It’s been a 5 year wait since the announcement of an anime adaptation of the Junji Ito manga, Uzumaki. Now the 4-episode anime adaptation has come to Adult Swim and the streaming service, Max.
What is Uzumaki? For short, It’s a horror manga from 1998 to 1999 by Junji Ito that takes place in a town that seems to be under a curse that Is related to spirals. The main character, in a sense, is a high school girl named Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi, but many citizens in the town are featured. The story is mostly connected to the theme of the spiral and the happenings of the curse to the people of the town.
The first thing I’ll mention is the look. The anime adaptation goes for a full and black and white manga look instead of adding color. I like this look, it’s different and makes it distinct. It fits the sense of other worldliness and the strangeness of the things happening in the story. This was a fun direction for it to go in and a brave one for a television audience who usually expects color from their television viewing. That gets a high mark from me. The style of translation from the manga is also well done. Thanks to the time between the manga and this anime being a long distance, the anime adaptation is sharper and more polished to fit how TV looks.
The music by Colin Stetson is perfection to this series. The background music does the fine job of making sure it’s not taking over the entire show or distracting from the story, but also fits what’s going on. The music gives a sense of horror and off-kilter feelings, befitting this show. Great choice!
The first episode was a great masterpiece showing the work done to bring this to screen. The second episode seems to drop. The art style loses some consistency, and details seem to be lacking compared to episode 1. It does look like it recovers a little by the end. While that does hamper the episode in the visual sense, the audio side is still well done and of high quality. Episode 3 does also seem to recover that sense, however it’s not as strong as episode 1. The show seems to keep episode 3 feel in episode 4. Overall, It does take a nosedive from the high quality of episode 1, but episodes 3 and 4 at least come in the middle in quality so it’s mostly alright, but brings disappointment.
Another thing that I feel lets it down, and might be because of production troubles, was the story pacing. This was a 4-episode anime, and some episodes had slightly longer run times, but it does feel rushed and lacking. It feels like the idea of trying to cram the 20 chapters of the manga into 4 episodes and loses a lot because of that. The first episode takes 3 and half chapters and puts them together and narratively brings them together. The idea of taking slightly anthologized chapters and putting them together for an episode isn’t a bad one on paper. Even that first episode was paced quickly, it’s understandable that some things would be changed from a reading and image format to a moving pictures format.
The first episode does do a good job of setting up the strangeness the viewer is about to see. Shuichi tells Kirie that his father has been acting strange: he’s fully obsessed with spirals. We see spirals in the water, and other things as well. He is visibly upset and wants to leave the town. As stated, before the episode weaves together different chapter’s stories into one episode, mixing them together. The story of Shuichi’s dad is weaved in with chapter 3’s story “The Scar” about a girl named Azami Kurotani and her scar that seems to have a mysteriousness to it. Finally, chapter 8’s “The Snail”.
The type of horror isn’t a looming serial killer or a monster. The horror is the uncertainty of why strange things are happening, who will be next, who will be next, what will be next, where is it going? Also to make people afraid of the simple shape of a spiral. Shuichi’s father beings lose grip of reality as his spiral obsession makes him go mad. Azami’s story is very much focused on the scar on her forehead and Shuichi is the only one who seems to be freaked out by it and then it turns out into a spiral. It’s not a jump scare, here’s the killer or monster, but more a slow painful wondering horrifying thing will happen next. It’s good at horrifying imagery without being reliant on blood and gore. Shuichi and his mother finding his father enwrapped up as a spiral wasn’t bloody or gory but is 100 percent disturbing and unsettling. Also, there is some slight body horror with Shuichi’s mother who has been deeply affected by her husband’s death.
The way it does weave in Chapters 1,2, and 3 is interesting and does flow to a natural feeling where it doesn’t feel off. The pacing here wasn’t bad. I think including part of “The Snail” felt a little random, as what happens with that story in episode 2, it kind of kids a bit ruined. “The Scar” plot, while different story, does bring the sense of the twisted stuff in this series to give a sense of what to expect.
