Junji Ito Collection – Episode 5 (Review)
By RaeJunji Ito Collection, Episode 5: The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri/Cloth Teacher
The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri follows a young man who is shocked one night to encounter his classmate running through his house, screaming at him to not hurt her. At school the next day, nothing seems to be amiss. His classmate, Mio, looks to be fine and completely unfazed by his presence. His classmate teases him for watching her, commenting that he’s too short.
Meanwhile, Oshikiri is seeing strange things at home, including a giant, monster version of his bully that soon melts into a puddle. After realizing that the classmates he’s seeing in these situations at home aren’t the same as the ones in school, he decides that somehow his house leads to another dimension.As Oshikiri and Mio become closer, she starts asking to visit his home, as she’s heard it’s a huge Western-style mansion. Despite warnings, she still wants to come over, and while he thinks it’s a bad decision, he brings her anyway. Mio doesn’t return to school, and Oshikiri believes she became stuck in the other world.
Finally, late one night, Oshikiri has the opportunity to find out not only what became of Mio, but what his alternate self is really like…
Cloth Teacher is another Souichi story – surprisingly more ridiculous than the last.Souichi’s classmates are shocked one day when their teacher comes in…. looking a little different – almost like a cloth doll. The teacher is strangely violent, and even comes after a student with a razor. A teacher intervenes, but she’s the next to have a cloth version of herself show up.
When Souichi’s classmate embarrasses him (there’s a lot of pulling down pants in this episode – be warned) he makes a cloth doll of him as well, intending to make him run naked around town. There’s…. actually not a lot to say about this one. It’s mostly a lot of falling down pants and ridiculousness.
At this point, I’m a little tired of harping on the art and animation, but unfortunately the slight improvement last time hasn’t continued. Art isn’t everything. There are some visually stunning shows out there, and I love them when they come with good characters and fun story. There are also some shows out there that are less aesthetically appealing, and it often really isn’t bad enough to matter. But I’ll maintain that in Junji Ito Collection, the bad art and animation actually really does take away from an otherwise decent atmosphere. It’s hard to take a horror story seriously when it’s matched with laughable expressions and awkward movement. I want to look past it, but it’s disappointing every episode.Story-wise, this one is a mixed bag. The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri is an interesting story, with a good continuation that hopefully will show up later on in the series. While it was a pretty faithful adaptation, it could have used slower pacing – it’s a story with plenty of opportunity for a slow buildup of tension, and animation was a perfect medium to do that in.Personally, I don’t like the Souichi episodes. I don’t find them fun or funny – I know they’re there for the humour aspect, and it’s not necessarily fair to blame the show for stories that already existed in Ito’s collections. But to me, they don’t really fit in well with the rest of the stories, and aren’t very enjoyable – especially with Souichi’s voice (which I will not say is badly acted, because it seems to be right on point, but is still pretty grating).At this point, we’re five episodes into the season and it’s probably fair to assume that not much will change. If you’re a fan of Ito’s works or interested in them, I think Junji Ito Collection is interesting and something a little different, but maybe not quite enough. Hopefully, though, it brings some new fans into the fold.Catch Junji Ito Collection on Crunchyroll, Fridays at 10:30!
