Uzumaki (2024) Thoughts- A Flawed Adaptation That I Had Fun Watching.

Happy Halloween everyone- now that I've seen the whole event more than once; I thought I would finally unpack this latest attempt at adapting a manga by Junji Ito into an anime. I have not seen every attempt; but I'm noticing that they're recurring proof of not everything on the page working on the screen. Here are my thoughts on Uzumaki, a flawed adaptation that I had fun watching.

Courtesy: Adult Swim/Production IG/Junji Ito

The anime follows the same premise as the manga- in a small town known as Kurouzu, an ancient curse involving spirals seeks to engulf the whole area. At its center, a young woman named Kirie Goshima and her partner Shuichi Saito are caught in an increasing tour of horrors.

Before I get into my thoughts on each individual episode; I thought I would address the spiraling elephant in the room- the troubled production of this anime. Translating what's arguably Ito's most well-known manga to TV was never going to be easy; especially as a previous live-action film adaptation was not well-received. 

Of course, the clearest factors behind the delays and artistic "quality" moments are the ones most outside the crew's control- the COVID-19 pandemic and Adult Swim's parent company changing hands twice. First was the AT&T partnership, then there was the much more infamous WB Discovery partnership. The latter one was especially not willing to offer any more delays, even threatening to shelve the whole thing for a tax write-off as they had controversially done before to a number of projects. There was of course a considerable time crunch just to get the project done. We'll get into how this impacted the anime itself over the course of this post, but for now; it was initially believed that David was running WB like Judge Doom. Others later realized the same thing I did- He was running the company like Mr. Krabs.

Now, let's get into each individual episode; starting with what's easily the best- the first. The whole show uses a mixture of traditional animation and rotoscoping interspersed with digital effects; even making the show in black and white to recreate the look and feel of the manga. The unnerving dread caused by the spiral curse ("Uzumaki" literally translates to "spiral") is an increasing source of fright throughout the episode, culminating in Shuichi's father contorting himself to fit in a washtub and the smoke from his cremation causes the curse to spread further. It is easily one of the most effective pilots I've seen all year; and the opinion I hold that's most consistent with everyone else.

It's the second episode onward that everything (ahem) spiraled out of control behind the scenes. When both Jason Demarco and Henry Thurlow said as much on their social media feeds; I believe them. Admittedly; the show as a whole is faithful to a fault to the source material, in the sense of cramming an entire volume of A Song of Ice and Fire into two hours is.  The subplot with the "Jack-in-the-Box" was never my favorite; but even I noticed how truncated it was from page to screen. At least Kirie's monstrous hair got a full whack, off-model animation aside.

The third episode centers around Kirie being hospitalized alongside her cousin. Her name is Keiko Nakayama. In addition to her and others expecting children, an outbreak of mosquitos has them all drilling people's blood... no, I am not making that up. After her return, a wave of storms break out in Kurouzu, leading us into the fourth and final episode.

As the storms engulf the town, no one in Kurouzu can get in or out; save for a lone reporter. With Kirie and Shuichi making a failed last-ditch effort to escape; I'm actually glad the anime retained the manga's ending of Kirie wanting to stay by his side till the end. However, right before that; we get Shuichi falling into an abyss, represented by Shuichi.png being dragged across the frame. I didn't really notice it on my first watch because it was after midnight (and waiting for Demon Slayer and One Piece to start); but people online certainly caught it. Kind of reminds me of the infamous scene from that terrible Kong game last year of Gaw.jpg. 

Still shot of Shuichi aside, it does wrap things up conclusively enough for the cycle to start anew; and also makes a solid enough time for me to finish.

Admittedly, this isn't the first time an adaptation from Ito has yielded mixed results from myself or the viewing public. I personally found the Gyo OVA to be decent, but found the Junji Ito Collection to be a much bigger mess than this. Maybe there will be an anime that does Ito's work justice one day, but that day has yet to come.

Despite everything, I actually had fun writing about this anime. While I certainly hope conditions improve going forward across the board, there are more than enough moments that entertained me even with or even because of its flaws. I am among those in the "so-bad-it's-good" cult followings Morbius and Madame Web have gained. Overall, the anime version of Uzumaki is a flawed adaptation I had fun watching. Sitting here typing this, I will certainly keep it in rotation. Happy Halloween once again, and don't forget to vote by this Tuesday. Later.