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olde-scratch · 1 year

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the end sequences of junji ito maniac transcribed (i can edit to put pictures later if anyone screenshots them)

personally i think theyre mostly telling whats in the next episode, but it’s also a very interesting story outside of that. not sure if it’s from a previous work or made up for the anime but i like it

e1: "I finally felt something was strange. A dark hole. A sweet scent filling the room. I must write down what's going on in front of my eyes, or at some point, people will say that I am the strange one. But I have no paper... I don't have a pen, either. I scraped the tip of my finger against the splintered wall. Oh, wait... there's some red ink here now."

e2: “It’s amazing. The red ink turns black when it dries. Good, good! That’s good for me. Hm... where does this poignant smell of iron come from? Ah, well... And, what’s that thing with my face that’s flying around? I must write down every little thing I see and hear with the ink. Oh, but there’s... no paper.”

e3: “See? Here it is! Right here! It’s not high-quality paper, but still, it’s better than nothing. I slide the soft pen over its bumpy surface, preparing to scribe. What I saw last night was a sad man who could not fall asleep. And there, a cicada out of season is crying out in an insane frenzy.”

e4: “Long black hair protruding from the wall. It was swaying from the letters I wrote on the wall, and I was wondering what it was, but it was hair. What exactly is it trying to do? Is it growing in an effort to touch me? I just tore off that curious clump of hair. When I did, that mound of mane became very docile.”

e5: “No... It was white. Was it white to begin with? The paper is filling up with black insects. Where did these things come from? If you look close enough, those insects are in the shape of letters. It’s almost as if they’re trying to tell me something. I need to know more about these strange insects. If I open the putrid library, will I find the answer somewhere in there?”

e6: “Gather round and listen closely to the tombstone thrusted there! To the many tombstones. See, now, I can also hear the voices of a conversation, you see. The fact that I can hear it means that you can clearly hear it as well. But for those among you that can’t hear it, I must find a way to share. I’ll teach it to the insects...”

e7: “Ha, that is what the insects are teaching you today! They’re piling up. What’s piling up is the bottom of the ocean! The insects multiplied and filled up the paper. They keep screaming. It’s getting hard to hear them. There are three large pieces of paper. The other side has many poles sticking up from the ground. If the insects left from here, it would be very bad.”

e8: “Hey, Mr. Insect. Do you want to hear the story about the woman who came here yesterday? I was surprised to hear that there are people like that out in this world. Oh, yes, you feel the same way, don’t you? You know, that woman also had an insect on her face! My life was spared only because the insect on her face allowed me to take notice of it.”

e9: “Oh, it appears the insects are starting to argue with one another. My, oh, my! This might not be an argument. Is it... bullying? Everyone’s watching this. It’s better if you stopped. I’m watching as well with my very own eyes. Oh, the ink... It’s no longer coming out. I need more red ink.”

e10: “Oh, it seems that there’s quite a bit more ink. But I’m running out of paper! Oh, there’s paper in the other room, isn’t there? Is it possible to get there? Yes, but to do so I must traverse this twisted back alley. The spot where the ink stopped flowing is white, hard, and pointed now. If I dig with that, maybe I can bore a hole...”

e11: “I decided to head to the room next door through a new, gaping hole. The insects were whispering and that made me realize. Ahahah... what a fool I’ve been! I’ve only been following the orders of the insects until now. I won’t listen to what they have to say anymore. I rammed my bony body through the open hole and jumped out of the room!”

e12: “And so the warden read the bloodstained letters on the wall. The squiggly letters representing insects filled the entire space. It was quite difficult to decipher, most likely because the letters were written by the man who drilled through the wall with the bones of his fingers in an attempt to escape. The first sentence reads as follows: I finally felt something was strange...”

#junji ito #junji ito maniac #junji ito maniac: japanese tales of the macabre #not sure if theres any differences between eng and jap versions cause the subtitles of the jap one matched the first 4 eps #anyways hope this is helpful to someone i figured id transcribe it anyways in case someone needed it for some obscure reason #ill probably use it as inspiration or fodder if i want a junji ito reference somewhere #idk maybe someone will make a theory that the narrators souichi or something like that and needs the transcripts idk lol #i dont know if this counts as spoilers but #junji ito maniac spoiles

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b1skiel · 1 year

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Llevaba tiempo esperando este anime porque me volví fan de Junji Ito por el anime anterior #JunjiItoCollection

Fue en octubre del 2022 cuando empece a ver esas historias de terror y quede enamorado.

#JunjiIto Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre.

Cuando ví que iba a salir un nuevo anime estaba impaciente por verlo, pocos spoilers, solo comentarios de lo que me parecieron los capítulos.

1. The Strange Hikizuri Siblings: The Seance

Ame demasiado al personaje de Kazuya.

2.The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel/Ice Cream Truck

Me dio tremendo escalofrío con la historia del túnel./Jamás imaginé que pasaría algo así con la historia del camión del los helados, es brillante.

3.The Hanging Balloons

El simple hecho de imaginar algo así me causó una especie de cringe con miedo, imaginar que se puede terminar así es terrible.

4.The Room with Four Walls/Where the Sandman Lives

Me identificó mucho con Soichi, es de mis personajes favoritos, personalmente yo sentiría claustrofobia. / ¿Como será el mundo al revés, el mundo de los sueños?

5.Intruder/The Long Hair in the Attic

¿Como será nuestro otro yo en la otra dimension?

/Este capítulo es muy bueno y espeluznante pensar que tu cabello cobre vida.

6.Mold/Library Vision

No sufro por el moho pero si tengo humedad en mi cuarto, y si bien me da asco el aroma no me imagino vivir en el moho. / Estar encerrado en tu mente es horrible.

