The Junji Ito Collection is Disappointing Garbage 

Let's hope Adult Swim does some justice with their Uzumaki adaptation.

I think everyone surely agree on one thing. "The manga was better."

Junji Ito fans: gets bad animation Berzerk fans: First time ?

Junji Ito's manga style would've fit perfectly in the 80s - 90s. Back when things were more realistic drawn and darker anime actually felt creepy by atmosphere alone

I would call his style “holy Shit, omg, it’s three in the morning, I don’t want to die- oh god I’m gonna die”

The whole budget of the show went to the opening and thats it💀

i saw a comment saying "what if they animated it in black and white" and honestly?? such a good idea... it'd be so unique, an anime in black and white (if you know of any black-and-white anime tell me!!) and it'd almost be more horrific if they did it that way. you'd feel like you went back in time and it'd give the readers more imagination to think of "what colour might her dress be?" etc. PLUS it would just make the anime more eerie in general

the thing that frustrated me the most while I was watching the series, is that they literally didn't even ACTUALLY animated the characters, there were just a bunch of shots in many scenes where the creatures were just static with an off voice saying the dialogues, it felt like they just painted the manga panels and stitched them onto the chapter. so disappointing

Problem is Junji Ito's art style is very detailed, to fully animate his works, every single detail, is extremely expensive and time consuming. But his art style is crucial to the horror, it just won't work if the details are not in the anime. Instead of making a show, spend the budget on a few short & high quality anime films. I've seen some incredibly detailed short anime films, I think it's possible for Junji Ito's works.

What I hated about the show was how bad the acting was with people literally getting their necks getting nawed off by a woman with shark teeth and they just go "aah"

I read the title as “Junji Ito is Disappointing Garbage” and literally had a heart attack

Junji Ito makes you disgusted due to how good his art is. The Collection makes you disgusted due to how bad it is.

I feel like the guy that did Perfect blue could have handled this, as he was very good with transitions and atmosphere

5:55 just image a girl covered in blood levitating while repeatedly saying "uwu"...terrifying

in the part where you talk about the window scene the anime did look pretty scary but when you switched over to the manga version it actually gave me chills

Imagine if this was made only in black and white shading/palette? With great lineart details? Like a moving manga? Nobody do that nowadays and its so unique.

I imagined this anime would have look so much better if it was made in the late 80's/ early 90's as an OVA series.

First we lost the chance to see what he could have done in the universe of Silent Hill and now we have an embarrassingly bland animated adaptation of his manga.

junji ito: *spend 9 hours on one art piece* me: *gets impatient ten seconds after starting an art piece*

I was in fifth grade and found a manga lying on the track field, at first I was full of joy, little did I know it was a Junji Ito collection... And The Window Next Door scarred me for so long... T_T

Disrespectful to adapt such masterful works in such a lazy manner.

In all fairness animators in Japan don’t always get paid more than a few bucks for each frame they make

Me reading junji ito: Me having to itch myself because my shoulder itches: Also me: I’m going to die aren’t I?

The junji Ito collection is like when you put a metaphor into Google translate. It's not like the original, it's lost is meaning, it's similar in a way, yes, but it isn't gonna be the same no matter how you adapt it.

Anime fans: What inspired you to make a Junji Ito anime adapation? Studio Deen: I like money

They tried to animate that woman but everyone who tried fuckin died dude

Here's all they had to do: make the anime black and white. That'd get them the budget to do more detailed art, more complex animation, and add to the surreal factor of Ito's original work. Not only that, but it would've definitely stood out among contemporary anime.

Imagine staying in his house and finding a huge pile of his horrifying artwork 😱

10:30 Maybe that still image would have been better if they did one of those gross overly detailed Ren & Stimpy close ups for animation

Did anyone else see the new Toonami trailer for Uzumaki and automatically thought of this guy?

I Was Worried This Was About Junji Itos Actual Manga For A Second

Uzumaki is being adapted into an anime, and it is actually being handled by Junji Ito himself. It is announced to come around 2022. I hope this can bring his work to life.

I'm surprised that he's not scared of his own art😂

I kinda feel bad for the staff. I heard that the director spent a while studying Ito's work and trying to emulate it for animation. But if you don't have the resources, time, or support from the higher ups to make the production as technically unique as the manga, then it's going to fail, and that's just sad.

