Junji Ito Collection Episode Guide: Full Story Breakdown
Here’s the full episode-to-story mapping at a glance. If you just need a fast answer, this table is your friend. Each episode contains two stories — the first story that airs is labeled “Segment A” and the second is “Segment B.”
| Episode | Segment A (First Story) | Segment B (Second Story) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Souichi’s Convenient Curse | Hellstar Remina (brief introduction) |
| 2 | Fashion Model | Long Dreams |
| 3 | The Crossroads Pretty Boy | Slug Girl |
| 4 | Shiver | In the Valley of Mirrors |
| 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 Strange Hikizuri Siblings |
| 9 | Tomie Part 1 | The Circus Is Here |
| 10 | Tomie Part 2 | — |
| 11 | Souichi’s Beloved Pet | Blood-bubble Bushes |
| 12 | Whispering Woman | Souichi’s Birthday |
A recurring character you’ll notice popping up across multiple episodes is Souichi — Ito’s mischievous, nail-biting curse-wielder who mixes horror with dark comedy. He appears in Episodes 1, 9, 11, and 12 (and a character in Episode 6 has a similar vibe).
Episode-by-Episode Breakdown
Let’s go through each episode in detail, including what the stories are about and where to find them in manga form.
Episode 1 — Souichi’s Convenient Curse + Hell Doll Funeral
(Note: episode contents below are based on available sources and may contain inaccuracies)
The series opens with Souichi, one of Ito’s most beloved recurring characters. He’s a creepy kid who chews on iron nails and fancies himself a master of curses — though his schemes tend to backfire in darkly funny ways. This first segment sets the tone for the Souichi episodes scattered throughout the series: more black comedy than outright terror.
The B segment offers a brief introduction to Hellstar Remina, one of Ito’s longer works about a sentient planet heading toward Earth. This is more of a teaser than a full story adaptation — it introduces the premise but doesn’t adapt the complete narrative. If you’re expecting a full second story here, that’s why it feels shorter than other episodes’ B segments.
Episode 2 — Fashion Model + Long Dreams
Fashion Model is widely considered one of the best-adapted stories in the entire series. It features Fuchi, a towering model with an impossibly wide, fanged grin — she looks like she stepped right out of one of Ito’s most disturbing panels. A group of amateur filmmakers cast her in their movie and quickly realize something is very, very wrong. The anime stays close to the original manga and is genuinely unsettling.
Long Dreams is a surreal, haunting story set in a hospital where a patient experiences increasingly longer dreams each night — first days, then years, then millennia. As the dreams stretch, his body begins to change. It’s one of Ito’s more philosophical pieces, and the anime captures its eerie atmosphere reasonably well.
Source manga: “Fashion Model” appears in the Shiver collection (Viz Media, the main English-language manga publisher). “Long Dreams” appears in the Smashed collection (Viz Media).
Episode 3 — The Crossroads Pretty Boy + Slug Girl
The Crossroads Pretty Boy deals with an urban legend about a beautiful boy who appears at a crossroads — but encountering him comes at a terrible price.
Slug Girl is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s one of the most effective segments in the series for sheer physical disgust. A girl begins transforming into a slug — this is what horror fans call body horror, a type of horror focused on disturbing transformations or violations of the human body. Ito’s trademark grotesque imagery translates surprisingly well here. If you can only watch a handful of episodes, this one’s worth your time just for this segment.
Source manga: “Slug Girl” appears in Ito’s older collections; availability in English varies.
Episode 4 — Shiver + Marionette Mansion
Content note: The story “Shiver” features imagery of clustered holes on skin. If you have trypophobia (an intense discomfort triggered by patterns of small holes), you may want to skip this segment.
Shiver involves a cursed jade sculpture covered in interlocking holes. The holes begin appearing on human skin, and the story builds a creeping, itchy sense of dread that’s hard to shake. It’s classic Ito: a simple, bizarre premise that gets under your skin.