7.Tomb Town

Más que darme miedo, me causó mucha tristeza el final.

8.Layers of Fear/The Thing that Drifted Ashore

Me daría un shock terrible que algo así ocurriera en la vida real y más la locura de esa madre por creer en la maldición. / No soy muy fan del océano pero realmente lleguense a imaginar la vida de las profundidades.

9.Tomie: Photo

Ella es muy linda sin importar su monstruosidad.

10.Unendurable Labyrinth/Bullied

También me volvería loco. /Me causó una impresión muy grande, este capítulo es muy cruel y enfermo.

11.The Back Alley/Headless Statue

No fue de mis favoritos ya que realmente esperaba ver a los fantasmas. / Me gustan las artes plasticas, sería hermoso y terrible que cobrarán vida.

12.Whispering Woman/Soichi's Beloved Pet

Realmente se hizo justicia. / Soichi es un idiota.

#junji ito maniac japanese tales of the macabre #junji itō #Netflix #spoilers

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eyedelater · 1 year

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junji ito post

this is a diary post of my thoughts while reading various works by junji ito.

i found the beautiful hardcover edition of GYO at my local library, so i borrowed that on a whim. i read that. then i thought i would watch the movie version because i wanted to see how they would tackle, you know… all aspects of the work. the movie was so lousy i quit watching less than halfway through. maybe i'll pick it up again sometime. but i'm a stickler for honoring the source material, and they inserted so much weird and dumb fanservice, it was intolerable. then i wondered what other anime adaptations existed of junji ito works. so i watched the 2022 netflix series JUNJI ITO MANIAC. i thought it was, on the whole, somewhat weak, but i did watch every episode. then i got more junji ito books from my local library, including TOMIE, UZUMAKI, DESERTER, LOVESICKNESS, REMINA, and VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT. i also watched the series JUNJI ITO COLLECTION and read more stories online. i wanted this post to encompass all of ito-sensei's works, but after reading most of them, i decided to read the rest some other time. you can scroll to near the end of this post for an incomplete list of ito-sensei's works that i find to be worth reading. this post contains some spoilers, but i think spoilers don't matter too much for horror manga, as it's the visuals that really count.

i should preface everything by saying that i have known of junji ito for many years. when i was in high school… well, a short summary would be that in 9th grade, i saw a traumatizing gory video that messed me up and made me afraid of the dark despite being 14 years old, and i was especially afraid of dark spaces like the cracks between things. i slept on a mattress pressed into the corner of a room, and i was still afraid of the gap between the mattress and the wall. i wouldn't face my back to it all night. the cabinet door under the bathroom sink didn't shut all the way, and i would watch that dark gap through the clear shower curtain for 100% of my time in the shower to make sure nothing came out. (i made my dad get a clear shower curtain for that reason.) i was mentally ill, you see. did you know that sometimes, knowing a fear is irrational does nothing to make you not afraid? (i'm better now.) so there's the baseline, and then, due to the whims of my internet friend group, i felt compelled to read junji ito's THE ENIGMA OF AMIGARA FAULT. it struck the worst possible chord with me: now i knew that what could be lurking in the dark cracks between things is a stretched and disfigured human body being blissfully, eternally compelled through its own personal tunnel. THAT is what's in between my mattress and the wall. THAT is what could slip through the crack in the bathroom cabinet door. can i put into words how awful it was to think about? but of course, being rational at the same time, i acknowledged even then that the manga itself was kinda good. to come up with such an unpleasant idea is worthy of praise in itself. so i came to respect junji ito. but i haven't read that story again, and i won't. (they had the nerve to stick it in as a bonus story at the end of the GYO hardcover. i didn't even flip through. i will not read that story again.) several years later, i read UZUMAKI and thought it was good. and i think i read one or two TOMIE stories and then lost interest. (oh and i read the cat diary with yon and mu with no hesitation because i knew it wouldn't actually be scary. it was fun.)

so i had the impression that junji ito was very powerful and worthy of my respect. that's why i picked up GYO at my local library. i was pretty sure it was going to be good, and there was also a distant element of facing my fears.

GYO was pretty good. the way humans became disfigured after infection reminded me of Mermaid Swamp, an RPGmaker game i played a while ago and lost sleep over. i can't say i recommend it, but i do like RPGmaker horror games… anyway, GYO was well-composed and certainly Extensive in Scope. you know, it just keeps piling on and on. but it all came together… kind of. but when we got the circus part, i had to be like, "seriously?"

then i watched JUNJI ITO MANIAC. i find that netflix-produced animes have a certain flavor, a tinge that says, "netflix execs really really really really want to make money from this!!!" so to the extent that there is production value, it feels like it has been expended for the sake of making it Look like the anime is good, and not for actually making the anime good, if that makes sense. i feel that there is some heart missing… some loving devotion to the source material. at least some of the time. after watching the whole series, i came across many of the source stories in the short story collections i read. the anime adaptations were generally faithful to the short stories, and i appreciate that. but there is a difference between "turning a manga into an anime" and "turning a manga into a good anime." it is the difference between "this manga scene is now happening in motion" and "the tension and emotion of the original scene has been successfully translated into motion." and actually, it kind of felt like… for some of these… we didn't need to animate them? the thing about horror manga is that your own feelings of horror set the pace. maybe you are pulled quickly forward by suspense, but your eye lingers on the most hideous pages against your will. if the scariest part flashes up too briefly when translated into anime, it won't have as much of an effect. so it felt as though the timing for the scariest parts was weirdly rushed in some of the anime episodes. even watching without knowing the source material, i got the distinct impression that the manga had to be much better than this. [note added in later: sometimes, they actually weren't much better.] they got some of the faces wrong, too. you know how junji ito has his distinctive style where sunken eyes are expertly depicted with many small lines? it's a striking look. it looks great. classic. the way they showed those sunken eyes in the anime was unbelievably lame. it was an airbrushed look. i know they couldn't have animated it with many small lines, but shading it with a harder edge would have looked a thousand times better. or cel shading. come up with a creative solution to capture the effect. also, some of the voices were really annoying. i mean, i guess souichi's voice being annoying is appropriate. (what is souichi's deal? isn't he just really annoying? i haven't read any of his short stories yet.) anyway probably the best story in this series was the hanging balloons. i haven't read that story yet either. i have a feeling the manga is much scarier. but the anime has the advantage of showing the movement of the balloons. the way it will loop around your neck and fling you away in a second was well done.

