Junji Ito Maniac is another short anime based on Junji Ito stories. I thought this one was equal to Junji Ito Collection. I think some of the story choices for Maniac were a little better than Collection, but there were also some pretty dull choices. I can’t really blame them, though. Junji Ito’s stories aren’t all great. Some are just weird and some are just dull. I do think that these short episode collections are a better way to turn his work into video media. The movies are always too long and add nonsense to stories that are usually made with precision. Anime also lets you keep the macabre look of Junji Ito’s art style. If you wanted to watch, instead of read, Junji Ito then I recommend Collection, Maniac, and Gyo. I still have the Uzumaki anime to watch, but I’ll probably add that one to the list, too. Unless is majorly fails.

Child's Play is an '88 movies about a killer doll. Now, I've seen this movie before, but it's been a while. Surprisingly, for a batshit concept like this, the movie works pretty well! The kid is a horrible actor, but the rest of the cast make up for it. Everyone else is really giving it their all. The regular doll looks just creepy enough as is that it really gets creepier when it gets the movie humanoid face. Of course, by today's standards, the graphics are cheesy. There's a couple of scenes that look like it's obviously a little person in a suit. But for the late '80s, the graphics were actually really decent. I think the only thing that's always got me about the first Chucky movie is the decision to make the soul transfer voodoo. I think it's slightly racist and doesn't really add a lot to the narrative. I think the second idea, of his soul just randomly entering a doll after electrocution, would have been explanation enough. I would have even taken the first idea of it being Andy's anger manifested in the doll. Except for the blood doll part. That wouldn't have worked in any narrative. Overall, the movie still works pretty well!

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack is a movie based on a Junji Ito comic. This is my last Junji Ito movie! Honestly, this one was a high point. I read the manga, and while I found it interesting, it didn't really click as well as the movie. The original manga felt very stereotypical to most post apocalyptic series you've seen. Aside from the specific type of monsters, it could have been any zombie movie. I feel like the movie's spin of making Kaoru the main character was more engaging. Having her trying to get to Tadashi instead of them being together the whole time was more interesting. Adding in a random reporter as her impromptu body guard was a stroke of brilliance. All the added characters honestly add more to the movie than in the original manga. They add depth to the narrative that wasn't there in the original. Junji Ito is great at coming up with gruesome ideas, but his narrative choices are usually bland. It's usually horror for the sake of horror. The added characters definitely give you more to think about than just. Oh, no, stinky fish with feet. Eek! Overall, this one is definitely worth the watch.

Walpurgisnacht Rising is the fourth Madoka Magica movie. It finalizes the outcome of Homura stealing Madokami's power at the end of Rebellion and becoming Homucifer. This movie has been controversial amongst fans. I've heard a few people who loved the movie, and a lot more vocal people who disavow it from the canon. Where does this girl stand? I thought it was an amazing movie and a fitting continuation. Is this a perfect movie? No. Neither was Rebellion. People consider it a masterpiece now because of the twist ending. That's really it. I feel like Rising does about the same as Rebellion did. It pieces together a bunch of different story elements and then gave you a twist ending. Look, I went in expecting to hate the movie. But instead I found myself fully engrossed and even tearing up at multiple points. My biggest complaint is that this should have been a season. There's so much story being condensed into two hours. Also, the ending was left a bit ambiguous. But there were so many good and touching moments in the movie. What the movie doesn't do is spoon feed you the story. There's a lot left to interpretation. This is definitely a movie for fans who've watched the original series and Rebellion many times and know the intricacies of the world. For people that can infer meaning from events without being told exactly what it all means. I understand why many people don't like this movie. It's mostly because they aren't being spoon fed the story like a lot of modern day anime. There's no giant monologues explaining everything. There are a couple, but it's not every scene. People aren't all explaining what they're doing after doing it. If that's what you're looking for then this movie isn't for you. But if you like to analyze scenes and infer what it all means, then you're going to love it.