In the Valley of Mirrors features a haunted mirror and the dark consequences of vanity.
Source manga: The story “Shiver” appears in the Shiver collection (Viz Media).
Episode 5 — The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri + Cloth Teacher
Oshikiri is a recurring Ito character who lives in an oversized, eerily empty house. The house has doors that seem to connect to parallel worlds, and Oshikiri keeps encountering alternate versions of himself — some of them violent. It’s a quietly disturbing concept that plays on isolation and identity.
Cloth Teacher is a short, unsettling piece about a substitute teacher who appears to be made of cloth. It’s brief but memorable — the kind of story that lingers because it never fully explains itself.
Episode 6 — Window Next Door + Gentle Goodbye
Window Next Door is a creepy peeping horror story where a neighbor’s window reveals something deeply wrong.
Gentle Goodbye is the emotional standout of the entire series, and one of the most moving things Ito has ever written. It’s about a family tradition where “afterimages” of deceased loved ones linger for years after death, slowly fading away. A young bride learns about this tradition after marrying into the family and must come to terms with what it means to truly let go.
This is not typical Ito horror. There are no monsters, no grotesque transformations, no jump scares. It’s melancholy, tender, and deeply moving. If someone tells you Junji Ito can only do gross-out horror, point them to this story.
Source manga: “Gentle Goodbye” appears in the Smashed collection (Viz Media).
Episode 7 — Used Record + Town of No Roads
Used Record follows a cursed vinyl record that plays a strange, captivating melody. Those who hear it become obsessed — and the obsession doesn’t end well.
Town of No Roads (also known as Town Without Streets) is wonderfully claustrophobic. An entire neighborhood has been built as one single connected structure — every house shares walls with every other house, and the only way to move between them is through hallways that run through people’s homes. There’s no outside. No streets. No escape. The paranoia and surveillance themes make this one feel uncomfortably relevant.
Source manga: Both stories appear in the Shiver collection (Viz Media).
Episode 8 — Honored Ancestors + The Strange Hikizuri Siblings
Honored Ancestors is grotesque even by Ito standards. A woman visits her boyfriend’s family home and discovers their revolting family secret: their ancestors are enormous caterpillar-like creatures living in the house. The family sees nothing wrong with this. It’s darkly funny and deeply gross — peak Ito.
The Strange Hikizuri Siblings is horror played for laughs, centered on an incredibly dysfunctional family. The siblings are all terrible to each other in increasingly unhinged ways. The humor is extremely dark, but the tone leans more comedic than frightening.
Source manga: “Honored Ancestors” appears in the Shiver collection (Viz Media).
Episode 9 — Tomie Part 1 + The Circus Is Here
This is where the anime finally tackles Tomie, arguably Junji Ito’s most famous character — and the one he’s been writing about the longest, since his very first published manga in 1987. Here’s the quick primer: Tomie is an impossibly beautiful girl who drives the people around her — especially men — to obsessive, violent madness. When she’s killed (and she gets killed a lot), she regenerates. Cut her into pieces and each piece grows into a new Tomie. She’s part supernatural seductress, part body horror, part commentary on obsession and beauty standards, and she’s one of the longest-running characters in horror manga history.
This first part introduces Tomie and her disturbing nature.
The Circus Is Here is a lighter Souichi bonus segment — bringing dark comedy energy as a breather after the Tomie horror.
Episode 10 — Tomie Part 2
The Tomie adaptation continues and concludes here. It’s worth noting that the anime only covers a tiny fraction of the sprawling Tomie saga. The manga collects many interconnected storylines into one large omnibus volume, and the two episodes here barely scratch the surface. If Tomie interests you at all, the manga is where you want to go — the anime gives you a taste, but the full experience is on the page.
Source manga: Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition (Viz Media) collects all of the Tomie stories in one oversized volume. It’s the definitive way to experience the full Tomie saga.
