Junji Ito Plays Dead By Daylight To Celebrate Ghoulish Crossover

Dead By Daylight has seen its fair share of slasher villains arrive in the video game that is considered one of the biggest horror games on the market. Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Child’s Play, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Ring are just a handful of franchises that have seen their horror icons dive into the game. This week, the asymmetrical survival horror game has entered the world of Junji Ito, taking its killer and survivors and giving them new aesthetics to reflect the works of the manga master of horror. To help promote the crossover, Ito himself entered the Fog and tried out the meeting of horror worlds for himself.

For those who might have missed the original announcement of this crossover between the worlds of anime and video games, the event arrived earlier this week on January 7th. Dead By Daylight killers including The Artist, The Spirit, The Twins, The Trickster, and The Dredge were given new makeovers to look like Miss Fuchi The Model, Tomie, The Hikizuris, Soichi, and Half Spirits’ Torments respectively. For the survivors, Yui Kimura, Yun-Jin Lee, and Kate Denson were transformed into Tsukiko, Terumi, and the “Puppet’s Troubled Ballet.”

[RELATED: Dead by Daylight Mobile Officially Shutting Down]

Junji Ito is a Model Main

Alongside Junji Ito releasing a new video as the world’s newest “Let’s Player,” thanks to the help of Crunchyroll, who had a major hand in this partnership, the beloved manga artist also commented on the collaboration. Here’s what Ito had to say about his characters entering the Fog, “This time, I had the opportunity to experience playing Dead By Daylight. The characters I created become killers and do some very horrible things in the game. It was very moving to see that they had become even more terrifying characters after leaving my hands.”

Dead By Daylight’s Anime Future?

While nothing has been confirmed as of yet, Junji Ito’s creepy creations might not be the only anime figures arriving in Dead By Daylight down the line. In 2023, Behaviour released a survey to players, asking them which anime franchises they would like to see enter the Fog. The survey touched upon quite a few franchises including Berserk, Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost In The Shell, Hunter x Hunter, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Jujutsu Kaisen, Overlord, and Tokyo Ghoul. While Dead By Daylight hasn’t confirmed whether it will ever receive an anime adaptation of its own, the game is clearly willing to explore the anime medium.

On the Junji Ito front, the author recently had one of his biggest works brought to life thanks to Adult Swim’s Uzumaki. While no other anime adaptations have been confirmed for the future, this isn’t stopping some of Ito’s biggest works being brought to life down the road. Fangoria Studios is planning to create three live-action feature-length films to life, including Bloodsucking Darkness and The Mystery of The Haunted House. No release date has been revealed for these projects but considering the source material, they’re sure to be quite shocking for theater-goers when they arrive on the silver screen.

Speaking of live-action horror films, Dead By Daylight is also planning to get its own creepy movie thanks to Blumhouse. While production has not begun on the slasher flick, Jason Blum confirmed last year that the studio is still working on the script. Ultimately, it will be interesting to see which original slashers, or perhaps established slashers, will make an appearance.

Want to stay in the loop on all things Junji Ito and Dead By Daylight? Follow Team Anime and Team Gaming on ComicBook.com for all the latest on both horror worlds and hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.