(revelation) i see… so basically… the JUNJI ITO MANIAC series was the second junji ito series netflix made. so these are all the second-tier stories that they didn't care to animate in the first series? is that right? that makes sense. i'll have to watch the other series soon. [note added in later: wrong. JUNJI ITO COLLECTION was about the same.]

some of ito-sensei's stories are bizarrely anticlimactic. because it is horror manga, i set aside my usual expectation of a happy ending; i am expecting an ending that is either disastrous or faintly hopeful despite everything. but i was expecting an ending, and some of these short stories don't have much of one. like "the bully" (ijimekko). i thought it wasn't very good. i thought it was a miss. i think maybe that one didn't need to be animated, for that reason. but after reading several, i have come to accept that an anticlimactic ending is standard for his short stories. i got used to it. i guess his intention is to end a scary story without much denouement, before the terror fades away, so as to leave a stronger impact. [note added in later: it turns out that in an interview, he said pretty much exactly that.] but i think it wasn't executed successfully every time.

i read the LOVESICKNESS collection of short stories. the story of the beautiful boy at the crossroads was pretty good. i find it kind of strange how romantic love is a strong and frequently recurring theme in ito-sensei's work, and not just in this particular collection. well, the whole way he depicts women has a certain flavor, doesn't it.

i read REMINA. i don't have very strong feelings about this one except that remina the girl sure doesn't have very much agency as a character. all she does is get pursued and picked up and pulled around by everyone on earth. i thought that as a climax, there might actually be some fun and exciting link between her and remina the planet, since at first that it seemed to attack the most when she was being crucified or whatever, but there was no such thing. remina the planet just made a beeline for earth and then started taking its time on the devouring part for no reason.

i spent my whole saturday reading TOMIE from cover to cover. it was pretty good. i think it's really funny how tomie herself evolves (in terms of character development) to be such a needy brat. and i think it's funny how all the tomies want to kill each other. i like how a tomie regenerating under certain circumstances takes on some characteristics of her surroundings, like the ashes tomies and the sake tomies and the carpet tomie. i also think it's really funny how tomie really doesn't want to split into more than one but she's sooo prone to it and she haaates it. overall, i was more amused than really scared by TOMIE. important note: there's probably quite a lot to be said if you read these stories through an explicitly feminist lens, but i don't care to do that right now.

i'm looking at wikipedia now and realizing there is a nearly endless supply of junji ito short stories. my local library does not have all of these. they have six or seven volumes, which is a ton given the extent of their manga collection, and i kinda thought that was all, but it's not. i'll have to read some of these online. however, there is a dilemma. given my history of getting afraid of the dark and its debilitating effects on my life, i want to avoid giving myself that feeling again (and i know it is possible), so i never read or watch anything scary at night. but i don't read manga online unless it is on my laptop or ipad. and i don't have my laptop or ipad with me in the daytime, only in the evenings… maybe i'll bring my ipad to work…? [note added in later: i made it work by reading in the early evening. this is the kind of thing i really worry about.]

i guess i've had a complicated relationship with horror media in that i like it, and most of the time it doesn't Hit in a bad way, but i need to make sure to take precautions when i consume it or else i could seriously lose a lot of sleep. even just typing out that paragraph about my ordeal in high school left me with a terribly nervous feeling because i wrote it at night and relived unpleasant memories. but i can still turn a lightswitch off and then walk out of a dark room without pressing my back against a wall. so i'm miles ahead of where i was back then. that's a relief.

i will note that this whole time, i kiiinda thought junji ito's "ito" miiight just be ito �� (thread). i mean, i knew his name (romanized) long before i ever learned that "ito" means "thread." it's only natural that in my ignorance, i might form some association between them. but it's totally not thread. who would be named that? (there's probably somebody.) it's actually itou 伊藤. junji itou. itou junji. but no one romanizes it like that. it's the same itou as the itou in delicious ITO EN jasmine tea, which goes really well with unfrosted blueberry pop tarts. if you're planning to try it with frosted pop tarts, don't even bother. oi ocha is good too.

while watching MANIAC, i was like, what is souichi's deal…? now i'm watching the first episode of JUNJI ITO COLLECTION and i've realized that souichi could be an enjoyably ridiculous character but they gave him a completely insufferable voice actor and thus made him insufferable. i wonder if they had the perfectly reasonable thought, "we can't make his voice nice or else he could become sexy to teen girls, and that idea is apprehensible," and then they overcorrected. perhaps they could've made it less awful and safely unsexy by giving him a realistic teenage boy voice. they could even make it appropriately obnoxious without going too far. i have to read the souichi series and then i'll be able to love him. i can't love him with this shitty voice <3 [note added in later: it turns out souichi is in 6th grade and 11 years old. he's not even a teen. that means my sexy voice hypothesis, by all rights, ought to be moot. i still think they made the wrong voice actor choice. i mean, not that the actor didn't give it his all. but he sounds like an annoying man or teen, not an annoying kid. souichi needed a kid voice.]

