but had gone undiscovered until now. This, too, has holes in it, but they are not human-shaped; instead the shapes are long and distorted. One worker examines one of the holes, and as he shines his flashlight in it, notices that a horrifyingly disfigured being is slowly inching out of the chasm. Media Manga Gyo was written and illustrated by Junji Ito. In his words, the inspiration came from Steven Spielberg's Jaws: "He masterfully captured the essence of fear in the form of a man-eating shark. I thought it would be even greater to capture that fear in a man-eating shark that goes on land as well as sea." The manga, published by Shogakukan, was serialized in the weekly manga magazine Big Comic Spirits from 2001 to 2002. Shogakukan compiled the chapters into two bound volumes and published them from February 2002 to May 2002. In North America, Viz Media published volumes of the series from September 2003 to March 2004. Viz Media later re-released the series with new covers from October 2007 to January 2008. OVA An OVA adaptation was produced by Ufotable. It was directed by Takayuki Hirao while character designs were provided by Takuro Takahashi. The OVA was originally planned to be 30 minutes long but had evolved to 75 minutes throughout production. It was originally slated to release on December 14, 2011 but was delayed and released on February 15, 2012. Terracotta screened the film in London at the Prince Charles Cinema from April 12–15, 2012 as part of their Terracotta Far East Film Festival. Terracotta released the film on DVD September 3, 2012. Both DVD and Blu-ray versions were also released in Australia in March 2013 by Hanabee and DVD-only in North America on July 9, 2013 by Aniplex of America. Reception In France, Gyo was nominated at the 37th annual Angoulême International Comics Festival. Katherine Dacey of Mangacritic.com placed the manga at #1 on her Favorite Spooky Manga list. For the first volume, Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network praised the art and the bizarre relationship that Tadashi and Kaori share. Josephine Fortune of Mania gave it an A, praising the artwork, specifically the detail of the backgrounds. Fortune also praised the pacing of the story although noted that the plot contradicts itself later in the volume. Ken Haley of PopCultureShock gave it a B+ praising the silly moments the manga had and how