English Dub Series Review: Junji Ito Collection

Junji Ito is one of my top favorite mangakas, and is my absolute favorite horror mangaka of all time. I first got into his stuff through Uzumaki, and it’s stuck ever since. While he’s had some one-off series and live-action movie adaptations of his work, he hasn’t had many chances with anime.

When I heard that there was going to be an anime, I was excited- until I saw that it was going to be by Studio DEEN. Studio DEEN is notorious in the anime community for producing popular titles with shoddy animation. They pick up stories with potential, but then fall flat when it comes to animating them. The community has been conditioned to not expect much in terms of quality when it comes to DEEN, and I was holding onto a bit of hope that this would be a little different.

It was not.

All of the stories are handpicked from Junji Ito’s many short story collections and span about twelve minutes each. Overall, the selection was fairly decent. Some are author favorites, such as Shiver, and some are popular amongst the fanbase, such as Fashion Model and Tomie. There were some lesser known ones also added in, such as Supernatural Transfer Student, which creates more variety. While Ito’s work isn’t necessarily scary, some portions can absolutely freak you out- Greased is the first that comes to mind. Animating both popular and lesser-known stories allowed for a fair balance. Unfortunately, this balance is disrupted by one character: Souichi.

Souichi is a recurring character in many of Ito’s short stories and terrorizes his hometown with his curses and outlandish behavior. While Souichi’s curses are very real, the stories he’s featured in have more of a comedic tone, instead of the heavy-handed horror that usually remains dominant. A wide range of horror allows for variety, or else the audience would get bored. Having Souichi inside the Collection to lighten the mood is a good choice, but unfortunately, he gets too much. The series begins with Souichi and ends with him- a rather strange choice to frame a series based on monsters and body horror with a comedic segment. He’s also the midway point, making 1/8th of the stories dedicated to Souichi. While the framing narrative can make sense from a stylistic standpoint, there was no reason for Souichi to also be the midpoint when that spot could have been given to another story. Amigara Fault or Human Chair could have easily been animated, but instead we got a third Souichi. It’s well known that Souichi is one of Ito’s favorite creations, but there’s no need for him to have three entire stories to himself. The segments itself were fine, but there were too many of them.

What was particularly off-putting is how the anime didn’t really feel like an Ito work. Any fan of Ito would know that he has two particular signatures in his art: his heavy use of ink and negative space, and the look of his characters. His characters all have a particular style, and good adaptations usually try to mimic the style of the original work to keep it distinctive. The anime briefly attempts to stick with Ito’s character look, but most of the time falls flat. The characters end up looking generic, which is definitely a bad sign. Ito’s also well known for using a ton of ink, as shown in his episode in Naoki Urasawa’s Manben. However, the animation barely adheres to this, and instead goes for flat colors without any of the excessive shadows. As a result, I didn’t really feel like I was watching an adaptation of the material I loved, only something imitating it.

The saving grace comes with the Tomie segment, one of Junji Ito’s most powerful works to date. Tomie has it all- body horror, a beautiful and mysterious woman, characters slowly losing their minds, and a grisly ending. Everything is right there for the proper Ito experience. While the animation quality remains relatively mediocre throughout the series, the animators made sure that Tomie looked good. This was the segment I was most looking forward to, and I truly enjoyed seeing Tomie’s rotten self finally animated (we don’t speak of the live-action). That DEEN is finally devoting the screentime she deserved to have for the two future OVAs is a good sign. Hopefully, those OVAs will have the same quality of her title episode.

Unfortunately, not even that is enough to lift up the series. What could have been compelling and visually striking, especially with Ito’s signature styles, ends up being bland? I wanted to love this, I really did, but I can’t pretend that I wasn’t let down. There’s no question that I had fun watching it, but I can’t give this series a high score in good faith.