her apparent baldness.
The girl ends up cutting her hair, as she can’t take it anymore, and her face resembles the haunting one she sees in reflections. As the PTSD Radio horror manga progresses, it becomes clear that Ogushi is chasing and dragging people away, such as the two men who were talking about Ogushi’s suicide of a co-worker.
Ogushi is depicted in shadowy arms grabbing people, rooting them in place before taking them elsewhere. The manga also relies on some jumpscares, nightmare faces and fear of what comes next to keep readers hooked.
Nakayama’s inspiration for the horror manga PTSD Radio
Where do all these stories come from? Volumes 5 and 6 of the manga include little extras explaining Nakayama’s inspiration for this. The story goes that the creator of PTSD Radio rented an office building eight years before volume 5. One day, he heard scratching on the ceiling and in the attic.
Scanning the space, he discovered a broken shrine. At first, he paid no attention. Then strange things started to happen, like scratches on the ceiling, lights going out unexpectedly, and the smell of sewage coming from the front of the building.
One of the inspirations for the distorted faces is how the landlord’s face is contorted with anger after a misunderstanding about paying rent after 6 years without any problems.
When they switched spaces, Nakayama developed an unexplained bruise around his mouth and was diagnosed with Thrombocytopenic Purpura (PTI) shortly after drawing a similar scene of someone vomiting blood and spawning demons.
He was forced to stay in hospital for a few months for treatment of a rare disease in which platelets are destroyed and prevent blood from clotting.
But one of the scariest and arguably gruesome stories that inspired the PTSD Radio horror manga was the assistants seeing shadowy figures around the office. Whether it’s people or just crows in closed windows, everyone who came into contact with these things suddenly stopped or became ill.
This included Nakayama himself, when one side of his face suddenly swelled up like a balloon and his temperature dropped…but when he rewrote his idea of saying nothing more, it suddenly felt good.
Will the PTSD Radio horror manga continue?
At the end of volume 6 there is a ”to be continued”, here’s the problem, which occurred over 4 years ago, in 2018. The other problem is that the original magazine was published in Nemesis, which is now defunct and was not a really popular series.
As there is no official announcement as to whether it will continue or not, many readers have considered PTSD Radio finished as of now. While research has shown that Nakayama continues as a mangaka on Fuan no Tane, an older horror anthology series, there has been no word on the PTSD Radio horror manga.
What do you think? Check out our list where we recommend manga and light novels!
Source: Sportskeeda