Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre

  

Created by: Junji Ito

Written by: Junji Ito & Kaoru Sawada 

Starring the voices of: 

Takahiro Sakurai, Romi Park, Hisako Kanemoto, Yoko Hikasa, Natsumi Takamori, Hajime Iijima, Risa Shimizu, Ayaka Asai, Tomoko Kaneda, Riho Sugiyama, Daisuke Kishio, Iori Nomizu, Rie Suegara, Yumiri Hanamori, Taku Yashiro, Tomokau Sugita, Hiroyuki Yoshino, Yūji Mitsuya, Yoshimasa Hosoya, Yuka Saitō, Yutaka Aoyama, Hiro Shimono, Ryōtarō Okiayu, Sara Matsumoto, Takatsugu, Chikamatsu, Ryōhei Kimura, M.A.O, Aya Uchida, Yuki Kaji, Tomoe Hanba, Fumiko Orikasa, Takashi Kondō, Shōko Nakagawa, Mie Sonozaki, Tomoko Kaneda (wow, that was a lot)

Trailer: 

I don't know what I expected going into this, but this wasn't quite it! 

First off, I didn't initially realize it was going to be animated. I was expecting live action shorts, maybe in the vein of Black Mirror, except, you know, Japanese, and horror (not just cynicism). I also thought some might be linked for longer stories like how the Star Wars: the Clone Wars animated series will link two to three (or more) episodes to tell a movie-length story. 

What I didn't expect was for each episode to often have two 10-minute stories-- and what I expected even less was for the stories not to have endings. None of them ended well (to my memory; it's been several months now) and many of them had quite abrupt endings with an uncertain fate for the main character. The story just-- ends. It reaches a scene, no matter how far into the actual story, and cuts to credits, never to return to that again. Granted, it's often at a point where the ending is somewhat predictable; enough factors have been put into play that we mostly know where it's going. But still... not enough factors for me to feel satisfied! 

A photographer visits the supposedly-haunted home of a rather creepy family

But I mean, hey, I think it still worked. I was never yelling or throwing my phone at the TV for a story's lack of completion. Sometimes I cocked an eyebrow and muttered "That's it...?" but I never felt truly peeved. And in fact, when I consider the overall effect, it added to the sense of brevity the entire series gave me. I don't suspect these stories were meant to feel complete or whole by Ito; they're all meant to feel like small slices. Just appetizers of world or story concepts to get the imagination going, enough to send a chill down your spine and set your mind wandering and wondering. In this effect, it succeeded. 

This character appears in multiple stories, none of which explain why he's always depicted chewing nails like toothpick

Plus, such a diverse range of stories really had something for everyone. (I mean, everyone who's into supernatural horror in the first place.) There were some stories that were completely fantastical, like giant balloons shaped like real human heads stalking people to hang them or corpses that crystallize into their own gravestones, and some that were a bit more grounded in reality, like a remote religious cult deep in the woods or students stalking and taking photos of other students. 

These characters dig up graves where alternate versions of themselves have been buried

I personally enjoyed the thrill of discovering whatever horror was unfolding in each story, and determining for myself at what point in each story I might have realistically backed out to save myself a grisly ending. I also loved the Japanese cultural component of the stories; it was interesting to see different modern-day areas depicted, from cities to jungles to small towns, and the things that Japanese people might consider normal that us Americans don't--or vice versa. 

Anyway, there's not a ton I'm able to review in this kind of a show since it's incredibly niche. It was just fun to watch for what it was :) so I'll leave it off here.