I would love to see Junji Ito's take on The Addams Family.

The anime looks like it is copying Ito instead of translating Ito to a different media. Some stuff doesn't come out the same way when going from still pictures to moving pictures.

Studio Deen's production is the real horror story

"What if they animated it in black and whit?" Boy do I have good news for you, Toonami is going to do a full black and white animated adaptation of Uzumaki

I can't believe i actually met this man

Between this anime, the god-awful Uzumaki film and Silent Hills being cancelled by Konami, my man Ito can't catch a fucking break. Dude is a living legend, definitely deserves better treatment.

i think that junji ito's horror is cosmic horror, not a new genre. cosmic horror themes are based around perversion of the physical/psychological idea of humanity, horror beyond understanding and hopelessness/pessimism.

When I think about it that was the problem with the Killing Joke movie, they copied scenes from the comics but didn't understand why they worked so they looked bland in comparison.

Junji Ito's work is like Lovecraft's. It's very hard to create and adapt to the big screens and animations.

The anime version of the woman from Window Next Door looks like one of the Beatles I SWEAR I...

one of the things i love about ito's work is that he doesn't care about keeping monsters hidden to increase the suspense of seeing them, he just makes them absolutely horrifying to look at.

I found out something extra disappointing about the anime as well: the version sent to crunchyroll is CENSORED. The shock value is made even weaker because certain parts of gore are blacked out (especially clear in Town Without Streets).

11:10 Ito really knows how to draw the creepy picture you get when you look at something long enough that it starts to morph and turn eerie. It's similar to the creepy morphing your brain does. When you look between two pictures as they flash and change on screen. All the ordinary faces you see start to turn ugly. You could even say it's the sleep paralysis demon in the corner of your eye Ito is drawing.

8:35 you can even notice by her expression that she just realized it, but then in the anime she just looks like she is thinking "this tastes normal".

My personal problem with the Junji Ito anime is how a lot of the stories seem to skip important details from the manga they adapt. Don’t get me wrong, I know these details can’t be called “plot points”, since Ito doesn’t follow a regular kind of plot when it comes to his works, but I still feel that when you skip over certain details, you can still lose something important. What do I mean? Well, after reading some of his stories, I got the feeling that there were some hidden meanings in them. Ideas that were conveyed by giving very small and subtle hints. For example, in one of the stories called “Hellish Doll Funeral”, a couples’ daughter turns into a doll because of a bizarre disease that only infects children, and most parents burn their own children once they find out. The main couple find the idea of killing their only daughter foolish, and decide to let her live as a doll, until they find out that, over time, the disease mutates their daughter’s body even further to the point where she’s now a hideous scarecrow-like abomination with a centipede neck; at which point, they change their minds about burning her. Reading all of that, you could interpret “Hellish Doll Funeral” as an allegory for people who suffer long and hard from severe illnesses to the point where the only way to cure them is to finally put them out of their misery. However, the anime adaptation completely omits the fact that the daughter’s transformation is due to a disease that was spread on an epidemic level, so that kind of potential message is all but lost. I guess what disappoints me the most about this anime is that much of the interpretive aspect of Ito’s works is gone, and makes it hard for me to really tell if he’s trying to give some commentary or just trying to give a scare.

Imagine what this could've been in the hands of Bones or Mad House...

1:49 Oh my goodness, they really did Tomie dirty with that.

I saw one frame and thought to myself: Well this doesent look *too* bad! But then I remembered what the original shot looked like and I just: ):C

the big rumour going around was that the Ito collection was just "the cheapest ito stories we could get a license for." it was a pure cash grab. and the fact that even the stills are low qual really reinforces it.

When it comes to still shots, I don't get why they couldn't up the detail. When you started talking about it and showing their stills, what I thought of was how even shows like Sponge Bob can produce more detailed stills that are creepier.

What i would do if i was art director for a Junji Ito adaptation would be: -make all the backgrounds black and white -make the horrible creatures and mutations black and white -make the humans colored, but with very dull, lifeless palettes, to give them some kind of life and contrast to the horrifying things that happen to them -make the characters ACTUALLY ANIMATE -try to maintain at least some of the detail of Ito's creatures -the translation would be pretty much the same

I think the problem here is that Junji Ito's horror relies a lot on heavily detailed and precise drawing. Heavily detailed drawing happens to be very expensive and difficult to animate. I guess its very similar to what happens with H.P Lovecraft's work made into film. It works so well on prose that it anything else simply works worse. Ito's stills are so perfect that they look dull on any other medium.

