When it comes to the depiction of truly terrifying and inescapable horror, none achieve this more than the work of renowned horror manga artistJunji Ito. Across works such asUzumaki,Tomie, and a list of other stories so long it would be impossible to properly list here, Ito explores suffocatingly bleak themes such as obsession, loss of humanity, and the impartiality of horror through genres such as body horror and cosmic horror. He creates macabre and sometimes absurd horror spectacles that haunt readers long after they see his highly detailed panels. So, when it was announced that Ito’s work was getting anime adaptations in the form ofJunji Ito Collectionand Netflix’sJunji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, audiences, new and old, were going to be introduced to these beloved stories in motion, but unfortunately, both of the animes struggled to properly capture the intense and revolting feelings of dread felt when reading the source material.
Ito’s Brand of Terror
Ito’s particular style of horror stems from following ordinary characters spiraling into an inescapable nightmare within a cruel and malevolent universe that cares very little about them. Ito is known for taking mundane ideas or things in everyday life and twisting it in unnatural ways, whether it is the human body willingly twisting itself into a spiral shape seen inUzumakior a futon trapping its victims in a surreal nightmare as seen in his short story “Futon,” but there are other times when he creates something so out there conceptually, it is a mystery how someone could come up with it. The storylines Ito has his characters suffer through are as alluring as they are disgusting, but the one thing that sticks out for fans of his work above all else is his immense passion for creating highly detailed drawings that give life to the monsters he makes. Whether it is a cannibalistic model intensely looming over a potential victim or Tomie smiling with a haunting atmosphere around her, Ito is skilled in creating images that stand out and convey the tone he envisions for the story. This is only enhanced by his “page-turn” writing style, which can be summarized simply as building suspense through several reaction panels of characters discovering something horrifying and then forcing the readers to physically turn the page themselves to discover the monstrosity the characters are looking at. This writing approach to horror provides an almost interactive jumpscare for readers that pulls them deeper into the experience. This is sadly one of the major elements of Ito’s style that is weakened when adapted in the two anime series.
The Details Lost
Ito, when interviewed about his creative process byNewsweek, admitted that he can spend up to two days working on the same image for one of his manga. This dedication lends his imagery to have an immense amount of visual detail, but when it comes to the anime adaptations, the imagery has to become animated in order to be given a sense of motion, so it becomes extremely difficult for studios, if they don’t have the time or budget, to put nearly as much detail into each frame of a shot. A good comparison is “The Window Next Door” which follows the story of a high school boy as a woman preys on him from the neighboring house. Within the story, the boy is awakened one night by the calls of the woman next door, asking him to open his bedroom window. Unnerved, the boy attempts to ignore her, but she continues to beg for him to open up. He cautiously opens his window and discovers the neighbor, a disfigured woman with claws and fangs and boils all over her face. She begs for him to come over in a perverted predator tone. This scene is filled with an intense atmosphere with an effective build-up of suspense, and theJunji Ito Collectionadapted this scene beat for beat from the manga. By most measures, the adaptation is faithful, but the finer details of the neighbor’s appearance are lost with the adaptation.
Within the manga, the neighbor lurks in shadows that provide harsh depths to her face as her sharp teeth bend inward and her eyes are almost unidentifiable due to their abnormally small size and her elongated skull. The image is detailed to the point that despite its horrifying nature, readers are invited to look at it further. When it comes to the same shot in the anime adaptation, there is an immediately noticeable lack of detail. The image isn’t inherently bad, but it feels like the artists didn’t invest as much time into the image as Ito did with the original work. The anime removed a lot of the boils and shadows that provided a three-dimensional depth to the neighbor. Most of her face is the same texture which makes the image flatter in its delivery compared to the original. This instance of losing small details was repeated throughout both animes and in every episode. A lot of the stunning visuals were muted when translated to anime which, in the end, created flat imagery that doesn’t haunt audiences as much as the manga did.
Muted Colors
One of the additional elements of Ito’s visual style is that his art is primarily in black and white. This element of his style isn’t thought about much when it comes to adaptations because a lot of manga that gets adapted is created in black and white, but this color scheme does allow Ito to rely on shading rather than various colors in his process and the gloomy emotions conveyed through imagery void of color enhances the atmosphere. The anime decided to bring color to Ito’s black and white worlds, which does lend itself to some intrigue for fans that were curious about what his monstrosities looked like with color, but continuing off from the flat details seen in the adaptations' imagery, the same can be argued for the color schemes for portions of the animes. All the colors are visually dull without much of a style being presented. There are a lot of various colors, but there is nothing brought by this addition that truly stands out for audiences. Returning to the neighbor example, the harsh black and white shadows from the original helped provide a visual depth to the already detailed image. In the anime, everything was coated with purples to add to the neighbor character, but with everything being less detailed and some flat textures, the color doesn’t add much contrast or depth and only dulls the impact.
