Junji Ito Fans Revisit Master of Horror’s Pokemon Crossover

The spooky season is inching ever closer with the fall season on the horizon and Junji Ito fans have taken the opportunity to revisit one of his lesser-known pieces of artwork in lieu of Halloween’s approach, wherein the master of horror tested out his art on the Pokemon known as Banette. Banette being a ghost-type pocket monster makes for it being a perfect chance for Junji Ito to cross over into the popular anime franchise that has been enjoyed as both an anime and a video game franchise via various Nintendo consoles over the years.

Banette was introduced as a part of Generation Three of Pokemon, which was first introduced via Pokemon Ruby, Pokemon Sapphire, and Pokemon Emerald respectively, with this trilogy of games originally releasing on the Gameboy Advance. While Banette itself doesn’t have two additional evolutions akin to Squirtle, Bulbasaur, and many other Pokemon that have been introduced over the years, the ghost-type does have an evolutionary form in Mega Banette, which makes it more powerful and far creepier to look at. While Ash and his many friends have never caught a Banette for themselves, the ghost-type pocket monster Gengar is one of Ketchum’s current go-to partners in his roster as he continues to explore the world via the anime’s latest season, Pokemon Journeys.

Twitter User Love Leigh rediscovered the crossover art of Junji Ito which proves that the horror mangaka can truly make anything look terrifying as he applied his insane talent to showing the scary side of the Generation Three Pokemon that lived in the world of ghost-type pocket monsters: 

View on X

This crossover artwork by Junji Ito was released as a part of the event dubbed “Kowapoke” in 2014, celebrating the scary season by giving fans of Pokemon new interpretations of some of the spookiest pocket monsters around. With Ito having dived into adaptations of scary stories in the past such as Frankenstein and No Longer Human, we definitely wouldn’t be surprised if he revisited other anime characters with crossovers in the future. 

Junji Ito fans are currently waiting for the upcoming anime adaptation of Uzumaki, which will be releasing on Toonami in the fall of next year, 2022, but it’s clear that the mangaka isn’t taking any breaks before this series hits the small screen.

What other anime characters do you want to see Junji Ito take a crack at? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of horror.