Junji Ito Collection Episode 5 Review: The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri Collection – Cloth Teacher

This episode of Junji Ito Collection was not good. There is no way to sugarcoat it, so I won’t: how little effort is actually put into this?!

Japanese Original Episode Title: 押切異談 / 布製教師

Plot

The first segment of the episode, Further Tales of Oshikiri, speaks of –guess who!- Oshikiri, some high school boy who for some demented reason lives in a house that operates as an opening between our world and another world (every time I hear ‘another world’ in an anime context recently I can’t help but feel feverish). So he keeps seeing people from his world that live in the other world hanging around his house, and they are usually his classmates. One day, his friend Fujii (who I have reason to believe, seriously fancies him) defies him constantly advising her to stay away from his weird haunted house, and walks in. Naturally, she is immediately kidnapped by the other-world version of Oshikiri who is a crazy scientist working on a formula to make people taller. Instead, people who try the formula melt, then turn to mud and die. When regular Oshikiri witnesses other world Oshikiri trying to stab his sweetheart, he jumps in and gives that little twat a taste of his own medicine (how old are you to be a scientist anyway?!).

The second episode –unfortunately- revolves around the worst Junji Ito character ever, Shouichi, who, in case you can’t remember from Episode 1, is an annoying slightly comic relief sort-of character and a voodoo enthusiast (his constant mishaps over practicing it don’t seem to be discouraging him much). In this episode, Souichi wastes time turning his teacher into insane cloth dolls that spit nails and try to strangle people with a rope. Some of his classmates try to deal with the situation and one of them who goes by the name of Wakayama ends up with a beard and a doll being made after him. Thankfully, one of the other messed up dolls rips up Wakayama’s version and Souichi, being fed up with the doll market not working to his favor, gives up on them, after receiving several nails on his butt cheeks.

Themes & Trivia

A massive melting blob of flesh: The melting versions of Oshikiri’s doppelganger’s victims reminded me of two things: Tetsuo’s weight-gain adventure from eternal anime classic Akira, and the stupidly cheerful Pokemon named Grimer. Yuck and Yuck.

Another world: Whether you ended up in a different world with your smartphone or because you found a door in the middle of nowhere and were looking for a hot meal, we don’t care. This cow has been milked dry for longer than I can remember. Stahp.

They probably have the same interior designer: Oshikiri’s house, the other world, David Lynch’s red room from Twin Peaks? Anyone? No, just me? Never mind.

I was on the verge of laughing, and that is not good

Especially in the second part, the drawings of the characters were so ridiculously poorly made, I almost started laughing at their disfigured faces. How terrible is that? I don’t think I will ever be able to get over the fact that they took the stories of one of my favorite manga-ka and turned them into this mediocrity. MAKE AN EFFORT!

What did you think of the Junji Ito Collection’s fifth episode? Let us know in the comment section! And don’t forget to check the rest of the Winter 2018 anime reviews on MANGA.TOKYO!