伊藤潤二「コレクション」富江

JUNJI ITO COLLECTION: TOMIE

OVA

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
2
RELEASE
May 25, 2018
LENGTH
10 min

DESCRIPTION

Unaired episodes included with the second and third DVD sets of the TV anime.

Tomie Kawakami is a femme fatale with long black hair and a beauty mark just under her left eye. She can seduce nearly any man, and drive them to murder as well, even though the victim is often Tomie herself. While one lover seeks to keep her for himself, another grows terrified of the immortal succubus. But soon they realize no matter how many times they kill her, the world will never be free of Tomie.

(Source: VIZ Media)

CAST

Tomie
Rie Suegara

Episodes (2)

Episodes are being prepared. Check back soon.

RELATED TO JUNJI ITO COLLECTION: TOMIE

MANGA DramaTomie

ANIME DramaJunji Ito Collection

Cover Art for Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre

ONA DramaJunji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre

REVIEWS

Yakariver
70/100
It's a shame the rest of the anthology couldn't have had the same quality. Flawed but a much better effort.
Story: This is another story that the less you know about it going forward the better. Only going into mild spoiler territory; the plot centers around the murder of a high school girl, presumed dead, returning at the dismay of her class who were complacent in her death. It's a suspenseful little tale, that goes in unexpected directions if you don't already know what you're in for.

Sound/Music: In terms of the music, there's really nothing that stands out. Although there seems to be a better effort to incorporate the music into the story than a lot of the stories in the extended anthology. The soundtrack mostly consists of very generic "horror" orchestral pieces that are woven into the appropriate story beats. Voice acting helped immensely to bring these characters to life. Tomie stands out among the performances, which is to be expected, considering her role as an iconic Ito character. Her classmate in the first episode worked well as a narrator for the start of Tomie's story and the rest of the actors worked well with what they were given.

Art/Animation: These episodes were much more consistent this time around with the quality of the art and attention to detail. Tomie was framed with consideration to her character, either hidden from view or staring intensely with her signature stare. Unfortunately, the execution of some of the "shocking" scenes were thoroughly underwhelming, lacking detail or proper framing within the scene. Additionally, the "censoring" (at least in the episodes on Crunchyroll) of the gore really killed the flow of the story with the large black and red smudges obscuring the scene. However, based on some of the gore present in the anthology and what is visible, I don't think there the level of detail would've been enough to elicit the kind of disgust necessary for these scenes.

I think because I'm comparing it to much of the poorer episodes of the anthology, I'm more forgiving of these episodes. That being said, this isn't the worst of the bunch and is worth a watch whether or not you are a Junji Ito fan. Tomie is just a good little campfire horror and this adaptation does a well enough job getting that across. Check it out if you have some time to kill.
Continue on AniList
TheRealKyuubey
70/100
Not a great adaptation, but an effective proof of concept and a solid introduction to Junji Ito's work.
When it comes to the subject of Japanese horror, there are plenty of names that get thrown around, and justifiably so. The Japanese horror scene is an absolute goldmine of the disturbing and the macabre. Arguably, the most well known among them, at least to the western world, is Junji Ito.

I would personally call Ito the Stephen King of Japan. Yes, obviously his style of horror is different from Mr King’s, but they do have some striking similarities. They’re both extremely prolific, pumping out work at an alarming rate over the course of decades. They’re both extremely creative, they’re both known for dealing in dark and disturbing subject matter, they’re not afraid to disturb and offend people, and when they pay homage to their own favorite writers, they are not subtle about it, often wearing their inspirations on their sleeves.

They’ve also both had their catalogues raided in order to produce anthology TV shows that were, sadly, very disappointing. For Ito, this came in the form of an anime series called Junji Ito collection. It wasn’t the first adaptation of his work… Tomie has had a ton of live action adaptations, and I personally really liked the Gyo movie… But it might have been the first really prominent one with viewers in the US.

I have actually reviewed Collection, and while I agree with most people that it’s not a very strong adaptation overall, I do give it credit for being the title that really got me into Junji Ito to the level I currently am. It converted me, I’m very happy to be converted, so it has to have SOME value. But that might also be because it was this title that introduced me to Junji Ito’s most prominent character, Tomie Kawakami.

