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2019 certainly feels like an eternity ago. A different time, when the pop charts were dominated by artists such as, Lil Nas X, Billie Ellish, and Lizzo. The same year that had some of the best movies out including The Lighthouse, Parasite, and Hidden Gems. 2019 was also the year that Adult Swim’s Toonami block would have one of its finest years, at least in my opinion. Not because they had great shows on the block (although they did), but because a major announcement would be made that would take the internet by storm.
That year, Toonami Squad staff members Logan (@schmullus1) and Bill (@OnionCuttyFlam) attended Crunchyroll Expo in San Jose, California. By all accounts, the convention seemed pretty normal for the most part. On the first day of the convention, both attended a panel about Crunchyroll’s upcoming (at the time) podcast about the anime industry, Anime in America, and one of the guests of honor was Jason DeMarco (current SVP of Anime and Action series at Warner Brothers Animation). After the panel, they decided to wait so they could chat with Jason. However, alongside him was the president of Production IG USA, Maki Terashima-Furuta. Logan went up and said hi and both chatted for a bit. During those chats they were tipped off if they wanted more Toonami news, they wouldn’t want to miss the Junji Ito: Man Behind the Horror panel later that afternoon. At the time, the panel didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary; just a simple question and answer panel with the acclaimed horror mangaka. But armed with Maki’s tip and expecting more than just a simple Q&A, they both attended and were met with a massive surprise. One of Junji Ito’s most famous manga was announced to get a four-episode anime adaptation, Uzumaki, directed by Hiroshi Nagahama, the same director of the anime series Mushi-shi. We broke that news, and it went viral. Our tweet accumulated thousands of retweets and likes, even getting the attention of some big-name anime Youtubers, while the trailer topped over 2 million views. People were excited. The best part of that whole announcement was it was out in just a year’s time! Nothing, and I mean nothing, could stop Uzumaki from coming out!
But that didn’t happen. In March of 2020, the world went into lockdown due to the concerns over the growing and deadly coronavirus, COVID-19. Due to that, the anime adaptation of Uzumaki was delayed from 2020 to 2021. While disappointing, it was understandable why the delay had to happen. I would rather have the safety of the team be prioritized rather than work in unsafe conditions just to get a product out. That said, nothing could stop it from coming out in 2021! And in 2021, Toonami announced that Uzumaki would be delayed again until 2022. As disappointing as it was to get this news, the world still hadn’t recovered from the pandemic, so it was understandable. Still, I was hopeful they would meet their 2022 deadline, and they dashed my hopes by posting a note on the official Uzumaki Twitter account on June 27th, 2022, stating that the show had been delayed indefinitely to make sure the final product was of high quality.
UzumakiAnime on X (formerly Twitter): “An important update for our Uzumaki Anime. pic.twitter.com/J3auulSvTI / X”
An important update for our Uzumaki Anime. pic.twitter.com/J3auulSvTI
I was heartbroken when reading it. Another delay, despite the world slowly crawling out from the mess of the COVID-19 pandemic at that point. All we were shown was the same teaser trailer alongside a small five second snippet of the show. 2023 would come and go with just another short taste of the elusive mini-series at the Toonami on the Green event at San Diego Comic Con. However, the lack of a firm date or any mention of when it might release only served to annoy me. With the number of times they showed it off and likewise, the number of delays it had, I would’ve preferred they shut up and just wait, because by the end, I grew rather apathetic of the long wait for this show.
However, a light at the end of the dark abyss has finally come! At San Diego Comic Con 2024, at the Rick and Morty The Anime panel, a number of Toonami announcements were made, including the finalized release of Uzumaki, coming September 28th at 12:30am, with the Japanese language with English subtitles airing on Saturday nights and the English dub running on Thursday nights in the same timeslot. The anticipation felt muted at first, but as the marketing rolled out, the hype for this show started up again. Does it live up to that level of anticipation? Was it worth the wait?
The story of Uzumaki follows a young girl named Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend Shuichi Saito as the town of Kuzuro-Cho befalls a great curse of the spiral (Uzumaki roughly translated into English is spiral). Without giving too much away, the curse on this town does a number of bizarre and creepy things to those who live in it. Can Kirie and Shuichi escape its grasps or will the curse, spiral them into madness?
