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Junji Ito Collection
It’s all in your head
Series in a Sentence
From monsters to mental scares, this series explores the collected works of Japanese horror mangaka Junji Ito.
What I liked
Western horror seems to have devolved to the point that jump scares are considered horror and more psychological offerings are categorized as thrillers. To me, this is a complete sham and the Junji Ito Collection proves this. I loved the fact that, like the source material, the series stayed psychological by presenting chilling ideas and imagery without relying on jump scares or wanton gore. In fact, many of the ideas presented in this episodic collection of horror vignettes had me really questioning what horror was while also making me recognize that some things could truly be hell despite appearing to be unassuming or passed over. That’s where the beauty of this series was for me: interesting and creepy ideas coupled with some intense imagery bundled into a series with stories of varying length and subject matter.
What I Didn’t Like
I know that I just said that the ideas and imagery combined made for a chilling experience but that experience was significantly brought down by one thing: The animation quality. In stills, some of the scenes looked like colored versions of their manga counterparts but, in motion, the show often devolved into what looked like a fan’s own animated comic project. Monsters chasing people often looked like barely animated cutouts being moved across a two-dimensional plane, characters mouth movements were out of sync even more than the typical anime, and scenes and backgrounds felt reused and overused. What’s sad is that it feels like the studio actually tried and didn’t choose this for a stylistic purpose like other anime with intentionally bad art. Make no mistake, there are some creepy moments throughout this anime series but the actual experience feels more like you’re watching an animated picture book than anything else.
Overall Feelings
Junji Ito is a master of psychological horror and working his style into a variety of situations. His works reflect this and, to an extent, so does this anime adaptation. It’s a shame, then, that the most memorable parts about watching this show center around hearing an idea and thinking about it later than actually watching the show. The animation alone is really to blame here as some of the stories adapted are my favorite of his works so, if you can get past the cardboard animation and flat presentation, you might just find yourself staying up at night hoping nothing like what is covered in this series ever happens to you.Fear comes in many forms.