Junji Ito is a horror artist/author, famous for creating some impressively hideous manga series, the most well known of which is likely Tomie, about a succubus who seduces men in order to have them kill either themselves or her. (Though she always comes back afterwards.)
His style is very distinctive, featuring some heavy body horror, and a significant element of gore. He often writes about hideous transformations, such as people turning into slugs or spirals, and his works are often cruel in that there's not a karmic source of horror. Nasty things just happen to people, and there's not much you can do about it.
I'm surprised it's taken this long to turn it into an anime, really.
This is an anthology show, with one or two different stories every episode, which thus far aren't connected, other than that they're all from a particular run of Ito's manga.
The first episode features a young boy who has mastered the power of voodoo in order to curse his enemies (other school children), in order to make himself feel better about never being loved. The second story, rather shorter, is about the parents of a girl who is slowly turning into a doll.
The style of the animation is close to the manga, but doesn't quite get there. The original artwork was often incredibly detailed, maintaining a sharp delineation between light and dark. You could find yourself drawn in to maddening spirals, or seeking tiny horrors in great monstrous cityscapes. But here, for obvious reasons, a certain simplicity creeps in. It still maintains the unusual face shapes and the odd geometries of Ito's world, but the reduced detail takes some of the horror away.
And I found that there did seem to be a little less horror in these than in the original manga.
I don't know if it's because there's not as much room to develop a truly nasty plot, or the animation softens everything slightly, but I find these more fun than scary. For example, the ugly model in episode 2 is mostly silly. I don't think they were necessarily aiming for farce, but they did get there partly.
It's worth watching because some of the stories are fantastic, but it might just convince you to pull Ito back off the shelf instead.
Recommended.
Tagged: Anime Horror Anthology Crunchyroll Subbed