It's OK, Stephen King has been struggling with studios not taking effort or care with his stuff for decades. Then when a director finally comes along and gives it the treatment the work deserves; i.e. Frank Darabont; and it blows up like gangbusters those same studios just don't know what to say.

I feel like a much better creative decision would have been to do the entire Junji Ito collection in black and white.

“What if they animated it in black and white?” Toonami: I got you fam

What's up with stuff like berserk and junji ito's stuff being given to inexperienced directors? It's well known stuff, why not give it to someone who is proven?

It's sad, when the only mildly creative and entertaining thing in this "show", is the intro. The music is creepy, and builds atmosphere, the kaleidoscope imagery is quite unsettling, and if the show had took more of advantage of these aspects, improved the writing, animation, stories, and formed it's own identity, it could've been ACTUALLY good. Sounds cool, right?

It is like that 1998 Psycho remake of the original film. It has the shots but where is the soul?

One thing that REALLY bugged me about this anime was the lack of good camera work. I couldn't feel the least bit immersed in anything because it always felt like I was just merely looking AT the scene rather than ever feeling like I was there with the characters.

I've read all the junji stories. All of them. 70% I read when I was a kid. And I guarantee all the stories are scary, and creepy at the same time. Most of the stories don't end well for the main character, and that's the reason why I always end up depressed and feel uncomfortable for several days after I finish reading the story. I'm fine with a spiral face, humans being sucked into holes in the mountains, endless labyrinths whose walls are made of monks who are silent and fast to death, I endure with humans hiding in sofas, and others. Most of the stories above, only gives an uncomfortable feeling for a few days or even a few hours. But. There is one. There is one title that still makes me feel uncomfortable, even now after a very long time when I last read this story. The title is 'The Bully.' Little Belown Spoiler: The Bully, really makes me still ask about the fate of the child. Coupled with the quality of pictures of junji ito who managed to provide a panel that revealed the figure of the mother of the child that I had to admit, I was still afraid of that figure. In fact, it was the figure who often appeared when I closed my eyes while bathing.

5:52 IS SHE SAYING UWU????

You hit the nail on the head. I've been rereading his manga works lately, and the art and atmosphere truly are inimitable. Also LOL at the animator of the anime having last worked on Diabolik Lovers previously.

At around 11:25 you talk about how this shot could be understood if it was for the simplocity of animation, except that this is just a still. Compare this to spongebob, where sometimes they use very detailed still shots to illicit a reaction. Something like that could have been done in these junji ito shorts.

The anime series looks like it was made around the early '70s. Instead of giving you fear and dread, it just gives you stiffness and boredom. Very slow-paced and the progression is not comparable to the manga.

Junji Ito has the same philosophy as H.P. Lovecraft when it comes to horror and that's why I love his work so much. That idea of cosmic horror where the human mind is unable to fully understand the strange horrors it encounters, it's a shame that the anime couldn't live up to that.

I think the most terrifaying episode is the one with the never ending dream. I mean, you cannot run from fatigue and every time you go to sleep, your dream last more and more longer, until you cannot remember who you while nobody understand you because it's only in your head

The anime sucked??? Oh my god I wasn'texpecting that!!! 4 months ago I also was more innocent...and hopeful (crying)

Like I was telling people when this first started, Madhouse should have been the one to take this show, or at least Bones. Not only would the names be kind of a funny coincidence, but they both have the level of dedication and budget to make a competent adaption of just about anything. From a purely aesthetic point of view, as well, this should have been a series done almost entirely in black and white to let Ito's shading and linework really come to life, punctuated by splashes of color in the same way the Sin City movie was done. That would do more to instill a sense of dread than anything the actual show has ever done.

