Known as the Master of horror manga, Junji Ito’s works have created a cult following. His art features highly contrasted characters and backgrounds, often with plain human faces to counterbalance the intricate and disturbing backgrounds and events. Through detailed art, Ito weaves stories into experiences that explore horror through absurdity. Commenting on society and social issues, Ito examines themes such as tradition, Japanese society, obsession, beauty and the self.
After the poor reception of prior attempts to adapt Ito’s written works into anime, many horror fans went into the new series, Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, with low expectations. While the series wasn’t a masterpiece, it was a definite improvement upon previous animated series based on Ito’s cult manga work.
Unlike horror in other forms of media, Ito relies on still images to unsettle his audience. His use of linework to create lifelike, unsettling textures on the page makes the body horror in his stories so harrowing that they become disturbingly memorable.
This is why previous animated renditions of Ito’s works have failed to capture the true fear of the source material. The horror in his manga comes from images that are intended to be stared at for so long that they haunt the reader. You don’t just skim-read a Junji Ito story, you soak in it. Each panel is intended to be savoured in a way that is hard to recreate on screen. While there have been live-action adaptations of Ito’s work, it’s difficult to show the intricacies of his art. The live-action adaptations succeed in being somewhat faithful, but die-hard fans of the manga were disappointed due to the lack of detail and atmosphere.
Thanks to the popularity of Ito’s works, several anime adaptations have been made in an attempt to capture the terror of his art on screen. In 2011, a film adaptation of Gyo was released. It was received extremely poorly due to story changes, resulting in a not-so-faithful rendition of Ito’s fishy nightmare. From this point on, and rightfully so, fans of Junji Ito’s manga became extremely wary of any other anime adaptations and their ability to capture the essence of horror found throughout their beloved tales.
In early 2018, Junji Ito Collection aired. Excitement for the series quickly turned to disdain from fans when Studio Deen presented a sloppy, poorly animated adaptation that lacked the depth of the source material. So when Netflix’s Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre was announced in 2022, fans were sceptical. Especially after seeing the tantalizing trailer for Adult Swim’s Uzumaki adaptation, which has been plagued by delays.
Junji Ito Maniac adapts 20 of Ito’s works, including ‘Hanging Balloon’, ‘Tomie’s Photos’ and ‘Souichi’s Beloved Pet’. While the series does miss the mark a little in terms of tone, it’s an improvement on Studio Deen’s Junji Ito Collection and does manage to capture the horror in Ito’s work well. Despite this, fans are still encouraging others to avoid the series altogether. This is where I disagree.
Let’s talk about the bad bits. Firstly, Netflix – in typical Netflix fashion – released the series in one chunk. Not weekly episodes, but all 12 episodes dropped at once. The issue with this release schedule is that anime is traditionally released at a rate of one episode per week, meaning fans are able to enjoy each episode slowly and sit with it for a while. Netflix, on the other hand, has a tendency to release a series all at once, encouraging people to binge shows in shorter intervals. When it comes to Ito’s work, as previously discussed, the horror is a slow burn. The images being presented to the viewer are very intentionally created to be looked at and thought about long after the media has been consumed. Unfortunately, Netflix’s release schedule doesn’t cater to that. Of course, fans can always choose to watch one episode a week, but then are at risk of spoilers or missing out on discourse because they’re limiting their intake.
Even without Netflix’s issues around releasing the series, it has its own problems as an anime. Primarily these issues revolve around the animation and its inability to reflect the tone of Ito’s stories. While Studio Deen has done a better job with Maniac than they did with Collection, it’s just not unnerving enough. Yes, the character designs, backgrounds and body horror are true to the source material, but they’re let down by animation that’s… sufficient.
It reminds me of Shuuzo Oshimi’s manga, The Flowers of Evil. The art is plain. There’s nothing particularly notable about it, but the story is a masterpiece. When the series was adapted into an anime in 2013 by Zexcs, there was an uproar. The studio used rotoscoping to animate the series, something never before done in anime. Fans were divided about whether or not the series was good thanks to this decision to use a non-traditional animation medium. But really, the series benefited from the strange animation, which lends itself to the unnerving tone of the source material. Another series that uses unconventional animation to successfully convey a horror theme is Yamishibai. The use of paper theater animation creates a disturbing overall mood that wouldn’t exist if the series was traditionally animated.
This proves that animation studios shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. Make the animation weird. Go ham. Use crude, unfinished CGI, or have each episode animated by a different studio. Something to make it stand out in a way that reflects what Ito’s stories are trying to say. There’s too much meaning in his work to let it be animated in a straight-forward, cookie-cutter way.
What you’ll find, if you read discourse around Junji Ito Maniac, is a lot of fans who are disappointed that they aren’t seeing manga panels move across the screen. This is fine and something that Adult Swim are currently creating. But this kind of work takes time. I think being able to dive into different forms of animation and take calculated risks should be commended and I wish that Studio Deen had done this with Maniac.
Junji Ito Maniac isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a better rendition than Collection is. It just lacks the unnerving tone of Ito’s manga. Some episodes do a better job than others. For example, the use of CGI for the floating heads in ‘Hanging Balloon’ and the use of greyscale for the whole episode during ‘Mold’ really set apart those episodes as being more experimental in a way that reflects Ito’s style. If reading manga isn’t your thing, I would recommend this anime as a great introduction into the unnerving world of Junji Ito. With 20 different stories over 12 episodes, the series has enough variety to entertain almost any horror fan.
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