Uzumaki (Review)

We’ve all had that one anime that disappointed us with how little it delivered on our expectations. What first seemed like a promising anime turned out to be a glorified dog turd pretending to be an anime. “Uzumaki” sadly enough would become a disappointment for not just myself, but other Junji Ito fans alike. The series spawned from the critically successful cosmic horror series of the same name, and has retained it’s status as being one of his best works. Around 6 years ago, an anime adaptation by Adult Swim was announced which got me hyped considering i had just started reading Ito’s work. Fans were of course skeptical and worried considering Studio DEEN’s previous failed attempts at trying to bring his work to life and were really banking on this to finally be a success. Adult Swim of course dropped the ball after just one episode which caused clips of it’s moments of poor animation to go viral online and soil whatever hope this show had going for it. But what specifically ruined this anime’s hype? Was the animation really all that bad? Well let’s take a look into the horrid and twisted world of “Uzumaki” to find out.

┏━━━━━━━━━━┓

#AnimeHunters

┗━━━━━━━━━━┛

The series takes place in a fictional small town in Japan called Kurouzu where we’re introduced to our leading couple Kirie and Shuuichi. They pretty much live an ordinary life within the town as days go by, but one event would soon turn this mundane life into an unforeseen nightmare. Shuuichi’s father Toshio has begin to have a peculiar fascination with anything shaped like a spiral. This interest starts off rather tame at first but then suddenly his interest turns into a full blown obsession with the shape. Toshio’s mind begins to grow warped and torn as this spiral causes much concern within his family. Eventually he becomes more and more like a spiral, kicking off several events that are forever tied within the spiral pattern. After his death, Kirie and Shuuichi as well as everyone in the town begin to be victim to the shape that takes different forms such as patterns in the sky, horrific beings, and all sorts of cosmic horrors. The plot itself is rather straightforward much like the manga and is just as good as what’s seen in the source material. In this department this is where it largely stays true to the manga and everything is rather fleshed out story wise.

The characters of “Uzumaki” vary from either being focused around Kirie and Shuuichi, or really anyone else that lives in the town. The main leading couple share a desire to leave their town given all the supernatural occurrences but always find themselves in the same place regardless. As for the other characters they’re decently written into the show although we don’t get too much details about them much like in the manga. Some characters are either transformed into hideous beings or wind up dead in one way or another. The designs for the characters are very true to the source material and almost look like they were ripped right from the manga itself. Visually this was one of the few things that the anime itself actually got right and even despite the decline, they stayed the most consistent throughout all 4 episodes. In short, the anime and manga are both decent when it comes to giving us a cast to be entertained by in a horror story.

One of the most crucial aspects of a horror series in my opinion would definitely be the animation. You’d think that an anime being in production for 4 or 5 years it would turn out to be great, right? Well on paper that should have been the case for “Uzumaki” but that wasn’t shown in the anime after the first episode. The second episode ended up being a major step down from what was shown in the first one that boasted an impressive level of animation. After that the animation in the series goes from stellar to just okay but not as bad as some of the other shows i’ve seen. Clips of these bad parts became instrumental in this becoming a flop with the public and i can get that to an extent. “Uzumaki” had the unfortunate fate of switching both directors and studios with a few being known for animating “spicier” kinds of anime if you get my meaning. I was baffled when i found this out because it’s practically a major disservice to Ito’s work. This anime garnered a good deal of hype over the past few years and this is what they came up with? It’s like falling into a bizarro world where the anime went into a odd and disappointing direction along the way. Even the final episode delivered a clip of poor animation that I can’t say that i’d want to sit through all over again.

As far as pacing goes, i thought the story’s pacing was a bit of a mixed bag. Even by the first episode some people had noticed how fast everything seemed to flow from one scene to the next. You could give the anime the benefit of the doubt considering “Uzumaki” is only 3 volumes long with just 19 chapters for the studios to work with. Even then it barely holds much weight considering there’s plenty of other shorter or slightly longer mangas that have had good anime adaptations with good pacing like “Tomo-chan is a Girl!”. With “Uzumaki” things happen a bit too fast or the pacing will actually get to be somewhat improved. So besides the animation i think the story’s pace really needed some work here. If anything, each episode should’ve been about 35 minutes long since i expected it to be an ONA rather than being broadcasted on cable. Well, if much of anyone still uses it anyways.

The music itself was alright since it’s going for a very ambient approach, something appropriate for a horror series such as this. So there really isn’t a whole lot that i can truly say about it’s soundtrack other than it being okay. As for the English dub, i found it to be really good if not just as good as the subbed version. It didn’t seem like one of those dubs that didn’t fit the anime akin to something like “Gintama” where the dub doesn’t work whatsoever. Here i can tell a good deal of effort was put into the dub and i’d say it paid off pretty well for what it’s worth. The anime’s general tone was very aligned with what the manga provides but even then i’d still have to say the manga felt creepier. You can very much feel the hopelessness and concern brewing within the town as each supernatural threat persists episode after episode. Had the animation continued to compliment the general mood and atmosphere, this would have been a 10/10 anime right out of the gate. Sadly, both Akatsuki and Fugaku had other plans with this one.

In short, “Uzumaki” is another missed opportunity to truly bring Ito’s work to life but also the closest attempt too. From it’s mixed animation to being coupled with good writing and sometimes odd pacing, “Uzumaki” feels like something that should have been much better than what we all had initially hoped. The final verdict for this anime is a disappointing 6/10 rating in my book. You’d think that after Adult Swim put out 4 mindless and awful FLCL sequels and other shows that didn’t do much they’d actually pull the breaks on creating anime, but apparently not. What’s even more baffling is they’re making another series called “Lazarus” with “Cowboy Bebop” creator Shinichiro Watanabe on board as the director. And if you’re asking if i’m going to watch it, then yeah pretty much. I can only really hope that it’ll actually be a bigger improvement then whatever they tried to do here. Maybe there might come a day where i’d give this anime a second chance, but given that i waited years for this to come out and this was the final result, i’m not so sure. But what did YOU guys think of “Uzumaki”? Was this anime not as bad as the internet made it out to be? Or is it really that awful? Let me know in the comments below! Make sure to like and share this post with your friends as well as to check out my other blogs where i make anime/manga reviews, chronicle anime history, discuss anime related news, and make opinion pieces regarding the medium and the industry itself. See ya~!!