In the world of comic book horror,Junji Itois a legend. His tales span the realm of weird, quirky, and the macabre. After Netflix took an interest in anime and horror, it’s no surprise that they would feature an animated anthology adapting some of his wildest stories.
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Because the nature of his work is so ‘out there,’ his stories won’t resonate with everyone. However, some of his tales hit just the right mark of character trauma and grotesque horror that they are terrifying tales unlike anything out there today. Here’s a ranking of some of the spookiest.
10Whispering Woman
Some of Junji Ito’s best work is that which shies away from thesupernatural like Stranger Thingsand instead finds a way to have truly weird stories with a possibly grounded explanation. Whispering Woman is about a woman that takes a job as an aid for a girl with crippling anxiety. It’s so bad that she is forced to follow her around all day, whispering instructions into her ear.
This is in contrast to the woman’s home life, which is at the mercy of an abusive boyfriend. So unsurprisingly, even after the whispering woman dies, she still manages to give instructions from beyond the grave for the girl to avenge her death.
Like the Whispering Woman, Bully finds a way to create psychological terror separate from any supernatural elements. It’s about a girl that bullied a young boy when they were children. Now as adults, they reconnect and find love. Unfortunately, now that the young boy is grown up he has a son of his own, which rekindles the woman’s childhood propensity for bullying.
The story is an example of just how psychologically twisted a mind can get, and when a child is added to the equation, it makes the reality all the more harrowing when the woman’s appearancedelves into Joker territory.
8Ice Cream Bus
Horror becomes especially troubling when it is able to take something as innocent as an ice cream bus and turn it into something twisted and corrupt. The basic premise is that a local ice cream van takes children for a ride around town before dropping them back off.
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However, something strange and bizarre is going on in that van that one boy’s father grows increasingly suspicious of. Any parent can tell you just how scary it is giving up control over their kids. The unimaginable horror and grossness of what goes on in that ice cream bus is enough to make anybody never look it the sweet treat the same way again.
7Hanging Balloon
As a general rule of thumb, when it comes to these animes,the weirder the better — like Chainsaw Man. And this one might just be the weirdest. It’s about an apocalypse of sorts when a series of weird hot air balloons with people’s faces descend from the sky. To make it even stranger, a hanging rope is descended from the balloon.
It chases after whoever’s face it has, determined to hang them. And if the balloon is popped, that person dies. It’s such a bizarre scenario that it’s hard not to watch it and scratch your head while also being absolutely horrified.
6Soichi’s Beloved Cat
This episode had the only distinction of being a sequel to a previous episode. The first episode was fairly mediocre as it introduced a trouble making kid determined to drive his brother insane. This episode continues the family’s story as the troublemaker takes their adopted cat and turns it into a demonic beast.
The fact that it was a sequel was nice to see as there was already a foundation for the characters to work off of. But it’s also unique as it takes a fairly playful and comedic tone compared to the rest of the episodes.
5Tomb Town
Stories are particularly tough to follow when they focus on an antagonist as a main character. That’s what happens with this story as a man accidentally kills a girl with his car and then tries to cover it up when he meets her family.
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To make matters worse, the strange town that they live in has a bizarre ritual where dead bodies turn into tombstones wherever their final resting place is. It’s such a quirky premise that to see it executed alongside a man trying to cover up a heinous crime is pretty sickening.
4Tomie Photo
Photography has always been had a sense of the supernatural around it. Cultures sometimes believed that taking a picture can reveal something unseen or even steal one’s soul. This episode takes the corrupt nature of voyeurism a step further by having a girl with a strange doppelganger waiting to come out.
This is one of the show’s episodes that starts off relatively mundane and psychological before ending in a completely bizarre turn of events as the girls head comes off, and a new one takes its place.
3Long Hair In The Attic
A lot of these shorts struggle regarding plot and character. They are mainly a terrifying premise that is then ramped up to an extreme. This episode is a great example, as the idea of evil hair is quite terrifying. Essentially, an innocent girl’s hair comes to life and takes up residence in the attic.
Unfortunately, it’s still attached to her head. So seeing this head of evil hair terrorize a household is one of those truly horrifying spectacles of anime that will haunt viewers' nightmares long after the episode ends.
2Layers Of Fear
Layers Of Fear also has a very bizarre premise as it wonders what if humans aged like trees. The idea is that a tree has rings that allow it to grow over time. Theoretically, if a human ages the same way, then those layers could be peeled back to reveal a younger version underneath.
If the premise alone wasn’t terrifying enough, a mother’s psychological madness leads to her peeling her own daughter’s skin back to reveal the younger version underneath. The result is a horrifying site to behold that combines the insanity of some episodes with the supernatural grotesqueness of others.
1The Sandman’s Lair
Stories involving dreams have terrified humans for thousands of years withdifferent variants of The Sandman. This episode taps into that anxiety to develop something new and interesting. The basic premise is that a man doesn’t want to go to sleep because he’s afraid someone will take over his body.
What ends up happening is that his sleeping self tries to turn him inside out to take control. It’s a truly horrifying concept that plays out in nightmarish fashion in animation. What pushes it over the edge is an ending that is both tragic and truly sad as his friend is sucked inside out with him.