At 3:00 the way he describes Junji Ito's horror sounds like he's describing Lovecraftian horror. From the grotesque body horror and the incomprehensible entities that it appears you can never escape from, all the marks of Lovecraftian horror but when it comes to the works of Lovecraft himself and the many other writers who worked on his mythos or simply attempted the same genre or style of horror, its more cosmic and almost always has some connection to the ocean stemming from H.P Lovecraft's own fear of the ocean and what lurks in it. I'm not saying Junji Ito made Lovecraftian horror, I'm just pointing out some similarities between them and I think it's cool how Lovecraftian influence can be found in so many different places.

I never thought Ito’s work would translate well to animation, I feel like without the page turn a lot of the horror is gone.

What is with extremely talented mangaka and going with the lowest bidder possible?

They should've kept the anime black and white perhaps

And now we have the teaser for Uzumaki. It seems a lot more promising then the collection.

he.......is.......not.....wearing.........an.......eyepatch. Let alone a super eyepatch. I´m heartbroken.

But Eyepatch, Junji Ito is a master at making people feel dread, so the show, by being so bad, makes someone feel SO dreadful, that actually lives up to the spirit of manga. This show is a masterpiece!

Now, with Maniac coming out, I only hope that no one will ever take Junji Ito's work into their hands to animate it. I honestly feel bad about the people who watched Collection and Maniac without reading the manga.

You know something is bad when even Eyepatch calls it garbage

Your "What Makes Media Scare Us" was the groundwork, here's the followup. And what a wonderful followup it is!

I remember seeing some of his work, it was top notch visual horror. I couldnt get sleep, because every time I closed my eyes I could still see some key parts of his works, thats the best kind of horror.

For me, The promised neverland faced an almost similar problem in terms of how demons are portrayed. Ive the entire manga up to the latest and watched the anime. The demons in the anime don't look intimidating or mysterious since they're colorful but in the manga, they convey mystery and danger. Dunno, perhaps many scary or grotesque shots/ scenes are better in black and white or a still picture than an animated piece. But ill see the anime as its own take of the horror and the manga to be different as well as the story itself somehow starts to move away from the horror aspect.

the animation is so choppy and limited... plus the only shots that match ito's drawing style are clearly traced from the comics. what a letdown

Wonderful, just what I needed this weekend!

now i get why when i watch the anime adaptation i didnt feel much fear, i thought to myself what is all the fuss about this junji itto guy.. i thought that u have to have a good imagination to actually appreciates it, now i know why

Him: But just look at the panel of the manga. Look at the detail and work that's forged this moment. The grotesque rendering of the woman's skin, stark use of black and white, the detail on her teeth, her jewelry and hair, and the life in her eyes and how it all comes together to create the uncanny feelling that she actually starring back at you. Me: No, do'nt whant to. l'm just gonna skip ahead ten seconds so I do'nt have to look a that thing.

To me, Ito’s work is unadaptable like Berserk or Vagabond. The art is so detailed and part of its identity, that an animation studio would never be able to emulate it right.

5:54 UWU

"no es que el anime sea malo, es que el manga era tan bueno que a su lado el anime parecía basura" "it's not that the anime is bad, it's that the manga was so good that the anime looked like trash next to it" - Danna Alquati

(15 minutes of video)...... Studio DEEN "Well there's your problem!"

>Studio DEEN Well, that explains everything. Just look at what they did to Fate/Stay Night and Umineko.

Is it weird that I find Ito's art somewhat beautiful? Maybe it's the line work.

11:00 also in the anime version she just looks like an ugly/weird looking character not that scary to me

Honestly if they did it in mostly black and white colors only it would of been so much better because it would of kept that tone to a better extent.

One of my favorite horror stories of all time is the Enigma of Amigara Fault. That story still creeps me out. I also love the Gyo story that was published with it. I've never read a horror comic, American or otherwise, that is so effective at giving me the chills. And I completely agree - the low quality was probably a money decision, hoping the name Junji Ito would give it the attention they were looking for without having to actually try.

As for examples of scary animation, Courage the Cowardly dog in some episodes pull it perfectly by the use of altering the style of the animation. The "You are not perfect" Monster done with CGI or the Violinist girl done with stop motion where great examples of this, they provided a feeling of uncanny that I cant remember from any other animation. Something similar could have been done with the Ito collection. But well, missed opportunity.

Does anybody think that the show would have benefited from being black and white? I believe that it might have made it slightly better, but this show still would have been a train wreck.

as soon as i saw this in my notifs i immediately yelled fuck i was so excited