JUNJI ITO COLLECTION failed to successfully adapt the story of the beautiful boy at the crossroads. as a multi-chapter story with a relatively strong narrative, it should have been given at least a whole episode or an OVA-length animation to tell the whole story at once, but instead, they abbreviated it and never followed up with the rest. that being said, the main problem was that they didn't make the narrative as clear as in the manga. well, whatever. i'm going to watch through COLLECTION even though it's lousy.

i read the compilation book entitled VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT. apart from noticing that they had the audacity to include the enigma of amigara fault again, none of the stories especially stuck with me except the cute love letter manga to kazuo umezz. i'll have to read some of his stuff next. speaking of other horror manga, i bought and read the english translation of "inuki kanako no daikyoufu" (Be Very Afraid of Kanako Inuki!) by inuki kanako because i wanted to support my local comic book shop. i kinda picked it at random based on the cover and paid full cover price. i kinda didn't like it. i don't have much to say about it except that her perfectly neckless art style is fun. maybe i'll read her tatari series sometime.

i'm remembering that when i read UZUMAKI for the first time, despite having watched many horror movies, i failed to consider the narrative expectations for works in the horror genre; that is, i had not resigned myself to a bad ending, which i now understand is very much to be expected. so i was really rooting for kirie and shuichi the whole time, and at the end, when they fail to escape the spiral, i was like "ok fuck me then i guess." i was pissed. but what i'm saying is that i was wrong to be pissed because my expectations were unreasonable. in retrospect, it was an appropriate ending.

there's that one tumblr post making fun of kirie and her fucked up boyfriend. it has a couple of panels where shuichi's looking deadened and she puts her head on his shoulder. i think that post is mean. i'm on shuichi's side! be nice to him! you saw what happened to his dad! have a heart!

JUNJI ITO COLLECTION episode 7 was probably the best so far, just because they did a pretty good job with the used record one. if the singer hadn't done a good job, it would have flopped. the song adds so much that is impossible to portray in the form of manga. it spooked me enough that i'm not going to watch any more episodes tonight, which did not happen with any other episodes of COLLECTION or MANIAC.

i was right. manga souichi is much more lovable than anime souichi, because though their faces are equally obnoxious, manga souichi has no obnoxious voice. the souichi stories are kind of refreshing because we get to see junji ito's strange sense of humor without anything too scary happening. my first souichi exposure was the 4 walled room episode in MANIAC, meaning i missed his introduction that appears in COLLECTION, so i was like "who the fuck is this? our protagonist, kouichi, is going to die in the gap between these walls. what? nothing in particular happened at the end. (souichi appears in another episode) this guy's in more than one??" but in the end, i kind of like how he's in 6th grade and his main powers are supercharged annoying personality and also being able to administer real curses. and despite the horrible voice, most of the souichi segments seem to have been adapted with incredible accuracy. souichi's recurring associated sound effect in the manga is "gachu gachu," the slightly clankety sound of him sucking on nails. one scanlator translated it as "munch munch;' another as "nom nom." i've never seen "gachu gachu" before.

ito-sensei's art peculiarities: he is the master of the "lovely face looking concerned." great skill with sunken eyes looking upset and exhausted. in the profile view, everyone has that distinctive frown. poses are sometimes a little awkward as if drawn from a clumsily posed posable model. chins sometimes don't make sense if the perspective isn't straight on or in profile. occasionally, his unique sense of humor shines through in the facial expressions. he's very good at drawing cutely styled hair and plain, elegant clothes. he also draws scary things.

the short story "fashion model" features fuchi, the fashion model. she debuted in the souichi story "rumors." i love fuchi. i'm on her side. when she's riding in the car with everyone much shorter than her and politely excited to go to the deep woods, that's cute. i like when she hitches up her long dress to run quickly in the woods. in "fashion model: cursed frame," fuchi appears in a magazine shot with two other models smiling happily, and that's cute. i want more fuchi content. (also, fuchi is pronounced the same as huci, the ainu word for grandmother. irrelevant.)

junji ito short stories are really hit-or-miss, i've decided. UZUMAKI, GYO, and TOMIE are essentially hit, and that's why he's popular, but a lot of these one-shots, they do not hit.

many of the strange evils in ito-sensei's works seem to be town-restricted. it seems that in most cases, if you get out of town, everything's fine. town where bodies turn into tombstones. town where everyone needs maps to navigate. town where it's foggy and everyone does fortune-telling. town contaminated by spirals. let's all exit towns.

i think ito-sensei can tell when an idea is good and when an idea is bad. generally, the better ideas are longer stories, and the worse ideas are shorter stories. i guess an exception would be hell doll funeral. that one was short but good. another exception is the bully. that one was bad but long.

i think ito-sensei's stories would be better if he applied his skill at drawing unique face shapes to drawing main characters instead of using unique face shapes only for the sake of showing "ugliness" in comparison to the uniformly beautiful main characters. as if ugliness is horror.

most of the characters in his stories are very shallow, but that's okay; they are only here in service of the narrative, to react to whatever hideous sights are laid before them... or to take part in them.

he is really a master of rictus...

it's funny, i just read a ton of ito-sensei's works from the 90s and very early 2000s, and then i accidentally jumped to one from the past few years because the entries on his wikipedia page aren't in chronological order (someone fix that), and now youtubers are appearing and twitter is a plot point. also, the quality of the work is quite visually different, as he switched to digital. it feels very, very polished now. i wonder why they don't have these at my local library.

here are the junji ito works that are worth reading, in my view (not in any order) :

the hanging balloons - this vision is truly inspired. you can also read "return of the hanging balloons," but it's hardly anything.

