Junji Ito Collection

Episode 4

We seem to have rolled a pretty solid episode of Junji Ito "Collection" this time. These two half-episode segments are different in their tone and content but united in surprisingly tighter direction than before, an effective use of ambiguity, and most importantly, some actual scares! This is in keeping with what we've come to expect so far; the shorter-format stories tend to work better than the ones that take up most of an episode.

The first half brings us ‘Shiver’, which lays out its concept right away with solid atmosphere and inherent spookiness. It doesn't take long before the reveal of Rina's hole-ridden arm, codifying the level of creep factor to come. The horror is generally structured well in this one, as we build up to Yuuji learning more about this mysterious disease and how it relates to his grandfather's death. The comparatively slow burn is supported by some surprisingly good sound direction, as odd background ambiance cuts to silence effectively between scenes. There's an ominous aura over even banal flashbacks or diary-reading.

This all manages to be scary thanks to the story's relatable feeling of dread. Fear of an unknown disease is a fundamental human fear, and the bizarre body-holes condition is alien enough to work as a supernatural scare while still conveying the literal chills the story wants to send through our bones. Maybe having Yuuji directly read these descriptions to the audience out of his grandfather's diary seems like a cheap way of telling rather than showing, but the prose is effective enough to get the mood across.

There are still some structural issues with this story though. It seems odd that the nature of the hole-disease is so unbelievable to bystanders like Yuuji's friend even when the holes themselves can be readily seen. The story also escalates to its big finish too suddenly, but it's honestly worth it for the shocking turn that ends the story on a louder note than the slow build had prepared us for. It's jarring, but it still works, and the open-endedness of this conclusion is more effective than it was in previous stories. The sight of Rina recovering immediately after the death of Yuuji's friend is scary in its implications rather than just being ambiguously confusing. It feels like a striking open question rather than a cop-out or a total cliffhanger.

The second story, “House of Puppets” is less ambitious, trading on the inherent creepiness of puppets that's been explored in all manner of scary stories. Its nature as a spooky stereotype is at least apparent in the ideas this story tries to play with, concepts like “What if the puppets are the ones controlling us?” that are interesting in theory, but delivered with an unnecessary heavy-handedness. The fact that it takes so long to get going also does this one a disservice, but it's easy to forget the detours it took by the striking conclusion.

The tone of “House of Puppets” is a slam-dunk overall. Ito's stories in general tend to rely on a sort of magic realism where people more readily accept bizarre occurrences, so when Haruhiko finds his brother's new family willingly stringing themselves up in their house to be controlled as puppets, his response isn't so much incomprehensible horror as a general reaction of “what the heck?” The rest of the story carries this tone well, showing how well a wonderfully weird idea like this can work with the right execution. Even though it definitely comes off more goofy than scary, it was still intriguing enough to have me whispering “What?!” every few minutes.

The on-the-nose philosophical angle does come up a few more times in this episode, attempting some payoff with the concept of who the real puppets are in this situation, but that pales in comparison to the more overtly grisly manner in which this episode ends. Ito's talent for twisted visual punchlines lands again in this story, with Haruhiko being led to the puppet-ified corpse of his girlfriend dancing on strings. The secondary payoff with his brother's family turning to puppets is perhaps less interesting, only decently memorable as an ending left open to interpretation, but it wraps the story itself up well enough. The visuals throughout both stories work surprisingly well within the confines of this show's technical limitations.

Between the gnawing dread and payoff of “Shiver” and the pointed absurdity of “House of Puppets”, I mostly found myself surprised by this episode's more lively direction. Part of me wants to retain some positivity from this effective outing, but I'll check that as simply cautious optimism for now. You can always find yourself unpleasantly surprised in a horror anthology if you let your guard down for too long.

Rating: B

Junji Ito "Collection" is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.