That is a surprise to see Tomie appear in this series as i originally thought her stories where to be covered in a separate OVA that is to come out. Now out of all of Junji Ito’s creations, Tomie is without a doubt his most Iconic. There are eight Tomie live action movies though their quality seems to be of questionable worth and Tomie has a whole manga omnibus with stories dedicated to her. Her general gimmick is simple, Tomie is a girl that cannot die and men tend to become obsessed with her to a unhealthy degree. Eventually those who encounter Tomie are driven to kill her, by obsession or just Tomie being a bit of a bitch. Then the monstrous nature of her is revealed as her version of immortality is a rather unnerving one. Chop her into two and you will have two Tomies, ingest a part of her and you become Tomie, and even her regeneration can take on nightmarish aberrations of mashed together Tomies. This story of the painter does a good job of showing what she’s all about and her character, namely a desire to immortalize herself despite being actually immortal and how people become obsessed with her. As well as her general manipulative nature and massive vanity. But as far as Tomie stories go this isn’t the strongest as she has better tales. In simple terms Tomie is like a Succubus, it that she leads all that come to love her to hell as they all clamor for her love but she can only love herself.
The second story is the most straightforward story to date with this series as it has a predictable setup. A couple crash in the middle of nowhere, encounter some strange vampire children and take refuge in a castle with a mysterious stranger. The only real inventive part is that there is a strange disease that is turning people into trees that bare fruit that contain blood. The disease ultimately gives an ultimatum, either die and become a blood fruit tree or drink the blood fruit from yourself and become a monster with an unending thirst for blood. And yet again the story ends on a non ending of the most predictable fashion. It isn’t helped that the anime cut out quite a bit from the story, likely to make room for the Tomie story, as there were more scenes involving the vampire children. Even one scene with the vampire children breaking into the mans garden of blood trees only for one of the tree villagers to reveal to a boy that he was his father, just right before the boy disregards him and rips the fruit from his branches. Personally I don’t really see this worth adapting as I would prefer something more haunting like the Hanging Balloons story though I guess this was chosen for timeframe reasons. Not that I expect that story would be given any justice but well…it would give me more to talk about.