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An Uncanny Addition
Despite the uninspired visual aspects of the anime adaptations,Junji Ito Maniacdoes implement a surprising element to its visual style, that being 3D animation. For some of the episodes, the show includes 3D animated models alongside the 2D visuals which creates this jarring inconsistency to its own style. This is most apparent in “The Hanging Balloons"episode, where the world comes under siege by an endless swarm of doppelganger balloons that each share the same face as someone in the world and seeks to kill them with the noose tied to them like a string. Within the episode, the show decided to animate the balloons with 3D animation which clashes heavily with the standard 2D animation the series uses. Artistic consistency is usually necessary to establish an immersive environment which is important when trying to craft a horror atmosphere, but this stylistic difference breaks that rule, creating uncanny visuals that could deter audiences not fully on board with the absurdist concept. Within the manga, everything had a consistent style, so the hanging balloons visually fit within the world, looking more like ghostly heads than literal balloons, but despite the jarring nature of this design choice that may not work for some audiences, it does provide an uncanny feeling when one sees a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional world. Visually, the balloons don’t belong within the space the story is set, but that idea and the uncanny feelings evoked by the contrasting imagery almost thematically fits with the surreal nature of the plot even if it isn’t the scariest thing to look at.
Sound Replacing Silence
Printed media being adapted into an audiovisual medium such as film brings more additions to the experience than just motion. Audio, when mixed into the story, establishes a whole new pillar to the creative process of delivering atmosphere. When it comes to the original manga, readers could use their imaginations when conjuring up what the characters, world, or unknown horrors sound like. Since the adaptations don’t have that luxury with audiences, they had to provide proper voices to the characters in Ito’s stories. Although the voice acting was fine, the process of hearing the dialogue - Ito’s writing - makes it very clear that the dialogue is sometimes expository to a fault. When reading the manga, readers can imagine an execution of the dialogue that they’d like, but hearing sibling characters explicitly call each other brother and sister constantly throughout numerous episodes, and characters breaking down every single aspect of the horror they’re facing in some episodes instead of just letting the horror remain a mystery can bring audiences out of the experience.
Despite gripes about hearing some of the dialogue spoken aloud, the additions of sound overall do enhance the horror experience through subtle ambiance and the soundtrack. The sound design adding uncomfortable squishes, unnatural groans, and the characters' screams helps bring audiences into the nightmarish spectacles, and the music in both series is effective at creating a suspenseful and dread-inducing atmosphere despite the upbeat pop music chosen for both animes' intros.Tomie, created byYuki Hayashi, is a stellar theme song for Ito’s iconic character of the same name. It’s filled with a low melancholic symphony that glitches, providing a jagged feeling to noise, and then as it progresses the song spirals with ethereal moans, wounded buzzing from unknown voices, and haunting laughter from Tomie herself, creating this unnerving music that relentlessly escalates until it eventually ends. This theme and other themes like it brings audiences into the chilling atmosphere Ito’s concepts create.
But nondiegetic music isn’t the only enhancement. One story called “Used Record” follows the events of a cursed vinyl record that causes people to become obsessed over it when they hear its music. It is given new life as audiences can hear the very same music the characters become enthralled by. The song within the adaptation is called “Paula Bell’s Scat” byHayashi, and it is a sad melancholic melody that feels as ghostly as the story describes it as. The original manga could only describe the music through a collection of “Doo,” “La La,” and other descriptives, so the anime took advantage of its medium by allowing audiences to hear the music itself which in turn helps immensely with the immersion and atmosphere.
Flawed but Faithful
These two animes are anthologies that introduce audiences to a wide variety of Ito’s work, which is the greatest thing an adaptation can do and there isn’t any doubt in the adaptation’s faithfulness to the original stories, but when analyzing the differences in the art style, the flawed execution of the adaptations leaves a muted and sometimes dull experience that struggles to properly capture the same sense of dread and terror Ito is known for. There are signs of hope that Ito’s work can be fully adapted into film with the more effective episodes in these animes being a solid foundation for inspiration. Looking at the trailers for the upcomingUzumakianime, the black and white art style present seems to be directly lifted from Ito’s manga, providing the dreary visual tone missing from these anime adaptations, but time will only tell if the newUzumakiseries being developed byAdult Swimdelivers where the animes before struggled.
