Junji Ito "Collection"

Kajisakana Feb 16, 2018

1

I've never seen better source material adapted in a more pathetic manner.  The difference beween the manga's excellent, creeping horror and the anime's stupid, inneffectual attempts at creating fear is astronomical.  Amateur voice actors on YouTube do a vastly better job building tension by merely showing manga slides and narrating over them- for example, this channel (which is doing a full cover of the Spiral storyline): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GONgAh9il7s. Watching through the 6th episode left me with the desire to give this anime a 2/10, as it was creepy at times, but the 7th episode was such an abyssmal, poorly-directed failure at cosmic horror that I have decided to downgrade my review to a 1/10.

Rascal Mar 24, 2018

2.8

*spoiler free review i guess* A disappointment to a great artist. I've learned a lot through this anime. I learned what a mastermind of horror Junji Ito is. I learned about the passion he puts into his art, his work, and the amount of artful awesomeness to be found in every panel. I have no appreciation for horror as a genre or an art form. I'd go so far as to say I hate horror, but what I do have respect for is when an artist puts all they have into something, a genuine love for it. That's what Junji Ito's works are, in manga form, as people have told me and I've seen a few of them. I also learned what a goddamn disappointment a mediocre anime adaptation can be. DEEN are a bunch of fuckwads. I have no respect for them. The stories chosen are bad. I don't know if the originals are as bad but the anime, with its shitty atmosphere, dumb directing and shoddy art definitely don't help the apparently poor story choice. I'll have trouble talking too much about the story. It's episodic, and most of the episodes are lame. They suck, they're not creepy in this form, and sometimes they're literally laughable. I've laughed at this anime quite a bit, and not when it was the desired reaction. Souichi was supposed to be funny but I didn't laugh at him, I laughed at hilariously timed deaths, the comedic timing this anime accidentally has and the downright silly nature of some of this stuff. It's hardly ever actually scary for me. Yes, this is actually supposed to be scary. The characters are literally throwaways besides the cool ones which they hardly ever use like tomie and sometimes soichi. I just don't give a shit about any of the rest. The animation... oh God it's just never good. The art looks terrible nearly all the time and definitely doesn't compare to the manga from the few samples i've seen. There's no vision behind this. I can't nearly do the disappointment justice with this review. I'd reccomend looking up SuperEyeatchWolf on youtube for the review this anime deserves, but i'll suffice it to say I hate the art an animation. It did manage to gross me out a few times though through the Snail Mouth story and Glyceride(this thing literally made me want to vomit and go on a soul-searching journey through the mountains). That's about the only reaction other than disappointment and mocking laugher i've gotten from this anime. It sucks. Avoid it, even if you're a fan of horror, I'd say. End of review.

JaniDraws Jan 6, 2018

9

((Possible Spoilers and this is my first review so please bare with me))Manga horror artist, Junji Ito is celebrating his 30 years of making manga by of course, being able to have the opportunity of releasing his first anime of his "shorter" stories. Even though this isn't considered the first anime adaptation of his works- Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack is the first to be adapted but the story trailed off so far from the original manga that I'm not sure if it should be considered his first anime. But for starters, I will go ahead and warn people who are expecting the entire anime to be focused on Episode 1's main character, Souichi. It will not be all about him, there is going to be multiple of his stories made into this anime. Although so far not all the stories have yet to be announced since the animators have been very tight lipped on what all will be adapted, but judging the intro, the anime will most likely focus on: -Fashion Model -Tomie -Souichi's Diary of Curses -Slug Girl -Lovesick Dead -Further Tales of Oshikiri Like I mentioned before, not all the stories have yet to be announced but it may be a bit of a surprise to not know what to expect. As a huge fan of Junji Ito's work, I am a bit bias to his way of story telling and overall works. He doesn't focus on jump scares or typical horror tactics. His way of writing and creating his works could range from being eerily beautiful or just skin crawling creepy. Ito's illustrations can give off this feeling of discomfort and unsettness. He's capable of to take something extremely simple and able to twist it backwards and turn it into something that would crawl out of your worst nightmares. He truly has a talent with understanding horror psychologically and physically. So with all of this being said, I will now give my opinion on this anime adaption. Judging from the first episode, I would say the animation can be improved in some areas. Although it does a good job with color pallets and giving the viewers the unsettling feeling that Junji Ito is known for, but some areas it was a bit choppy and didn't exactly feel quite right. Like it was too forced to be scary. Even though Souichi is one of his milder horror stories, there is some parts that could've been improved. Now for the sound and voice acting. So far that's been released as the voice actors, it seems to be a pretty good line up. In the first episode, Souichi (in my opinion) was portrayed pretty well. After all, he is supposed to be this creepy kid who tries to put curses on anyone who basically looks at him. So I feel that the voice actor did a good job on making him even more cringy and just strange. The music so far has been nice and I enjoy how it adds a bit more to scenes, but for some of the sounds, it could have some room to improve. Overall they did a decent job. In conclusion, I'm not sure if the anime will truly top Ito's illustrations and his manga since it shows more of his eerie visuals and feels more genuine, but I do feel that there is some good potential for the rest of the anime that will be released. For now I think this is all I can say so far since after all only the first episode has been released. It's not perfect but I can see it's at least trying to portray Junji Ito's stories well.