In episode 2, a problem does arise in that its pacing is kind of too fast and trying to squeeze in too much. It takes the rest of “The Snail” chapter and continues with that from episode 1. A boy named Katayama comes to school very slowly and seems to only show up in the rain. He has some swelling on his back, he also has been bulled by a boy named Tsumura. Also, as Kirie says in the episode, the spiral theme shows up as the growth seems to look like a snail. Like the first episode, it weaves in other chapters. Chapter 5’s “The Twisted Couple”, Chapter 6’s “Medusa”, Chapter 7’s “Jack in the Box”, and Chapter 9’s “The Black Lighthouse” This might be too many chapters at once.
“The Snail” story started in episode 1, the viewer gets most of the early set up there, then the tension building happens in the start of episode 2. Then it loses some of that tension that it could have had by adding in the story line of Kirie’s hair getting longer and spiraling at the tips. It kind of makes the horrifying transformation story of Katayama turning into a snail feel less tense and more like an afterthought between the other events in the episode. It reduced the drama and intrigue and kind of sadness of that story. It also speeds up Tsumura’s own transformation into a snail. “The snail” is a good story and it’s a shame that it didn’t get to really shine in the anime.
I can compliment how they did find a way to fit in these stories together mostly by having all the stories seem to happen under the “Medusa” plot. Kirie’s hair begins to spiral out of control, and she can’t cut or anything because that makes it mad. The episode weaves in her original stuff she did in “The Snail” and “Jack in the Box” as part of the story effectively. It shows her humanity when she helps Katayama get some water that’s kept in and few other things. Even with using that story, it skips parts of that story so it’s kind of out of the blue when Kyoko Sekino ends up with the same hair problem and she’s mad that Kirie’s getting all the attention and there’s a hair fight.
I don’t know why they adapted in “Jack in the Box” because it was the most random part. They introduce the boy named Mitsuru Yamaguchi as Kirie and her friend are walking near the cemetery (foreshadowing) he confuses his love, Kirie rejects him and we don’t see him until after the other stories have been taking up the attention and then he shows up again, confesses his love, gets rejected, he tries to prove his love by stopping a car with his body. He doesn’t prove his love by stopping the car because car more powerful, he’s killed, we see his body in the car fender.
The problem with adapting these many chapters with different things going on is there’s too much going on. There’s no room for anything to breathe, there’s no room for stories to take their impact, it’s hard to get invested. Especially when it adds the Romeo and Juliet like story “The Twisted Couple” I kind of forgot their part when watching and even rewatching because it gets lost in the other stories. It doesn’t help the viewer get to know their characters. Yoriko and Kazunori are in love and their families don’t want them together, the episode starts with the story, skips back to two other stories then comes back to theirs and just finishes it.
There’s more story plot about spooky lighthouse in the town. People start not able to walk in straight lines and the lighthouse has started operating again, which confounds and surprises everyone. People have disappeared. Mitsuo, Kirie’s brother, runs into the lighthouse and she goes to find him because it unsettles her. Also, there’s more of the spiral theme. This part of the episode was the best executed part of the episode. It’s not bouncing around to other stories; it has a sense of danger and unease to it. Besides that, most of episode 2 was kind of too top heavy, it tried to fit in too many stories and hindered some of the effects going with less stories could have done.
Episode 3 was slightly better, the chapters it blends fits as they were ones that succeed the “The Black Lighthouse” with Kirie in the hospital for burns. It’s also the most classical horror style of the episodes. It also stitches in the final plot or Shuichi’s mother’s plot which also takes place in a hospital. Due to the writing not trying to squeeze in so many chapters, there’s more room for the story to breathe and work. It’s building up as each part is allowed to do so. Pregnant women are being brought to the hospital in large numbers. Kirie just happens to be ending up sharing a room with her cousin Keiko. At first, you wonder if nothing seems to be out of the normal, but there is a sense of something coming. There are pregnant women going around and sucking blood out of sleeping patients. It’s even creepier since they use hand drills to get the blood
The pregnant women story goes further as now they have given birth. It’s less horror and even stranger as the babies talk about how they’d rather return to the womb. The delivery room is covered in placentas. Keiko is found as apparently a baby has been put back into her. The other women have been eating the placentas and Keiko kills the doctor for his blood.