souichi's series, including: fun summer vacation, fun winter vacation, souichi's diary of delights, souichi's home tutor, mannequin teacher [probably the best], souichi's birthday, souichi's selfish curse, the room with four walls, coffin, rumors, souichi's beloved pet, secret of the haunted house, and the souichi front [also known as secret of the haunted house: souichi's version]. - not every single one of these is fantastic, but some of them are quite good. if you only want a little taste, read "souichi's home tutor" and then "mannequin teacher," as they distinctly go together. you can also read "souichi possessed," but it's hardly anything.

splatter film [also called smashed] - another truly inspired vision. if you don't get it, the joke is mosquitoes.

used record [also called secondhand record] - read it and then watch episode 7 of junji ito collection.

fashion model - get to know my girl fuchi. you can also read "fashion model: cursed frame," but it's not much.

village of the siren - this one has a unique feeling, i think.

gyo, tomie, and uzumaki are all about as worthwhile as each other.

lovesickness is slightly less good than the three listed in the previous bullet point, but still pretty good

the chill [also known as coldness] - if you want to experience trypophobia hell. don't take that warning lightly.

groaning drain pipes - just because the perfectly anticlimactic ending cracks me up

blood bubble bushes - uhh something also similar to trypophobia in this one, but it's striking

oshikiri's series, including hallucinations, bog of the living dead, pen pal, intruder, further tales of oshikiri, and further tales of oshikiri: walls - some of these are pretty good.

house of puppets - it's a house of puppets.

the town without streets - goes in an unexpectedly atmospheric direction. interestingly a mishmash of many different ideas, unlike his usual one-note short stories.

gravetown - another inspired idea.

the story of the mysterious tunnel - can't decide how much to like this one.

frankenstein (adaptation) - very well done. there's a scene where victor and the monster make eye contact and then the monster immediately turns around and scales a sheer cliff face. you made his body really strong, victor. he can scale a sheer cliff face. i should note i only read around the first half of frankenstein the novel. i know, it's a failing on my part. so i can't judge the accuracy. i don't know if the monster scales a sheer cliff face in the novel. anyway someone should cosplay as reanimated justine. you just need to really build up your limbs onto some stilts and stuff.

hell doll funeral - it's a hell doll funeral

fixed face - ending cracked me up

weeping woman way - i like this one. it's so wet.

madonna [also called the witch] - i enjoy a story that offends the church.

spirit flow of aokigahara - this one is really good. i love their bodily transformation.

sensor - the first chapter makes you envision getting hairs in your mouth so you go "pfuh! pfuh!" and the rest is like, oh, so god really does exist. i really appreciate how much he wrung out of the creepy natural phenomenon of volcanic hair, which i didn't know about before this.

i wanted this to be a comprehensive list, but i'm sick of reading these for now. maybe i'll read the rest of his works some other time.

in conclusion, despite the inexplicably strong urge i felt to read as much of junji ito's body of work as possible, i'm not in love with his stuff. i certainly don't care enough to compare any translations. however, i do really respect his art skills and horrific ideas, and i enjoy his inscrutable sense of humor.

(i am really looking forward to the black and white uzumaki anime if it ever comes out.)

#junji ito #ito junji #this post is about horror manga and contains some potentially upsetting things.#i'm not giving you a trigger warning for each and every junji ito work discussed in this post.#please look up trigger warnings for each individual work before you read them if you're worried.

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timefospookies · 1 year

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Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre episodes ranked from best to worst (in my opinion) with small to no explanation 😋

Kept as vague as possible to avoid spoilers :3

[Btw I LOVE ITO’S WORK but I feel like it’s very hard to translate into animation because it takes away from the magic the drawn medium provides for the story’s pacing, tone and overall look. This isn’t a criticism to Ito or the people who made the anime, it’s just things I liked and disliked in general!!]

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1. Tomb Town

Beautiful environments and engaging story!! Kept me at the edge of my seat! I loved the sister character (the protag’s sister not the dead one 💀). Such an interesting concept!!

2. Layers of Terror

The horror lay in the relationship between the mother and her two daughters- her desire to be adored pulled to an extreme by her selfishness

3. The Bully

Horrifying example of different abuses and its victims. How the woman fell back on old habits that she never truly regretted or grew out of. Poor Nao who remained blind to his abuser and his poor son who will suffer a terrible fate. All because the woman couldn’t move on from her childhood

4. Whispering Woman

Predictable but I honestly loved the character of the whispering woman and her story. She was so eerie but beautiful. I really wanna say she had a genuine desire to help the girl at least at some point, but it also feels somewhat manipulative

5. Long Hair in the Attic

I wanted her to better herself to badly :(((

I love the protagonist and her sister pls make them happy :(

6. The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel

A little dull at times but the concept is so terrifying and the horror was so well drawn!! I loved the protag and the little sister

7. Tomie’s Photos

Beautiful and horrifying at once!! The storyline was engaging and personally I loved the protagonist. Surprised me how chill she was after witnessing the brutality that Tomie’s henchmen did tho💀💀💀💀 like “oh well better clean up ig”

8. Headless Statues

Gave me the same vibes as Tomie’s Photos in the sense of the setting but it was a fun episode! Was rooting for the protag the whole way and the statues are so interesting

9. Intruder

The opening was never really explained but the concept is really interesting and I loved the characters!!! Kinda like the Scooby gang!!

