It was among the most anticipated of the anime winter season, to put a little bit of terror on our screens. ‘Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre’ It has already been released on Netflix to adapt several stories by the Japanese horror master to animated format, and has left us with a very eclectic collection that can be seen too well.
Paranormal costumbrismo and disturbing realism
A few years ago, ‘Junji Ito Collection’ was released, a first anthology based on the mangaka’s work, for which he was also in charge Studio Deen. The sleeves of Junji Ito have been adapted on several occasions, both to anime and video games and to live action movies, but in ‘Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre’ some stories have jumped to anime for the first time and directly to Netflix.
The anime anthology in total consists of 12 episodes collecting 20 stories, including ‘Tomie’, ‘The Hanging Ballons’, ‘Unendurable Labyrinth’, ‘Bullied’, ‘The Strange Hikizuri Siblings: The Seance’, ‘The Long Hair in the Attic’ and ‘Where the Sandman Lives’.
If we come back to the work of Junji Ito, this anime of ‘Japanese Tales of the Macabre’ is a perfect introduction, with short episodes and content that balances suspense and terror very well.. Of course, do not expect terror with jumpscares and murderers with knives, because the horror of ‘Junji Ito Maniac’ is based more on an uneasy and disturbing atmospherewhere you know that something is not right in what is apparently a normal day on a normal street… And that it can reach you at any moment.
And we must also warn, if we are also looking for brainy explanations to the almost costumbrist horrorss that the anthology shows us, we can wait sitting down. Disturbing (and heartbreaking) situations just happen, and you have to accept them as they come without necessarily having a resolution.
Studio Deen it gets a pretty big improvement from what we were able to see at the time in the previous anthology. It still doesn’t measure up to the source material if we expect certain scenes to be just as disturbing (and gross), but maybe that’s how they’ve also managed to make certain stories a bit more accessible.
Unfortunately, what can throw you in the face that the finish is still a bit static and even generic with an animation that is not especially outstanding. Where it can be said of the visual section is that manage to perfectly capture that everyday but disturbing atmosphere and some very expressive characters that highlight each situation very well.
‘Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre’ is perfect for a good suspense marathonHey psychological terror in which there is also a touch of body horror. It cannot be measured with the quality of Ito’s original work, but it is an anthology that conveys the tone very well and that manages to hook you from the first moment.