The last part of the episode is a different story about a typhoon showing up. It seems to be obsessed with Kirie, and it also destroys everything. Kirie’s family moves into a spot there are other refuges as well. They have a neighbor named Wakabayashi. He seems nice, which probably means something bad. He informs them of the moaning neighbors on the other side of them. Kirie decides to check out why the woman sounds sad; her son has died. Wakabayashi becomes more unsettling as well, asking strange questions and then looking at Kirie though the hole in the wall. Then he becomes a strange monster creature thing. I couldn’t take the undead kid from the “Jack in the Box” chapter coming back seriously, you can’t make someone going “boing, boing” on a spring scary, even if they are undead.
Episode 4 was allowed to be longer, which is good since it will be trying to adapt chapters 14 to 20. It also works in that those last few chapters, themselves, come together in a story and aren’t different stories, per say. I think episode 4 is in the middle in terms of ranking these episodes. The pacing still is on hyper drive at points, you don’t get real sense to let things sink in. Where there being more episodes to allow things to go slower, it would be helpful. This episode especially going on the idea of the desperation the characters have in different ways really would have been bettered at a different pace.
Since the last few chapters of the manga are more a connected story the episode at least didn’t need to go bounce around things it flowed narratively better. The episode ends where it seems the curse destroys everything then rebuilds ready to do it again. It’s been doing that for a long time and continues to do it. Again, like a spiral.
Overall, in terms of story the story is a good one, but I think even without reading the manga there’s a sense that the show loses something with the story pacing. You don’t want it to go to slow where it’s a slog but you want the cosmic horror to work and grab people and make them feel unsettled and disturbed. It’s also disappointing because there are some stories that really would have been fun to see in a longer form and animated but got chopped or part of a very loaded episode.
Moving on the characters, the focus is Kirie and Shuichi. Kirie is there for the audience to latch on to and guide us through the story. She’s not deeply interesting and doesn’t do much to stand out, but she’s likable and you feel bad for her and the situation she goes through in the series. Shuichi seems to be the sanest man of the series, not that Kirie isn’t, but he very much feels the danger of the spiral curse and is very persistent to fight it. Also, the poor guy sees his father go mad, then die after being turned into a spiral. Then he has to see his mother also lose sanity and harms herself to the point she dies. You feel bad for him and really hope he somehow makes it out of this. It also makes sense he eventually succumbs himself and just kind of gives up.
The rest of the cast mostly serves roles and but there are some you feel bad for in their situations. Some of it is the pacing, again, going a little too fast. We don’t get a good chance to know some of these other characters in their stories. Mitsuo has a little more than Kirie’s parents, and her connection to him does make his story heartbreaking too.
Overall, I feel the anime was mostly a disappointment. I think it was interesting to go full black and white and try something different, and the music was good. The first episode was the best outing, and I think the episodes 3 and 4 at least were in between the quality. The animation quality does dip and kind of hurts the series, but I feel the pacing is the thing that hurts it the most. Taking the manga out of it, trying to put 5 stories into one episode is a lot in general. The cosmic horror aspect doesn’t get a chance to work and set in because it feels like it must rush to the next thing.
Some of that is production and being limited to 4 episodes, when it really needed more episodes to be aired. We don’t get much to understand the characters and let anything really set in because of that speed run type situation. It’s a shame because Uzumaki is an interesting story and does a great job of building up the tension for the cosmic horror.
It’s a disappointment for something that has been in wait for 5 years, the good aspects are good, but the bad aspects bring it down a lot. I can’t recommend it, unless you are just curious about how its faults go, and maybe to hear the sound track. Otherwise, manga might be the better way to go here.
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