I have to admit my faults: I foolishly thought that a good animated adaptation of Junji Ito’s works could never be done. I literally wrote a whole article about it. Junji Ito, renowned horror writer and illustrator, makes insane stories that do not translate well the second you change his creepy art style. But you have to in order to get something animated in a timely manner. People have tried, but it always falls flat. Adapting any of his works is fighting a losing game, or so I thought until I watched the first episode of Uzumaki.
I have to amend my statement: a good animated adaptation of Junji Ito’s works can be done if you spend about five years on it and presumably perform some sort of witchcraft to channel the spirit of the words “oh god, that looks gross” directly into your storyboards. After several years of delay, studios Production I.G USA and Williams Street have delivered us the first episode of the animated adaptation of Uzumaki. How is it? Keep reading to find out!
[Warning: Light spoilers below!]
Uzumaki anime makes cuts from Junji Ito’s manga
Uzumaki is one of Junji Ito’s classics. Even if you’ve never read the manga, you’ve likely seen a panel or two floating around the internet. That one picture of a girl who has half her head missing in a gory spiral shape? That’s Uzumaki!
The manga and anime tell the story of the people from a fictional place known as Kurouzu-cho as their town is slowly overrun by a curse involving spirals. That doesn’t sound particularly spooky, but you’re going to have to trust me on this one. “Curse involving spirals” is unfortunately about as specific as I can get with it. All you need to know is that spiral patterns are showing up everywhere, and somehow all of them are evil and will kill you. Fun!
This first episode of the anime follows high schooler Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend Shuichi Saito as they try to deal with both her friend and his father’s descent into spiral madness, and let me tell you, it’s a killer first episode. The anime nails the vibe of the manga perfectly. It’s got Junji Ito’s classic tone of being kind of silly and also making you want to throw up a bit. You go from giggling at Shuichi’s father making his soup swirl before he drinks it to make sure it’s spiral-shaped, to gagging as his wife cuts off her fingertips to get rid of the spiral fingerprints, which was a sequence I, personally, could not fully watch. That is exactly what you want from a Junji Ito adaptation. Uzumaki was clearly made with deep love, almost a worship, of the original work. It’s very accurate in its tone, and fairly faithful in its story.
That being said, one complaint fans might have of the show is that it’s a fairly condensed version of the manga. The whole thing is going to be cut down to four episodes of twenty minutes. Before the episode run was released, I saw many people hoping we’d get a run time of ten episodes in order to properly cover the material.
While I love the pacing of the original manga, I’m not too upset at this change. This sort of series is hard to pull off. The production was delayed so often, it itself was rumored to be cursed; it’s a miracle that we’re getting these four episodes. I will always take a shorter, more well-made show than a longer, worse one. If five years is what it takes to get an anime as visually intriguing as this one is, I am happy with what we got.
Uzumaki’s animation is fantastically creepy
I care a little too much about adaptations. If an adaptation adds nothing to the original, why make it? You can’t just make something on par with the original medium; you have to show why this new format is a good way to tell the story, for a reason that isn’t just “we wanted our franchise to make more money.” If you’re going to take the weird inner workings of Junji Ito’s mind and make it move, you need to not only match the original level of quality, but convince viewers that this was worth doing, or else they’re going to pick up the manga and just read that instead.
Here’s the first thing Uzumaki did right: they didn’t change the art style to suit animation. In fact, this project took years so that the animation could suit the art style exactly. Judging by the way this show looks, I can only assume they spent that time hunting down Junji Ito himself, grinding the spirit of his imagination into a paste, and then using that to ink out the frames.
Uzumaki looks insane. I spent the 20 minutes of this episode making a mixture of breathless expletives and gagging noises at my screen. My mom had to shout from the other room “Stop yelling ‘no f****** way’ at me” because after the fifth time I yelled it became a little much.
This is the most visually faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen. Uzumaki has solved the problem of adapting a manga’s style by simply ripping it straight from Junji Ito’s illustrations. Every paused frame looks almost exactly like one of his manga panels, down to the intricately detailed shading. In technical terms, this is what we animators refer to as “really hard to do.”
This was the best artistic choice the show could have possibly made. This is a story about being afraid of spirals, that’s not an easy sell unless you have the visuals to back it up. Even just trying to add color, as most animated adaptations tend to do, would have ruined the aesthetic. If you showed me a streamlined colored-in version of Shuichi’s dad curling his tongue into a spiral, I would find it silly, not disturbing. Under the direction of Hiroshi Nagahama, it’s just as unsettling as the original manga.
Of course, if you’re going to recreate the detailed illustrations, you have to figure out how you’ll make everything move. Thankfully, the actual animation of Uzumaki is just as uncomfortable as the art style. A mix of 2D, 3D, and rotoscoping makes Uzumaki’s animation what can only be described as grotesquely fluid. Characters are in constant movement in a way that feels very natural and yet also uncomfortable to look at.
The heavy stylization of everything else in the show set against the realistic movement lands the visuals right in the uncanny valley. It didn’t just match the original artwork, it elevated it. You can actually see the spirals spin. I mean, episode one involves watching a girl’s eyeball detach from flesh as it swirls into her head while her body unmakes itself. For me, that’s more impactful than an illustration of the same subject matter.
Watch this series on Adult Swim and Max
Even if you don’t feel like checking out the show itself, I heavily recommend checking out a clip or two just to see how fantastically weird the visuals are. Although it’s a miniseries, Uzumaki is shaping up to be one of the best anime adaptations ever.
Episodes of Uzumaki will be airing every Saturday on Adult Swim, and will be available to stream the following day on Max. What did you think of the series so far? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus!
The Book of Japanese Folklore by Thersa Matsuura
Top Manga Without An Anime Adaptation