Episode 11 — Souichi’s Beloved Pet + Blood-bubble Bushes
Souichi’s Beloved Pet sees everyone’s favorite nail-chewing troublemaker trying to keep a dangerous creature as a pet. Things go about as well as you’d expect. It’s classic Souichi: more amusing than scary, with his schemes inevitably spiraling out of control.
Blood-bubble Bushes is classic Ito body horror. Trees begin growing strange fruit — and the fruit is filled with human blood. The imagery is visceral and unsettling, and it’s one of those Ito concepts that sounds almost silly in description but becomes genuinely disturbing in execution.
Source manga: “Blood-bubble Bushes” appears in the Smashed collection (Viz Media).
Episode 12 — Whispering Woman + Souichi’s Birthday
Whispering Woman is one of the strongest stories adapted in the entire series. It follows a girl who is incapable of making decisions on her own — she freezes in any situation requiring choice. Her family hires a caretaker who stands behind her and whispers instructions for every action. “Turn left.” “Pick up the chopsticks.” “Keep walking.” The psychological horror builds slowly as the relationship between the girl and the whispering woman becomes increasingly disturbing. It’s Ito at his most psychologically sharp.
Souichi’s Birthday closes out the series with one final Souichi segment. It’s a comedic send-off that brings things full circle — the series opened with Souichi and ends with him, nails and all.
Source manga: “Whispering Woman” appears in the Fragments of Horror collection (Viz Media). This is a short story collection featuring standalone horror pieces — if you liked Whispering Woman’s quieter, more psychological approach, the rest of the book follows a similar tone.
The 2 OVA Episodes
Beyond the 12 TV episodes, there are 2 OVA episodes. OVA stands for Original Video Animation — these are bonus episodes that were not part of the original TV broadcast. They were produced separately and bundled with the Japanese Blu-ray releases.
The OVAs follow the same two-story-per-episode format as the TV series. They adapt the following stories:
- OVA 1: Tomie — Photo (Segment A) + The Ongoing Tale of Oshikiri: Walls (Segment B)
- OVA 2: Souichi’s Convenient Curse: Souichi’s Selfish Curse (Segment A) + Souichi’s Convenient Curse: Bindings (Segment B)
A few things to know about the OVAs:
- They were only included with Japanese home video releases
- Availability outside Japan is limited — they haven’t been widely distributed on streaming platforms
- They feature additional Tomie, Oshikiri, and Souichi content not covered in the main 12 episodes
If you’re a completionist, tracking these down takes some effort. For most viewers, the 12 TV episodes are the complete experience.
Which Episodes Are the Best? Fan Favorites Ranked
Reception for Junji Ito Collection was mixed overall — it holds a score of roughly 6.41 on MyAnimeList (a community rating site for anime, similar to IMDb for movies — scores are out of 10). The animation quality was widely criticized for not capturing the intricate detail of Ito’s manga art. That’s a fair criticism. Ito’s work lives and dies by its artwork, and Studio Deen’s adaptation often looked flat and rushed where the manga was dense and meticulous.
That said, certain episodes still deliver. Here are the fan-favorite segments that are most worth watching:
1. Fashion Model (Episode 2, Segment A)
The most faithful and striking adaptation in the series. Fuchi’s terrifying design translates well to animation, and the story is tight enough that the pacing works. If you watch only one segment, make it this one.
2. Gentle Goodbye (Episode 6, Segment B)
The emotional standout. Not scary — beautiful. A story about grief, memory, and letting go that shows a completely different side of Ito. It’ll stick with you long after the horror stories fade.
3. Slug Girl (Episode 3, Segment B)
Body horror that works. The transformation is grotesque and effective, and the segment captures Ito’s ability to make you feel physically uncomfortable just by watching.
4. Long Dreams (Episode 2, Segment B)
Surreal, haunting, and conceptually brilliant. The idea of dreams stretching into eternity and warping the dreamer’s body is pure Ito — and the anime handles it well enough to be genuinely unsettling.
