Adaptations (yes, the Netflix series as well as other animated and live action movies and shows)
Animated and Live Action Adaptations for Junji Ito’s Original Stories
(Skip to the End for a couple of Movies that are yet to be released!!)
1992 Senritsu No Senritsu (aka Fearsome Melody)
Adapted from short story Used Record
1998 Tomie
A traumatized young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name “Tomie” but is unable to recall where she knows it from.
1999 Tomie: Another Face
The mysterious Tomie, the girl who cannot die, makes her way through three separate eposodic stories of terror.
2000 Tomie: Replay
Adapted from Tomie: Part 3 Basement
A young girl looking through her father’s notes finds something written about the last experiment he worked on before he went insane. Everything looks ordinary until the name “Tomie” begins appearing throughout the notebook.
2000 Spiral
Adapted from Uzumaki
The inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.
2000 Street of Gravestones (TV Movie)
Adapted from Gravetown
A pair of siblings go to visit a friend in a remote town with a strange effect on its inhabitants; when they die, they transform into gravestones.
2000 Hanging Balloons
Anthology film adaptation of three short stories by horror mangaka Junji Ito: The Devil’s Logic, The Long Hair in the Attic, and The Hanging Balloons
2000 Face Burglar
Adapted from Face Burglar
Momoko Kamei has the mysterious ability to mimic any woman’s face while imitating what she wears and the way she speaks. Not knowing such a secret, Takafumi, who was fed up with Momoko’s relentless stalking, said, “Go out with me!”
2000 Partition
Adapted from a story in the “Oshikiri” series, “Intruder”
Oshikiri is a loner who has bad memories of his childhood and his grandfather, a brilliant scientist. He returns to his grandfathers mansion to try to remember what really happened to him.
2000 Long Dream (TV movie)
Adapted from The Long Dream
Strange things lurk in dreams. For Mukoda Tetsurou and the doctors tending to him, things have begun to get stranger as Mukoda begins having longer and longer dreams every night. Can one dream infinity in the span of a night?
2001 Tomie: Rebirth
Adapted from “Tomie Part 8: Painter”
An art student disappears after murdering his model. Now his friends and family are being haunted by the resurrected woman, Tomie.
2001 Love Ghost
Adapted from a story in the “Lovesick Dead” series, “Beautiful Boy at the Crossroads”
Teenager Midori’s family moves back to the city where she lived as a child and is relieved to discover that her old friend Ryusuke still lives there. Her terrifying nightmares begin intersecting with her everyday life.
2001 Scarecrows
Adapted from Scarecrow
The search for her vanished brother Tsuyoshi leads Kaoru to the lonesome village Kozukata in the Japanese back-land. The locals react repelling to her, which the exception of the Chinese girl Sally. As her car breaks down Kaoru is trapped in the village; will she have to repay for something she has done in the past?
2002 Tomie: Forbidden Fruit
Tomie terrorizes an artistically inclined young girl and her widowed father, slowly integrating herself into the family.
2004 Marronier
Whilst not adapting a specific story, the film uses the heading “Junji Ito Presents” and credits him for the design of the titular Marronnier, he also cameos in the film as a painter. The film loosely adapts elements from “Marionette Mansion” and “The Hell of the Doll Funeral”
Marino loves her Marronnier doll that was unfortunately made by a demented genius who uses a diabolical machine to turn human beings into wax dolls. Marronnier’s assistant, Numai, is even more insane and takes a fancy to Marino. He begins to stalk her, and when that isn’t enough, he takes Marino and her friends prisoner, plunging them into a dreamworld of living dolls and satin wedding gowns, hacked body parts and bondage! In his underground lair, Numai’s girl-dolls come to life and start killing everyone!
2005 Tomie: The Beginning
Adapted from “Tomie Part 1” and acts as a prequel to the first Tomie film
When a beautiful young girl transfers to a new high school, the students become possessed and soon realize that behind this beauty is an unexplainable evil.
2005 Tomie: Revenge
Direct adaptation of “Tomie Part 7: Revenge”
A young woman named Kazue runs over a naked girl on a mountain road. When she stops to help, the girl runs off into an old abandoned house in the middle of the woods.
2007 Tomie vs. Tomie
Adapted from “Tomie: Gathering”
A young, depressed man is trying to move on with his life after his girlfriend’s bizarre death. One day, a mysterious woman notices him at work and convinces his coworkers to introduce him to her.
2011 Tomie: Unlimited
Adapted from “Tomie Part 4: Photograph” and “Part 5: Kiss” and serves as a reboot to the series
A photography student’s life takes a turn for the worse when her dead sister is welcomed back into the family home.
2011 Tomio
Adapted from “Tomio: Red Turtleneck”
A young couple, Tomio and Madoka, decide to get married after graduate school. Madoka convinces Tomio to visit a fortune teller to have their future foretold.
2012 Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack
Adapted from “Gyo”
The friends Kaori, Erika and Aki are on a vacation to celebrate their upcoming graduation, when suddenly an infestation of mysterious walking fish forces them to reevaluate everything they care about in order to stay alive.
2018 Junji Ito: Collection
Each episode adapts two stories, those being:
1. “Souichi’s Convenient Curse” & “Hell Doll Funeral”
2. “Fashion Model” & “The Long Dream”
3. “Beautiful Boy at the Crossroads” & “Slug Girl”
4. “Shiver” & “Marionette Mansion”
5. “The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri” & “Cloth Teacher”
6. “Window Next Door” & “Gentle Goodbye”
7. “Used Record” & “Town of No Roads”
8. “Honored Ancestors” & “The Circus Comes to Town”
9. “Painter” & “Blood-bubble Bushes”
10. “Greased” & “Bridge”
11. “Supernatural Transfer Student” & “Scarecrow”
12. “Smashed” & “Rumors”
The final two episodes both adapt the first several chapters of “Tomie”
2023 Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre
This is essentially another series of the Junji Ito Collection with each episode adapting either one or two stories, those being: 1. “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings: The Seance”
2. “The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel” & “Ice Cream Truck”
3. “The Hanging Balloons”
4. “Four x Four Walls” & “The Sandman’s Lair”
5. “Intruder” & “The Long Hair in the Attic”
6. “Mold” & “Library Vision”
7. “Gravetown”
8. “Layers of Fear” & “The Thing that Drifted Ashore”
9. “Tomie: Photograph”
10. “Unendurable Labyrinth & The Bully”
11. “The Back Alley & Headless Statue”
12. “Whispering Woman” & “Soichi’s Beloved Pet”
2024 UZUMAKI: SPIRAL INTO HORROR
Adapted From Uzumaki