Now, fair warning, there will be spoilers ahead, but I’m only spoiling the OVA, which in turn only covers like at most five percent of the Tomie manga, I hope that’s cool.

To explain Tomie as a character, she started out as a 16 year old girl who was cheating on her controlling and possibly also abusive boyfriend with her pedophile teacher. People are going to have different opinions on this, obviously the teacher comes out looking the worst, but I’m pretty sure you’re intended to think all three of them are in the wrong to some degree, and I’m not opposed to that stance.

Anyway, they fight, she dies, and since the teacher is afraid she might be pregnant, he manipulates his class into cutting her up and hiding parts of her throughout the city. She wakes up in the middle of this only to be murdered again.

From there, she is reborn into what I can only describe as a cross between a Hydra and a Succubus. There’s another Tomie constantly threatening to burst out of her like a cancerous growth, so her MO is to enchant men into becoming obsessed over her and cutting her to pieces so each piece can grow into a new Tomie. She needs to do this constantly to keep the growth at bay.

She’s also an organ donor.

Actually, the first animated appearance of Tomie occurs in the Collection series proper, as it shows a story from later in the timeline, where she’s trying to find an artist to capture her beauty in a painting. It has to be a painting, because a photograph would reveal the growth sticking out of her head, which can’t be seen by normal human eyes.

I’m pretty sure this is where my obsession with Tomie started, because this story raises an interesting question: Can beauty be captured? Is beauty a single frame of existence, or is it in the constantly changing and evolving nature of life? If so, then does a photograph pervert or taint that beauty? Is Tomie herself akin to a photograph, frozen forever in a single stage of life, desperately trying to break free of her immortality?

The rest of the Tomie catalogue doesn’t really return to this question, probably because Ito is way too busy having the time of life exploring this concept from every perceivable angle, exploring idea after idea, leaving no stones unturned, which is exactly what I like a storyteller to do. Tomie herself is an endlessly fascinating character, but more importantly, Tomie as a concept is the gift that never stops giving.

The OVA itself, I’m afraid, is a bit of a mixed bag.

Starting with the dub, Monica Rial does an acceptable job as the title character, but I can’t help thinking that they could have found someone who fit her better. On the other side of the scale you have J Michael Tatum, who does a fantastic job as the aforementioned teacher, especially in the second part where he’s gone off the deep end, and Tatum is frighteningly good at pulling off both sides of the character.

The animation is not very good, especially in the second part. The budget for this OVA was clearly very low, seeing how the animation is very noticeably stiff and stilted and full of cut corners. On the other hand, the color palette is appropriately muted and creepy, and the cinematography is actually better than the manga in a lot of places. One big example is Tomie’s fall off the cliff, which looked pretty goofy in the manga, but it’s a lot more visually effective here.

There’s also a lot more graphic gore and nudity here than there was in the manga, which tended to use such content sparingly. When Tomie is being dissected, you see a lot more blood and organs this time around, and you do see Tomie’s bare breasts with full detail, but it weirdly only happens in the darkest scenes, when Tomie is either dead or being killed. Whether this increase in content is justified or gratuitous is entirely up to you.

Then you have the pacing, which is probably the biggest issue. I get that they had to fit Tomie’s entire backstory into 13 minutes, but their solution to this was to cut the story down to the bare bones in terms of dialogue and plot. There’s no real creepy atmosphere, so the mystery doesn’t have any time to build itself up to a satisfying reveal. Hell, it leaves a lot out of part 2, that story spirals way out of control in the manga after what you see in the short, it just keeps getting crazier and crazier within the walls of that hospital.

So yeah, unfortunately, this OVA is the spitting image of its parent series… It’s a disappointing adaptation, but only if you’re familiar with the source material going in and you know what you’re missing out on. Otherwise, if you come in completely blind, like I did at first, it’s pretty gripping, and it definitely has the ability to inspire you to check out more of Junji Ito’s work.

It’s not a great adaptation, but it succeeds as an introduction to the Tomie character, as well as a proof of concept that a full on Tomie anime series could work, and could be really really creepy and entertaining, if given the time and space to reach its potential, and honestly, I think that’s all we really needed for it.

I give Junji Ito: Tomie a 7/10
Continue on AniList