5. Whispering Woman (Episode 12, Segment A)
Strong psychological horror that builds slowly and rewards patience. The concept is simple but the execution creates an atmosphere of deep unease. A great note to end the series on.
Where to Read the Source Manga
One of the best reasons to watch Junji Ito Collection is that it points you toward Ito’s manga — and the manga is where his work truly shines. If you’ve only seen the anime, the original comics feature artwork far more detailed and disturbing than anything the animation could reproduce. Here’s a mapping of the key adapted stories to their English-language collections, all published by Viz Media:
| Manga Collection | Stories Adapted in the Anime |
|---|---|
| Shiver | Shiver (Ep 4A), Used Record (Ep 7A), Town of No Roads (Ep 7B), Honored Ancestors (Ep 8A), Fashion Model (Ep 2A) |
| Smashed | Gentle Goodbye (Ep 6B), Blood-bubble Bushes (Ep 11B), Long Dreams (Ep 2B) |
| Fragments of Horror | Whispering Woman (Ep 12A) |
| Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition | Tomie Part 1 & 2 (Eps 9–10) |
Important: No single book contains all the stories from the anime. The show pulls from across Ito’s entire catalog, including stories spread across multiple collections and some that appear in volumes not yet widely available in English.
If you want to start somewhere, Shiver gives you the most overlap with the anime — it contains several of the adapted stories and is a strong collection in its own right. Smashed is another great pick, especially if Gentle Goodbye or Long Dreams hit you hard.
For the full Tomie experience, the Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition is the way to go. The anime barely scratches the surface of the Tomie saga, and the collected edition gives you everything.
For more Ito horror, consider the Junji Ito Story Collection 3 books set: Lovesickness, Deserter, Fragments of Horror — it bundles Fragments of Horror (which contains Whispering Woman) with two other collections.
Junji Ito Story Collection 3 books set: Lovesickness, Deserter, Fragments of Horror
Where to Watch Junji Ito Collection
Junji Ito Collection is available to stream on Crunchyroll with both subtitles and an English dub.
Important clarification: Junji Ito Collection (2018) is NOT the same thing as Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre (2023). These are two separate anime series. If you’re searching on streaming platforms, make sure you’ve found the right one:
- Junji Ito Collection (2018) → Crunchyroll
- Junji Ito Maniac (2023) → Netflix
They share a studio (both produced by Studio Deen) and the same source material creator, but they’re different shows adapting mostly different stories.
Junji Ito Collection vs. Junji Ito Maniac — What’s the Difference?
This comes up a lot, so let’s clear it up:
| Junji Ito Collection | Junji Ito Maniac | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 2018 | 2023 |
| Studio | Studio Deen | Studio Deen |
| Episodes | 12 (+2 OVAs) | 12 |
| Streaming | Crunchyroll | Netflix |
| Stories | Mostly different from Maniac | Mostly different from Collection |
| Reception | Mixed (MyAnimeList ~6.4/10) | Generally better received |
Maniac was generally better received than Collection. The animation improved, the story selection was strong, and it felt like the studio had learned from the first attempt. That said, they’re adapting different stories for the most part, so watching one doesn’t spoil the other.
Which to watch first? If you want the more polished experience, start with Maniac on Netflix. If you want to go in chronological order or you’re specifically here for the stories listed in this guide, start with Collection on Crunchyroll. There’s no continuity between them — both are anthologies, meaning each episode tells self-contained stories with no ongoing plot connecting them. Watch in whatever order you prefer.
The real recommendation? Read the manga. Both anime series work as introductions to Junji Ito’s world, but his hand-drawn artwork on the printed page — with its obsessive crosshatching and impossibly detailed grotesque imagery — is where the true horror lives. A still image that you stare at and absorb is often more disturbing than a moving one that passes by in seconds. The anime adaptations are a great gateway, but the manga is the destination.