ONA
Description
In the Netflix anime anthology Junji Ito Maniac, there are two distinct characters who share the name Gorō, with each appearing in a different episode adapted from the manga stories of Junji Ito.
The first of these appears in the episode titled The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel. In this segment, Gorō is a teenager driven by a profound personal tragedy. His mother had walked into a mysterious tunnel years before and never returned, effectively dying there. This traumatic event shapes his entire motivation within the narrative. The story follows him as he revisits this ominous location, accompanied by a group of his friends. While exploring the tunnel, which is portrayed as a haunted and unsettling space filled with spiritual presences, the group's suspense builds. At one point, a strange occurrence takes place when water drips from the tunnel ceiling onto one of his friends. Later, Gorō experiences a similar drip, but wipes it away thinking it is only water, though the audience sees it is actually blood, signaling the escalating danger. As the situation grows more intense, his frightened companions flee, leaving him alone inside the tunnel. It is in this isolation that Gorō makes a surprising and eerie discovery: his own sister is wandering deep within the tunnel in a dazed state with no memory of how she arrived there. His role in this story is that of a grieving relative seeking answers or closure, who instead finds a new, disturbing family mystery.
The second character named Gorō is the central figure of the episode titled Library Vision. This Gorō is presented as an adult man, specifically identified as the husband of a woman named Koko, and is completely consumed by an all-encompassing obsession with his personal library. He has inherited a vast collection of books and his life revolves around them. His compulsion is not merely to own these books but to commit their entire contents to memory, spending his days reading and memorizing everything within his library. The catalyst for the story's horror occurs when one specific volume, described as his mother's favorite book, goes missing from its shelf. This single loss triggers a rapid psychological unraveling. Gorō grows increasingly hysterical and confused as he notices more and more books vanishing from his collection. His mental state deteriorates as he desperately tries to locate his lost treasures. In a poignant and sad development, he decides to intensify his efforts to memorize every single book in a desperate attempt to preserve them, as if the knowledge in his mind can compensate for their physical disappearance. Adding to his torment, he begins to experience terrifying hallucinations or supernatural visions in which human-shaped figures appear to him and recite the texts of the missing books, blurring the line between madness and ghostly visitation. His wife, Koko, attempts to calm him, but his obsession has fully consumed him, leading to a deeply unsettling and claustrophobic conclusion.
The first of these appears in the episode titled The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel. In this segment, Gorō is a teenager driven by a profound personal tragedy. His mother had walked into a mysterious tunnel years before and never returned, effectively dying there. This traumatic event shapes his entire motivation within the narrative. The story follows him as he revisits this ominous location, accompanied by a group of his friends. While exploring the tunnel, which is portrayed as a haunted and unsettling space filled with spiritual presences, the group's suspense builds. At one point, a strange occurrence takes place when water drips from the tunnel ceiling onto one of his friends. Later, Gorō experiences a similar drip, but wipes it away thinking it is only water, though the audience sees it is actually blood, signaling the escalating danger. As the situation grows more intense, his frightened companions flee, leaving him alone inside the tunnel. It is in this isolation that Gorō makes a surprising and eerie discovery: his own sister is wandering deep within the tunnel in a dazed state with no memory of how she arrived there. His role in this story is that of a grieving relative seeking answers or closure, who instead finds a new, disturbing family mystery.
The second character named Gorō is the central figure of the episode titled Library Vision. This Gorō is presented as an adult man, specifically identified as the husband of a woman named Koko, and is completely consumed by an all-encompassing obsession with his personal library. He has inherited a vast collection of books and his life revolves around them. His compulsion is not merely to own these books but to commit their entire contents to memory, spending his days reading and memorizing everything within his library. The catalyst for the story's horror occurs when one specific volume, described as his mother's favorite book, goes missing from its shelf. This single loss triggers a rapid psychological unraveling. Gorō grows increasingly hysterical and confused as he notices more and more books vanishing from his collection. His mental state deteriorates as he desperately tries to locate his lost treasures. In a poignant and sad development, he decides to intensify his efforts to memorize every single book in a desperate attempt to preserve them, as if the knowledge in his mind can compensate for their physical disappearance. Adding to his torment, he begins to experience terrifying hallucinations or supernatural visions in which human-shaped figures appear to him and recite the texts of the missing books, blurring the line between madness and ghostly visitation. His wife, Koko, attempts to calm him, but his obsession has fully consumed him, leading to a deeply unsettling and claustrophobic conclusion.