Junji Ito's Work Should Have Been Left Alone

LOOK y'all I don't know if you've read his work, but he's made some horrifying creations. They're amazing and the stories are quite chilling. I often find myself absorbed unable to stop reading them. I wonder what's going through his mind as he writes manga. To some degree I believe he has to be just a little twisted to come up with some of them. 

Now recently, his work has been made into an anime titled The Junji Ito Collection. It unfortunately is not that great. It's actually pretty disappointing. For some reason the episodes lost seriousness and became comical, which is something I doubt he was trying to do in his manga.

Now here's where I think it went wrong within the art, and animation. I'm not an animator just so you all know, so I don't know a lot about the process, but I feel like based on my many years of consuming the product, I think I can tell decent animation from, well, not decent animation. So that you all know my scale I'll tell you which anime did animation extremely well in my opinion and those that didn't. (Side note: Just because the animation sucks doesn't mean I didn't like the anime). Kiznaiver, Castlevania, and Kakegurui were some anime I thought had great visuals, exceptional to be honest. Anime that I thought could have done so much better, Ajin, Aku no Hana, Quan Zhi Gao Shou, they are really good so I definitely recommend them, but their animation and art style is pretty awful.

I don't think that The Junji Ito Collection is close to the art and animation of Ajin or Aku no Hana, but it wasn't Kiznaiver, but a lot of anime fall into that category, you know somewhere in between. So what's the problem you're probably still wondering, I personally didn't think it was clean, and not in the sense where it needed to lose that grittiness if had, but I feel like because it was animated it should've had that hyper realism. Somewhere in the realm of  Attack on Titan. I know for a while the art style and animation of AoT made it a little terrifying to watch. If The Junji Ito Collection was like that it would have gotten under my skin so much more. There were a few stories like that, like, the one with the jade stone with the holes, but I'm sure that's because it played on a phobia.

Take the episode with the model who was obviously a creature, for example, if that were hyper-realistic, I would have been disturbed tenfold. On top of this, the music didn't help set the mood for the show. The opening theme was upbeat and dance-y, it wasn't misleading, but knowing how psychologically horrifying his work can be, the opening just seemed inappropriate for the anime. There is one anime that comes to mind when I think about appropriate music for the horror and gore it provided, and that's Elfen Lied. That opening theme, Lilium, although I like the song, it gave me goosebumps and to this day I can't hear it without remembering a scene where this girl got her limbs ripped off. But I digress. The music missed the mark completely.

Isn't the magna terrifying 

Like I said I'm not an animator, but I also want to let you all know I'm not a voice actor either. I didn't have any qualms with the voice acting except when some of the characters expressed fear. It kind of reminded me of Scooby Doo, I'm sure that was definitely just me though. Overall I liked his stories in manga form, but watching them, I was disappointed. They were lack luster, with the exception of a few.

If you on the other hand really enjoyed the collection as a whole, please don't be afraid to let me know how I wrong I am to dislike it. Maybe you'll change my mind.

I'm going to go watch anime now!

Why You Need to Watch a Staple Anime

What is an anime staple? Ha, well, it's one of those anime that is a must. That shapes the way one ends up watching anime growing up... or not, but they are normally shows everyone should watch. They would be in the "anime starter pack" if you were trying to ease someone into their new life. I'd consider them to be important, they're often pretty big hits, and have more than 12 episodes. Oh, and sometimes get reboots, sometimes. 

Some anime that I would consider to be staple anime would be Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, Cardcaptor Sakura, Inuyasha, Trigun, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dragon Ball/DBZ, Pokemon (but not really, and I'll explain why later), Ghost in the Shell, Ruroni Kenshin, Berserk, Hunter x Hunter, and Mobile Suit Gundam. There are even some more recent anime I'd consider staples, like One Piece even though it came out in 1999, Naruto, Bleach, Death Note, and even Wolf's Rain.

In regards to Pokemon being a staple and yet, at the same time, not a staple, well, the thing is with this anime in particular, its target audience is young children and prior fans that have basically grown up. Even then the anime itself is really for the older fans. And I'd say they care more about the games than they do the show. So for someone who hasn't watched anime before, the last thing you'd recommend them would be
Pokemon, but because it had and still has such a large fan base with young children and prior fans because it was and still is such a big hit, it makes it staple, to some degree. 

I personally believe that a staple anime takes a while to become one for some years and that's why newer anime, regardless of whether they fit all the previous criteria I mentioned earlier I wouldn't classify them as a staple. Think of it as the criteria a place has to fit before becoming a national landmark. If you've never watched any of the anime mentioned above, don't worry that doesn't make you any less of a true anime fan. No one is gonna gate keep you. 

They're just highly recommended anime, the originators of the tropes. They've paved the way for other anime, and besides they're all phenomenal in terms of animation for their time, character development, and plots/concepts. Take Sailor Moon for example, I'm pretty sure it was one of the first, if not the first magical girl anime and now that genre is pretty huge. The clothes transformation sequence can be been in other magical girl anime and not even just that. Mobile Suit Gundam gave other anime like Neon Genesis and Gurren Laggan the opportunity to explore the mech genre as well.

Staple anime just have a way of always being relevant. Remember though all of this is just opinion based, and my ideas of what makes a staple anime could be very different from what yours or someone else's are. The staple anime I mentioned earlier are also subjective, if you have any anime you think should be considered a staple for the "anime starter pack" feel free to disagree in the comments below. 

I'm going to go watch anime now.