What I love about Uzumaki is its attention to detail. The art direction mimicks Junji Ito’s art with the animation looking like the black and white pages of the manga. According to a Vulture interview with Jason Demarco, the black and white aesthetic of Uzumaki came from Flying Lotus: “The idea actually came from Flying Lotus- Demarco’s friend and longtime Adult Swim soundtrack collaborator. “When I told him we were close to closing a deal to make the show, he said ‘You should do it in black and white,’” DeMarco recalls. “I thought that was an amazing idea and suggested it to Nagahama in our first meeting about the show. He said he had actually been thinking about the same thing and that he was thrilled I suggested it.” (Vulture, Fall Into Uzumaki’s Black-and-White Holes, Eric Vilas-Boas)
This is probably one of the many reasons why it got delayed so many times. Nailing that art along with the super smooth animation that gracefully moves between hand drawn animation and CGI that isn’t jarring or out of place to look at is incredibly difficult to pull off. Yet, the team that put this show together made it look trivial. Uzumaki is a faithful recreation of Junji Ito’s work, something that previous Ito anime adaptations failed at. They never seemed to put much care into making it scary, or even going the extra length to build up the mood and atmosphere. For instance, Junji Ito Collection just seemed to do the bare minimum of replicating the feel of dread that comes from reading the pages of Ito’s most famous works, which is why most of the time, they came out more funny than scary. Uzumaki, on the other hand, is genuinely unnerving and frightening to watch. It really sells that this is a living and breathing world, not to mention the number of times I winced or had the hair on the back of my neck stick up as the episode ran. It shows how much care and love they put into it.
The music and sound design are also fantastic. It was done by Colin Stetson, whose work I am not familiar with, but he deserves all the praise for his work here because his score sells the horror and eeriness atmosphere the show is trying to convey, with strong strings when things get intense and slow buildup in more horrifying scenes. During my watch, the music and sound effects alone made my heart drop in certain scenes. If it was handled by anyone else, they probably would not have been able to capture the perfect atmosphere and mood of the show that he nails effortlessly.
The English dub is also pretty good, although to be honest, I think I will stick with the Japanese language with English subtitles. The Japanese cast do a great job with their performances, managing to nail that sense of dread and horror. That isn’t to say the English cast does a bad job. I like Abby Trott and Robbie Daymond as Kirie and Shuichi respectively. They do a good job matching the Japanese actors pretty well while bringing their own performance to the table. Cristina Vee also does a great job as Azami Kurotani (Kirie’s best friend), but for me, the English cast as a whole doesn’t really sell that same sense of dread or horror in their inflection as the Japanese language version. Specifically for me, I wasn’t a fan of Aaron LaPlante (Spear from Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal) as Shuichi’s father. He isn’t bad here, but something about the performance didn’t really give me that unnerved feeling, at least not compared to the original Japanese voice. However, it’s a good English dub and if you prefer to watch it dubbed, you won’t be disappointed with it.
While I did enjoy a lot with Uzumaki, I do have a few small nitpicks. While I find the pacing in its first episode decent enough, it does suffer a bit from trying to cram a lot into its twenty-three-minute run time. Personally, I feel that each episode of Uzumaki should have been an hour long, allowing them more time to build up the madness of the town over the course of the episode rather than jamming a ton of plot from the manga into a short amount of time. It’s still solid overall, but hopefully with the rest of the series being longer than episode one, they take the time to build that horror and tension up. There are some truly horrific moments in the manga, and I hope they nail that with episodes two through four. I also took issue with the sub font color. The subtitles themselves are fine but the use of white/grey subs on a black and white anime made it difficult for me to read the subtitles at points. This isn’t a deal breaker by any means, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Uzumaki has the potential to be not just one of the best Junji Ito anime adaptations produced, but one of the best horror anime series ever made. I remain cautious, but if the rest of the series is anything like this first episode, then this will be a phenomenal watch. Uzumaki was worth waiting the five years it took to come out. It blew my expectations out of the water and delivered a beautiful and wonderfully crafted episode. If you are a fan of horror anime or are in the mood for a good scare Uzumaki delivers and then some!
Final Verdict
9/10
