Ito Junji Collection – 01

Well, that was odd.  I confess I’m not all that familiar with Ito Junji, the legendary Japanese horror writer, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting from this premiere.  But maybe it was something a bit different than what we got.

Deen has put together a very experienced staff and cast for this adaptation, and it plays very much like an old-school anime, right down to middle-aged men playing kids and such.  The first episode is split into two stories from the Ito collection, but oddly enough one is about 20 minutes and the other a mere two or three.  They do both involve dolls, so perhaps there’s going to be a thematic tie for future episodes – assuming, of course, we continue to get multiple chapters weekly (which we will for at least one more week).

The first story is a bit more comedic in tone than what little Ito I’ve seen.  It centers around a demented 6th-grader named Souichi (63 year-old Mitsuya Yuji), who gets his kicks by placing curses on anyone who gets on his nerves (which seems to be pretty much everyone, and vice-versa).  This is all rather too silly to be scary, though I’m assuming that’s on purpose – and that’s despite the fact that Souichi actually seems to be able to curse people.  Some of his antics were just childish hoaxing – but then, how exactly would he have pulled off the stomach pains and the kid being buried in the dirt unless he has legit cursing chops?

The other story is a weird little blink of an eye about a little girl who first turns into a doll, and then into some sort of freakish Eldritch abomination (much to her parents’ horror).  This is played more or less straight but it’s so short that it’s hard to make much of it one way or the other – though I suppose in tone, this was more what I expected this series to be. I’ll keep up with Ito Junji Collection for a couple more episodes at least, but it strikes me as a tough series to blog if nothing else – we’ll see.

Poputepipikku – 01

Here’s my take on Pop Team Epic: any show that has to try that hard to be funny usually isn’t.

This one is easy, really – I didn’t find that funny.  Really didn’t laugh even once, not that I remember.  I actually would have rather seen the fake idol romcom, and I really didn’t want to see that either.  I know Poputepipikku thinks it’s incredibly clever, but I think it’s really more shameless than clever – proud of itself that it can get away with what it gets away with, being a manga and an anime without having more to offer than that.  But then, humor is as subjective as it gets, and I know some folks love this.  And hey, I laughed at R-15 and even thought it was subtle and smart, so who am I to judge…