Feb 16, 2025
Frankly, Junji Ito's stories themselves are incredibly interesting, off-putting, upsetting, uncanny, perhaps even frightening; unfortunately, though, in this adaptation, they are the most appealing aspect of the series, because their execution is usually, for the most part, not.
The soundtrack is odd and off in places to the point of occasionally sounding like it were insinuating one should approach the entire story with a comedic interpretation (not inherently wrong, but perhaps disorienting if not sold as such, considering what title and synopsis promise), the animation can't quite seem to figure out a balance between maintaining shots from the originals and translating panel stills into moving
...
frames, and the use of CGI for some key components of one or two stories aren't integrated well enough into the rest of the animation to make keeping immersion easy. The voice acting from very talented names often exceeds the quality of the episode in a way that creates this odd disparity between the skill of the seiyuu, and the episode they're featured in (for example, terrorised screaming over a shot that seems like they'd forgotten to animate a screaming face, ((not as creative choice, mind you, or at least not delivered as such)).
Most upsetting, though, is that, even the ones that stick the landing slightly better don't give you a chance to truly experience the atmosphere, likely because of the choice of adapting multiple one-shots into one episode of about 20 minutes each. The episodes nearly speed-run the stories, and even if the open ending sounds good on paper, considering how quickly the episode gets to it, it almost looks as though it had just gotten tired of telling you about it, leading to build-up's that never earn the title of 'well-executed crescendo'.
Not recommended as adaptation of Junji Ito works, and because of pacing, animation, soundtrack, not much of a recommendation for people wanting to experience some horror one-shots independently from whether they're familiar with Junji Ito or not.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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