If you’ve read any of horror manga master Junji Ito‘s work, let’s get this out of the way now: you will be disappointed by elements of this episode: the static animation (a crime against the manga), the wooden voice dub, the bizarre censoring. It’s all a rich tapestry of meh.
Did I say I was disappointed? It’s a crying shame if you’ve read the original stories. This episode has two.
The first, “Used Record”, is a 7-minute adaptation about a cursed record that drives listeners to do anything to get their hands on it. Carrying strong connotations of Tolkien’s One Ring, the tale is a blink-and-miss-it few minutes with little to digest.
The second, “Town of No Roads” takes much longer to tell a much shorter tale: a young girl, fed up with lack of privacy, leaves her family home to stay with her aunt but soon realises there is something strange about her town. It has brief flashes [pun not intended] of some downright creepy, surreal imagery, and definitely ups the quality from the economic first half.
I’ll try another few episodes, but I’m not holding my breath that they’ll do justice to the source material.
Score: 🎃🎃
