The new trailer for Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre unveils the anime’s colorful but creepy opening sequence.
The YouTube channel Netflix Anime featured the new trailer, which combines psychedelic and disturbing imagery to create an unsettling viewing experience reflective of Ito’s style. It also features the anime’s opening theme song, “Paranoid,” performed by Madkid. As detailed on siliconera, this series adapts twenty different stories from Ito’s prolific body of work, bringing them to the screen for the first time. Thirteen of the stories included in this anthology are, “Unendurable Labyrinth,” “Ice Cream Bus,” “Library of Illusions,” “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings: The Séance,” “Bullied,” Headless Statues,” “Intruders,” “The Hanging Balloons,” “The Long Hair in the Attic,” “The Room With 4 Walls,” “Tomie: Photo,” Tombtown,” and “Where the Sandman Lives.”
What Viewers Can Expect from Junji Ito Maniac
Junji Ito’s stories generally feature one or more subgenres of horror, such as body and supernatural horror, among others. “Unendurable Labyrinth” focuses on two friends who discover an underground maze in which live a group of religious zealots who believe in something called “eternal meditation,” where people meditate until they inevitably perish. “Library of Illusions,” in contrast, revolves around a man who believes that his personal library is cursed and that the books have the ability to appear before him as spiritual personifications. “Where the Sandman Lives” revolves around a man terrified to sleep because of a dream version of himself that he thinks is trying to escape into reality. “The Hanging Balloons,” is about a town that believes that the decapitated spirit of a deceased celebrity is haunting them, and “Tomie: Photo,” is about a young woman being harassed by members of her High School’s photography club, which takes bizarrely gruesome and monstrous-looking pictures of her.
Studio DEEN (Higurashi: When They Cry) is animating Junji Ito Maniac, with Shinobu Tagashira (Diabolik Lovers) at the helm as director. Kaoru Sawada, who also wrote the script for Junji Ito Collection, is writing the script for Maniac. Several prominent voice actors are also involved in the production. Ryotaro Okiayu (The Prince of Tennis) stars as Sonohara in “Ice Cream Bus” alongside Sara Matsumoto (Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon) as Sonohara’s son Tomoki. Fumiko Orikasa (Bleach) and Takashi Kondo (Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island) play as characters Rumi and Shimada, respectively, in “Headless Statue.” In “Tomie: Photo,” Rie Suegara (Diabolik Lovers) stars as the titular character.
Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre premieres on Netflix worldwide on January 19, 2023. Many of Ito’s stories are available in English from VIZ Media.
Source: YouTube, via Siliconera
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