Oct 20, 2024
The only reason this was rated highly at all was because of the first episode. This is a lesson in not rating something until you have completely finished it. Anyways…
A near complete bastardization of the source material. I absolutely adore the original manga, I think it's creepy, thought provoking, and full of so much creativity, even as someone who isn’t super into horror stuff. However, after finishing this I have completely lost all hope in all Junji Ito animated projects. If they couldn’t even treat his magnum opus well that was announced FIVE FUCKING YEARS ago then there’s no way any of the other ones
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remotely have any chance of being even moderately ok. This pissed me off to an insane degree, ESPECIALLY episodes 2 and 3.
I’ll start with the positives I guess, the first episode was good. The animation was about all I could ask for from a Junji Ito adaptation. I also didn’t hate the decision to stitch the stories together in this, as I could see how that would work better in TV form as opposed to the episodic nature of the manga (at least in this episode). However, I had NO idea how much this would absolutely ruin the rest of the series. Also, it was nice in the last, like 5 minutes of the last episode when they actually remembered what directing was (besides fallingshuichi.png, that looked like absolute dogshit). There was some solid sound design and a couple scenes that were…not terrible I guess? Now for everything I didn’t like!
Episodes 2 and 3 are straight up insufferable. It lost every single little bit of the budget and turned it into a lifeless and lazy excuse for an animated series. It absolutely butchered every chapter from the original that I love, ESPECIALLY the hair duel and the mushroom hospital, two of my absolute favorites. The pacing is absolutely atrocious, with them rushing through every scene to get to the next one so they could shove it into 4 episodes. The jack in the box kid barely felt like he was there at all, it was such an obvious shove in at the last minute and I don’t even know why they bothered to include him. He had absolutely no presence at all and was completely forgettable. The animation was LAUGHABLY bad at times, like seeing two characters run sideways on a beach, a guy getting punched with basically no impact at all, and the walking animation looking like they stuck pictures on popsicle sticks and moved them up and down to imitate walking. And it gets worse from just bad animation, as at least the original story is still there to enjoy, right? Nope. The stitching together of the stories caused all the stories to feel incredibly rushed and half baked, and also created actual plot holes that were not in the original story. Of course they just HAD to fuck up that too!
Now is a good time to mention how laughable everything in this show feels in anime form. All the things that came across as creepy and unnerving in the source material comes across as laughably bad, completely destroying any semblance of a horror story.
Episode 4 has some of the lowest points of the series, especially at the start, but the rest of the episode was… not the worst thing in the world? The least offensive episode post episode 1 I guess, but it was still bad. The tornados looked really bad, they had like 2 models for all the tornados and just copy and pasted them along the screen. Also, most of the backgrounds were just copy pasted from the manga.
I could go on, but I’m just so sad at how this turned out. This was easily one of my most anticipated adaptations for a while as I absolutely love the manga and I think that Junji Ito is a horror master. But after seeing this, I give up. I can’t do this anymore. Junji Ito anime was just never meant to be I suppose. Instead of watching this garbage, please do yourself a favor and go read the original series. It will take you about the same amount of time, and is an INFINITELY better experience. Hell, even the live action version is probably better. That at least did something different with the ending (from what I’ve heard at least).
Fuck this shit. Fuck the people who decided to put this awful excuse for a project out rather than just cancelling it altogether. Lets just hope that Tomie doesn’t get this fate if it ever gets properly adapted.
3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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