The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself is an 8 episode tv series based on a British YA novel series. I found the story interesting and the characters very engaging. My only issues were that I felt the tone was very uneven. On the one hand, you have a lot of serious shit going on. There’s people being picked on, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Our main characters are literally being chased to be killed. On the other, they keep having what I consider very teen on vacation moments. Which, if it was me being chased, I don’t think I’d have the ability to fuck around knowing people are trying to murder me. Aside from that, though, I did find myself caring very much for what happens to our main characters. I hated with a passion the people who were after them. Which is high praise for an 8 episode series. It did seem a tab bit rushed, towards the end. I think summing up a whole book in one season wasn’t the best idea. I think the show needed a tiny but more padding. But, at least, it didn’t end on a weird cliffhanger as Netflix declined making anymore episodes. Even the the series was well liked and has like a 90 something on Rotten Tomatoes. If you like witches, or the X-Men, I’d definitely recommend this one.

Tomio is a short movie directed by Junji Ito himself based on his own story. I will say this one was better than the previous two. I kind of figured he'd get his own story right. Unfortunately, this story revolved around more gore than I usually like in my horror movies. I was squirming around uncomfortably in my chair most of the movie. The story was interesting, though, in a Junji Ito sort of way. It did leave me wondering, though. Do the Japanese have native shrunken head mythology? Or is this adapted from your usual voodoo American stories? I don't have enough knowledge on the subject to answer the question. If you like strange stories about cheating boyfriends and witches who keep collections of shrunken heads, and don't mind a decent amount of gore, then this movie is for you. If gore is a cut off point, I'd say skip this one. It's not SAW gory, but there's enough blood and open wounds to disgust.

The Groaning Drain is another Junji Ito based story. I'll admit, the only version I was able to find, was not the whole movie and had no subtitles. Even so, this movie was just about as amateurishly done as Marronnier, except this one was even more dull. Where Marronier had probably too much going on, this movie had nothing going on. There were the same scenes shown over and over again. A middle aged woman staring at a sink drain, a girl spraying her neck in the shower, and then there was a random music video in the middle? I can see where the story was starting to go, but it just wasn't getting there. This one was such a bad watch, even if it wasn't the whole movie, that it zoomed to the top of this year's worst list. A list that hadn't been touched in months. Also, and this is a side tangent but, why are the adaptations of Junji Ito work so obsessed with SisCon? I swear this is the third movie where there's a sexual obsession with a sister. It's extra weird because I don't remember any of his stories having it. Anyways, obviously, this is a don't even bother trying to watch movie.

Marronnier is a movie loosely based on a couple of Junji Ito stories. This movie was not a blockbuster. It does not even have well made quality. It feels like a student film, at best. At worse, it feels like a bunch of random scenes put together with music. The story is kind of nonsensical. The cast is so big that it's hard to tell who's who. The special effects are pretty decent for a low budget film, to be honest. Probably the most impressive things about the movie. Honestly, I kind of wanted to like this movie. It hit a lot of things I do like. (Lesbian love story, dolls, horror.) But then the way the movie was written and filmed ruin it. Especially how the film just makes less sense the longer it goes on. It did have a lot of influence from other Junji Ito work, so someone did do their research, they just didn't know how to string it together into one coherent story. This is a skip. It's not Amityville Frankenstein bad, but it's still not good.

Love Ghost is another movie based off a Junji Ito manga. Interestingly, this one deviates so much from it's source material that it barely resembles the original. Unfortunately, I can't say that's a good thing. I was totally with the first half of this movie. It felt like a pretty standard J-Drama with a supernatural element tacked on. Then we hit the twist that, while predictable, also kind of ruins the entire movie. You can't have your lead characters be escaped from a mental institution AND have all the crazy shit happening still be supernatural. It's like they tried to merge two different stories without actually knowing how to merge them. Then our main character randomly dies in her sleep at the old age of 16 and becomes the new crossroads ghost? Like, what is even going on? I won't say this movie is bad, but it's just not very well thought out. It's like that game where people take turns making up a scary story. The first couple of people had a pretty good idea of where they wanted the story to go, but the last couple of people just made up the wildest shit they could think of. I don't think I'd recommend this one, unless you like bad movies that go off the rails.