10. The Strange Hikizuri Siblings

HITOSHI DESERVES BETTER I LOVE HIM‼️‼️‼️ that’s it

11. Hanging Blimp

It’s a little strange but I enjoyed it overall :]

THE PROTAG FRUSTRATED ME AT THE END THOUGH LITERALLY EITHER JUST OPEN THE BLINDS OR CLOSE THE WINDOW ITS THAT SIMPLE

12. Library Vision

Interesting!! I was surprised at the wife’s patience and understanding but I found that the story was unclear. I had to look it up on the Fandom Wiki to understand what was going on :(

13. Mold

Nice visuals, texture and quality! I appreciate the choice to make it black and white :]

14. The Back Alley

I love how you can go from disliking the antagonist to feeling bad for her!!

15. Ice Cream Truck

The ice cream guy was pretty<3

But also I loved how you already KNOW something is off. The ending was….chilling :)

16. Thing that Drifted Ashore

The pink hair guy was so pretty 💖💖💖💖💖

that’s it!

16. Soichi’s Beloved Pet

I feel like this family could make a pretty fun horror-comedy series!! Its tone was more upbeat than other episodes but it still maintained its sort of sadistic visuals. I HATE SOICHI‼️‼️‼️‼️ (I love hating him)

17. The Room with Four Walls

I HATE SOICHI I HATE HIM I HATE HIM (he infuriated me it was not enjoyable) also what was up with that carpenter guy???? Anyway overall not very engaging

18. Where the Sandman Lives

Very sweet relationship between Mari and her friend and how she’s willing to enter the Dream world to not abandon her friend. However it was mostly dull and the ending was just meh

19. Unendurable Laberynth

Maybe I just didn’t understand this one but it was kind of a bore :/

I LOVED AYA THOUGH<3

———————————————————————

Anyway to conclude: I hated the 3D animation but I LOVE HOW ALL THE STORIES HAVE ELEMENTS THAT CONNECT THEM (news, books, names, ect)

That is all, thank you!!!!

#junji ito maniac #Japanese tales of the macabre #junji ito #spooky talk

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teecupangel · 1 year

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tag people you want to get to know better

tagged by @concerned-astronomer :)

Three Ships: (I... don't even know how I can pick 3 so I'll just pick the 3 most recent XD)

1. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad x Desmond Miles (Assassin's Creed)

My current OTP. Can't really be sure how they became my OTP but I just love writing them. The fact that they're both morally ambiguous (especially Altaïr during his AC1 days) makes it fun to think of different scenarios to throw them in. Definitely have the 'I'll kill for you' and 'I'll destroy the world/timeline to save you' vibes which I'm weak for. Also, the fact that they're centuries apart means I could easily add in time-travel fix-its which I'm weak for as well and the Bleeding Effect adds a touch of 'to be completely and wholly connected' setup that I can use whenever I feel like it. (To be fair, this is applicable to Ezio and Ratonhnhaké:ton as well and I do pair Desmond with them too but pairing him with Altaïr means more morally ambiguous/questionable setups XD)

2. Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd x Byleth Eisner (Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Speaking of 'I'll kill for you' and 'I'll destroy the world/timeline to save you', this pairing is the one that got me back into writing fanfic. The sheer potential of the three routes and Byleth's time-bending powers scratched my 'time travel fix it' weakness and the fact that Dimitri dies in all other routes not his own just makes my angst-with-a-happy-ending heart go hhnngggnnn.

3. Mio x Noah (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)

The development of their relationship in the main game got me. I don't normally like canon pairings, especially in JRPGs, but this one... The short moments of sweetness between them, the angst building up and culminating into those huge scenes in Chapters 5 and 6, the anguish in Harry McEntire's voice as Noah in those scenes, the absolute fuckery that is an absolute spoiler and... ugghhh. They're one of the few canon pairings I wish will have a happy ending.

(honorable mentions: sterek (the movie reignited what had long been embers because fuck that movie), merthur (they are the once and future otp), ghoap (shipped them casually in OG, loved them in the reboot) and hibatsuna/1827 (the pairing that got me writing fanfics in the first place))

First Ship: I had to think which pairing would be my first ship and I have concluded that it's Loki x Mayura Daidouji from Matantei Loki (although I do prefer Mayura's characterization from the manga). Mayura is the reason why I love pink-haired characters and their pairing has cemented the whole 'sunshine x loner/arrogant ass' otp trope for me. (I still believe in the theory that Mayura is meant to be Sigyn)

Last Song: Tranquility by Sawano Hiroyuki

Last Film: Teen Wolf (2023 Movie)

Currently reading: ... does the mission transcripts of Call of Duty Modern Warfare II count? If not, I guess the 120+ pages legal document my boss made me read for work XD

Currently watching: Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, (rewatching) Leverage

Currently consuming: Plain white corn

Currently craving: An all-you-can-eat buffet that gives me a food coma for an hour or so then makes me regret all my life choices later at night

Tagging @scrysthea, @fanworldbuildingfun, @kitsunesongs, @escapism-and-disassociation and @princesslikesfanfics but no pressure whatsoever. And anyone who sees this and wants to do it!

#personal #i just realized the craving part doesn't have to be food #but i try to keep my expectations realistic #otherwise it'll probably be #that fucking expensive altaïr purearts statues #what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck #no seriously what the fuck are those prices???

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bungajurang · 1 year

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A Stratum of Nightmare

This episode of Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre left me feeling nauseous and uncomfortable. I hope it won’t turn into a traumatic memory. I will never see sedimentary layers the same way again.

These pictures below are screenshot from the episode. Beware of spoilers, I literally retell the whole story here. Warning: body horror.

Title of the episode: Layers of Fear

The episode started with a group of researcher, which I believe are a group of archaeologists, found a unique sediment layer. One of them pointed out how the strata looked much like a human face.

Different human tradition treat those who deceased differently. Some of the funeral rites that’s ever recorded in human history are ground burial, cremation, and aquamation. The body of the deceased may be put inside a coffin, a casket, or wrapped in a plain cloth. However, there were (maybe there’s still) tradition where the deceased are covered with layers of clay or being mummified to preserve their body.

