The Cringe Anti-Hero of Face Thief
The Mean New Kid
Usually, the new kid in school is super nice so they have an easier time fitting into their new setting. Or, maybe they are a little shy and timid, suddenly being surrounded by unfamiliar faces. But usually, they are not relentless bullies who think they will beat their way to “queen bee” of the school.
Enter Yumi Machida, the main character of “Face Thief” by Junji Ito. The dark-haired girl glares at her new classmates, arms crossed, as the teacher introduces her. When the teacher tells her to sit in the front row of the class, she assumes it is so he can keep an eye on her. And when one of the dark-haired twins, Kamei, begs the teacher to let her sit next to Yumi, she ignores the girl’s greeting, feeling like something is wrong with her.
Yumi’s first impression to her peers is off to a rough start. She appears unwelcoming and cold. But it only gets worse when Kamei offers to go to the bathroom with Yumi in the hallway.
“Well, we’re friends and all,” Kamei responds when Yumi asks why she’s following her. Yumi grabs her by her shirt in the crowded hallway and tells Kamei they’re not friends. She explains she was kicked out of her last school for being a rule breaker, and she intends to stick to her ways. Her plan: to be the Queen Bee of the school. Yikes.
She pulls down the girl’s shirt, forcing her to jerk down. But Kamei is not put off by this. She calls Yumi pretty as a boy watches from afar. Yumi is confused, but she doesn’t know how odd this girl will truly be.
The Face Thief
Kamei seems like a nice, albeit naïve, young girl. But there is something odd about her; when Yumi asks Kamei’s twin for help getting Kamei off her back, the girl says they’re not twins. In fact, they are not even related. Yumi does not believe it, but it’s even corroborated by a nearby classmate.
Kamei still continues her pursuit of being Yumi’s friend, following her after school into a wooded area. Yumi begins to beat Kamei with no mercy when she is stopped by a boy, Hibino. After Kamei runs away with a smile, thanking Hibino, he tells Yumi to beware of Kamei. He explains something that Yumi doesn’t believe when Kamei listens. But after seeing Kamei’s transformed features, she begins to see the truth.
Hibino says Kamei has been stealing different girls’ faces throughout their time in school together, starting with a pop star he liked. And because of Kamei’s overwhelming attention on her, Yumi may be next. When Yumi sees Kamei moments later, her face has already started to change into her own. One of her dark eyes turning into Yumi’s light eye.
They both go to Yumi’s, mobster looking aunties. They can’t tell the difference between the girls and Kamei turns the table on Yumi for the first time in the story, grabbing her by the shirt and throwing her to the floor. She tells Yumi’s aunties that Yumi got plastic surgery to look like her.
The Perfect Plan
Yumi goes to school the next day, feeling the transformation will be fully complete soon. But when she goes into class, she finds everyone wearing different masks. Even the teacher. She runs out in horror only to find everyone in the school is wearing a mask. Everyone but Hibino.
He demands to know why even the teacher would partake in something like this against a student. But it is revealed Kamei was never a student. The teacher explains that she is an ancient creature that appeared in the school one day, but they were unable to get rid of her. So, they settled with just ignoring her. It took a student to come with this very complex plan. Wow.
Kamei continues to run from students, needing to find Yumi. But, it’s too late and in front of the school, her face snaps. It cracks with an eyeball springing from its socket. Horns and antennas emerged from her head. Hibino looked on in horror as she begged him for a mirror.
The Bully Saves the Day
Yumi is a jerk, that is the truth. Before she knows that Kamei is a face stealing demon, she treats her like she’s a piece of gum stuck to her shoe. There’s also the cringe comment she makes about becoming the “Queen Bee” of the school by being a rule breaker. In reality, a kid like this coming into a new school so egotistical and aggressive would only make them an Queen of Outcast.
But in the end, she was able to do something not even the adults of the school could do: stop the face-stealing demons’ evil reign on the students.
An anti-hero is a character who lacks the normal heroic “ideals and morality” (Wikipedia). And though they may save the day, the audience usually does not agree with their reasons for doing so.
Yumi may have found a way to stop the face-stealing demon, but she did so due to self-ish reasons. Had Kamei not targeted Yumi, she would have not gone to her teacher with the plan for everyone to wear a mask, making it impossible for the demon to continue its parasitic transformation into Yumi.
The Yearning Yōkai
Kamei’s mission was to win the affection of Hibino. But, she could not achieve this with her natural form. So she had to steal the faces of pretty girls who she thought Hibino could love more.
There is not a demon in Japanese mythology that Kamei is directly a reference to, though there is a a Japanese yōkai (demon), called a Noppera-bō, that can disguise itself as other humans before revealing an empty, blank face, believed to be done to frighten humans (Wikipedia.)
It would appear Hibino liked Kamei to some degree. As he was the only one concerned for her the day Yumi enacted her plan and he even ran to her aid when the students began to chase her.
But, he could not love her if she used a “stolen” face.
Written by Lauren (Ren Michelle) Williams