Naturally, a sediment layer formed by a weathering process which loosened minerals such as pieces of rock and biological matter like trunks, leaves and corpses. In this case, the group of archaeologist found a sedimentary layer which has a trace of the burial process using clay. The body that was buried there affected the formation of sediment layer.

For a second I forgot that I was watching a horror animation series. I got carried away by the opening which remind me of my field practicum in my sophomore year in college. My group of class went to a natural laboratory in Magelang where we learnt about soil and sedimentary process. For that matter, we were taught about how to dig a site of observation. We dug a rectangular shape which pretty much looks like a tomb, but larger and deeper, and we got inside to analyse each stratum we found.

It was revealed later in the episode that one of the archaeologists took home the skull they found. He didn’t know the skull was cursed. A fecking classic; a scientist found something interesting in the field, take it home and get cursed. The curse was passed on to his family. But only his daughters got the bane, it made their bodies become layered. The first daughter has a layered teeth. But he and his wife never realised that their second daughter is also cursed.

Long story short, the daughters and the mum got into a car accident. It was this scene that scared me: the accident tear the second daughter’s face, but she’s fine because there were layers inside her body. To put it clearly, her body is made of layers of skin. It is as if she has no organs inside her, yet she still bleeds. The layers indicate her age, just like how it works on a tree. She’s 20 years old, so there were 20 layers.

The horror doesn’t stop here.

The mum started hearing her daughter’s voice when she was 2 years old. The 2 years old version sounded in pain and wants her mum to free her as she was located in the deepest layer. The mum peeled her daughter’s body layer, one by one. After she reached the last layer, the 2 years old that keep calling her was just the head, the remaining parts are the present body version of her daughter. The mum got frustrated and started to tear her own face, thinking that she might get cursed too. Well, unfortunately, she was normal. Poor the first daughter, as she has to take care of her sister (or what is left of her sister) and the mum with her face wrapped in wound dressing.

Regardless of the body horror and painful scene, I have to admit that this episode left me in awe. Junji Ito is a crazy genius. This episode is his most gory animation in this series, closely followed by the Tomie episode (honestly I can’t decide which one is the goriest. Both are fecking terrific). The scene where the mum peeling away her daughter's face, and the painful screams of her daughter together with the excited yells of her 2 year old version, is a terrific macabre scene and definitely will not leave my mind for a while.

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shewasanamericangirl · 5 years

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screamin bout zi-o 36

i had fun doing this last week, so let’s make another screencap post! of course, i said that, and then it took several days to upload all the pictures because tumblr just stops fucking working sometimes. anyhoo! it’s yuko kitajima roast hour. image-heavy and spoiler-heavy, naturally.

so ginga blew everyone up and they ran away to a sewer it seems.

honestly that theory makes as much sense as anything else on this booty ass fuckin’ kamen rider show

i was just like...he isn’t

but then he was

swartz: she could step on me in those red pumps and i’d say Thank You

hora: i regret so much right now

uhr: *shonen anime character walking down the street pose*

then over quartzer plays and im starting to feel a little lost because i don’t get to hear about the episode according to woz’s book? hello??

yuko’s still out gettin her spa treatments and shit, god only knows how she got the money for all that, and somehow she never crosses paths with the cops or anyone who recognizes her from the news?? uh

honestly yeah?? a queen deserves to look GOOD. her theme music is eerily sexy, i need an mp3 of it right now

don’t get me wrong, im well aware that swartz is being a suck-up to try and get yuko to help with his plan to seize ginga’s power, but damn im kinda shipping swartz with yuko now too...i mean, he WAS looking at her while doing the sexy ice cream thing last week. what flavor ice cream would yuko be? black cherry chip maybe?

(headcanon: woz tries apple pie ice cream and declares it a crime against both apple pie and ice cream alike--but he still eats the whole coneful)

hora and uhr get ZA WARUDO’D down the stairs by swartz

we were all uhr right here

yeaaaaaah she just doesn’t want to fight ginga

tsukuyomi’s a mood. someone put a band-aid on geiz’s forehead pls

ok woz i get that if you’re looking for a despotic ruler to follow that yuko is likely a better bet than sougo, but you’re missing an important detail: if yuko actually had a shot at becoming queen of everything, she’d already have one of you in tow, and you would most likely hate each other.

...majou means “demon queen” in this case, not “witch”, right?

aaaaaand this...is the moment when yuko started making me very uncomfortable. the way she responds: “yes...i do remember. it’s you.”

and sougo’s face just lights up--my guy, she could so easily be lying. she didn’t say one thing about the band-aid or the playground or anything that’d indicate she’s actually sougo’s crush.

like...if not for the fact that sougo had such a crush on the seifuku girl, it wouldn’t be all that major a memory. it likely wasn’t for the girl in question--just a happy sunny day cheering up a lonely little boy. a beautiful memory, yes...but memories fade.

can someone please explain to me why woz’s characterization is all over the place in kiva arc? are you pro-yuko or anti-yuko, woz? i don’t understand what’s going through his pretty head at all honestly. he gets pretty taciturn in the scenes he’s not inhaling pie, but then at times he seems to think yuko’s cool aaaaaagh i don’t know

junichiro: meowing, just wanted an excuse to cook lots of food

sougo: “yay, uncle’s cooking!”

woz: [deadpan monotone] “yaaaaaaay uncle’s cooking...”

ive had enough of this evil bitch honestly but when she points it’s still Good Shit

ridiculous move name, but also an awesome move name

and turning to stone to heal up while the sun’s clouded over? very cool

denied

i noped so hard at this part. like...i really do feel protective of sougo. yuko doesn’t give a damn about him, she just doesn’t want him to get in her way.

nope. no. nuh uh. you two step away from each other right now.

YOU CANNOT MAKE BABIES WITH AN IDIOT FETUS

ok but in all seriousness, do you want time jackers? because, im calling it now, letting oma zi-o go in raw is how you get time jackers.

yeah im pretty sure miho would’ve kept at it if she’d lived, and yuko...shes not gonna listen to sougo

thank you for the much needed reality check furry man

so she’s a...fu-joshi? 👀

☝☝☝

yuko wears such fabulous shoes

was anyone surprised at this point that yuko was the real killer? i sure wasn’t. not after all the obvious lies.

i love her leitmotif. i need it. where do i download

SHE DIDN’T PROMISE SHIT

hey kids! it’s time for *mashes play button* la-la-la lies! yeah, tell me that you love me! la-la-la-lies! look deep into my eyes! la-la-la-lies! say there’s no one else above me! i’m the king of fools, cuz baby, you’re the queen of actually very hurtful and manipulative lies!

that’s such bullshit

now im the last person to be like “don’t play the dead mommy card”--i practically keep that card in the hello kitty wallet my dead mommy gave me. but i bet you yuko’s mom is just fine (aside from living with the trauma of knowing her daughter’s a murderer and pathological liar).

sougo,,,,,pls

thank you tsukuyomi. god sougo really needs a chaperone with yuko around, he’s way too dumb and thirsty.

GUESS WHO’S BACK. BACK AGAIN. fortunately, it seems swartz and woz have been just standing there watching him for the duration of the rain shower.

lest we forget (because i didn’t screencap it), when zi-o took the brunt of ginga’s attack earlier, it sent him flying. now, that’s a human body, which has some ability to absorb force because it’s mostly pretty soft and fluid. yuko’s manhole cover almost completely absorbed this blast--she barely shifted her weight on impact. is it just that she’s THAT ripped?

then The Boys rider kick ginga to oblivion. rip ginga, you didn’t have a personality or a character arc, we never even saw you un-transformed--you were just a cool looking plot device with pretty attacks. but for that much, we appreciate you!

swartz looks so pleased with himself. he must not have watched the preview for this episode.

YOINK! gotta love how swartz doesn’t look surprised so much as puzzled.

sure am glad kurowoz took his other self’s advice and kept an eye on swartz

i love it so much how woz just has these magic scarf powers and it needs no explanation? hell, he can fly and time travel and make people fall asleep and he’s super strong too, with no explanation? and he’s the comic relief? ALSO HE’S REALLY HOT? woz is a being to behold honestly

speaking of super strong and really hot, yuko is KILLING IT in that gown. i mean...i guess that’s the intention. killing it. cuz she’s a homicidal maniac. haha.

she’s so good at pointing. yuko could be a prosecutor in shuichi kitaoka: ace attorney. (FUND IT)

yuko throws her manhole cover at the boys (rude!) and next we see geiz holding it. a shame we don’t get to see him snatch it out of midair. or did woz catch it and just hand it to him? we may never know.

zi-o. listen to geiz, zi-o. use the fucking watch. just use the watch, zi-o. you seriously plan on just letting another kiva go on a killing spree? do you not get by now what she’s capable of?

thank goodness zi-o has his retainers to make wise decisions so he doesn’t have to.

please note the placement of mars on ginga woz’s suit. very important.

I Love You

lmao

WHERE IS YOUR MANHOLE COVER NOW

my favorite character gets a beautiful rainbow final attack. i feel so blessed.

i mean...protecting all mankind would probably include protecting them from people like yuko. just sayin.

is it bad of me that my immediate thought right then was “at least woz’s attack wasn’t what did her in.”

this shot, especially in the context of the church, definitely gave me pieta vibes--albeit reversed somewhat.

weirdly enough, woz does an outro instead of an intro this episode.

at this point while watching, i said to shylax “you know what this calls for? pie!” but before i could finish--

--PIE! cmon sougo, it’s time to gobble up your feelings!

fucking woz, i swear, you have pie in your mouth and pie in your right hand and pie on your FACE and when your overlord expresses how miserable he is you just go for his uneaten pie with your empty hand.

...is it normal to eat pie like this in japan? because the only times i’ve seen americans make this much of a mess eating pie is when they’re toddlers.

oh hey, what do you know? looks like sougo’s first love wasn’t a violent crazy person after all. she also wasn’t yuko.

sougo’s just an idiot who will mistake any older woman who rubs him on the chin and calls him cute for his sailor girl.

previews!

i blame joshua kiryu

how eloquently this one line sums up not only kamen rider zi-o but kamen rider decade as well. that’s it, that’s the show. that’s the clusterfuck we will inevitably get whenever toei decides to make a kamen rider crossover.

LOOK AT THIS! TSUKUYOMI REMEMBERED SOMETHING! who is she smiling at? is it her dad? is that swartz behind her?! omg baby tsukuyomi is so CUTE!

“a team”. uh huh. is that what the youth are calling it these days? cuz when i was a wee lass, i believe they called it “fucking”.

so what have we learned this week?

very little about ginga

sougo does not remember faces all that well

before sougo dates ANYONE that person should be fully vetted by junichiro, geiz, tsukuyomi, and woz because CLEARLY HE CANNOT SAFELY CHOOSE A PARTNER FOR HIMSELF

i still really like yuko as a character, if not as a person. same as i enjoy junji ito manga, but would be very upset if most of it happened in real life.

swartz loves a woman who can kick his ass

what the fuck are manhole covers in this world

i can’t wait for baby tsukuyomi flashbacks! that, and more tsukasa.

#kamen rider zi o #drag yuko 2k19

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