This review is spoilerless and anything relating to the story of Uzumaki comes from the synopsis. Arc names are very general.

---

Junji Ito really can’t stop catching strays whenever it comes to his anime adaptations. Although I have only watched 2 of the piss poor anime adaptations under his name and not the other 2 listed on his profile (which I might probably do soon just to compare how bad each adaptation is to each other), it’s enough to convince me of the latter. The animation always turns out to be ugly as sin, and Ito’s source material is poorly handled storywise. I actually feel kind of sad for Ito since he’s such a really nice and chill mangaka if you look at the videos he’s in. I feel like those adaptations are just a big fat middle finger to him and his legacy. He literally leads the genre of horror manga and that’s how you treat him? Although I have only read Uzumaki and Dissolving Classroom, I can see why he deserves his fame. The way that he portrays horror is not like any other manga I’ve seen.

I would like to give a proper Uzumaki review with just its story in mind, and nothing else. I read the manga for Uzumaki way before the adaptation was even announced. I will stand by the fact that this is overrated, and not a masterpiece by any means. While I can praise the grotesque and disturbing art by Ito in Uzumaki, I really can’t say the same for his writing. It is basically just a sequence of small horror mini arcs that exist purely just for shock value. There are no explanations for any supernatural activity that occurs. If it happens, it happens, and the art says all that the audience needs to know. After each story arc ends, there is no mention of them ever again. They basically just come and go. In the typhoon arc (the final arc of Uzumaki), there is no reference to the hospital arc, snail arc, or any of the other arcs whatsoever. The ending was extremely unsatisfying as well since it has unresolved plot points. If I’m being honest, Uzumaki felt more like a horror sketchbook than an actual, linear story. The manga itself is a 6/10.

The day that the Uzumaki anime adaptation was announced, I was excited to say the least. Even though I wasn’t a fan of the manga initially, I wanted to see how things would be executed. The teaser that released along with the announcement looked very promising as well. I remember that the hype for the adaptation was unreal. I was going to wonder if this adaptation would do Ito’s work justice as all of his others looked like absolute dogshit. It HAS to look good since it’s literally his most popular and highly acclaimed work. Hint hint, I’m wrong, and should’ve been pessimistic about the announcement.

But then the hype started dying out when the official Uzumaki anime Twitter account stopped tweeting. Like no teasers or character designs or any of that on the account for maybe a year. I really thought the anime adaptation got silently abandoned after a few months of the account going inactive… And then 2 years after going inactive, the people behind the adaptation announced that they were going to start airing in October 2024. The new announcement got me hyped up again for the anime. I could not wait any longer, and when the first episode dropped, watching it was the first thing on my mind. I was ultra focused on checking this out.

Everything started off the way that I would expect it to. The beginning went pretty well with adapting the introduction to Kurouzo-Cho, its residents, and the important main characters Kirie and Shuito. We get to see how the spiral is driving that entire town crazy. The plot progresses as usual until we get a random source material jump out of nowhere. The anime suddenly went to the beginning of a separate arc already, which I will refer to as the snail arc. I first thought that this was maybe a smart directorial choice. I thought that this was done for some important purpose that I couldn’t put my finger on yet.

I then saw the absolutely horrendous second episode, which suddenly made all my positive thoughts and expectations toward this adaptation vanish.

The anime decides to cram three separate arcs from the manga out of nowhere, with the 3 being the twisted souls, jack in the box, and lighthouse arc. This quickly put the end of my question earlier about if this was a smart directorial choice. I now saw that the people behind the anime were trying to rush everything and get it over as quickly as possible. They somehow underestimated the amount of episodes needed to adapt. You would think that a measly 19 chapters would fit into the span of 4 episodes unless you actually read the manga. Those chapters are extremely long and have lots of information from just 1 chapter itself. And those mini arcs last for at least 1 chapter. It jumps back and forth with the arcs in this episode, leaving no space to breathe. It focuses on one arc, and then jumps to start another new one, and then back to the first one… I’m pretty sure you get the idea. They repeat this cycle for the entirety of the second episode until these half baked arcs are finished in the eyes of the people behind the adaptation.

> This is enough to turn you away from watching the adaptation entirely.

I have heard that there were apparently production issues with Studio Drive in the span of the 5 years that the adaptation was being made. Even with the amount of outsourcing done with the adaptation, there was still lots of time to perfect it. You’d expect everything to look crisp in 5 years of production on literally anything. Even movies take 1-2 years of production before everything is wrapped up and released to the public. If there was a work schedule that isn’t too much for the workers, it would look amazing. With the outcome of this adaptation, I can only assume the worst has happened with the animators and everybody else on the production part of this. There had to be severe cases of overworking employees and/or forcing them to stay inside the studios where they work. I don’t really have any credible sources for this, but something had to go on behind the scenes.

I should’ve probably dropped the adaptation at this point, but I want to see how much worse this adaptation gets. Plus, it’s only 4 episodes, which is pretty consumable for me. I just want to see how much worse that this could possibly get. As I booted up episode 3, I found the same exact issue as episode 2. We get a hard switch back to the hospital arc, where everything is rushed, which I should’ve expected. And now begins the final arc of Uzumaki, which I will refer to as the typhoon arc. This arc itself in the manga had already unresolved plot points, so you can already imagine how much worse it gets in the anime. As expected, everything in the typhoon arc is rushed. Everything just comes and goes, leaving the audience just going “Oh, so that just happened.” Not much else to comment about this episode. Episode 4 was about the same as episode 3 with everything rushed and the plot holes being extremely prevalent.

I now want to touch on the external factors of the Uzumaki adaptation. The art. I thought nothing about the art much of the first episode since the hype basically blinded me. I now realize how much of a nothing burger the artstyle is compared to the already amazing art by Ito. It just looks to me that they ripped off Ito’s artstyle completely just to storyboard the episodes. There was no creativity by the studios that created this abomination to even make it unique in any way. And the animation, oh my fucking god, that animation. In that beach running scene shown above, we can definitely see how half assed that sequence was. The quality drop compared from episode 1 to episode 2 is crazy. What’s the fucking point of saying “oh we went quiet to really work on this adapation and give our fans the best from us” and give us whatever the fuck this shit is? I was genuinely angry when episode 2 ended. The animation just gets uglier the more you progress in the anime.

The only positive aspect that I can praise this adaptation on is Colin Stetson’s OST. The music is a great addition to the tone Uzumaki sets. Whenever the music starts playing, I start feeling actual goosebumps. The discordant and off putting chords are so simple, but so strong and powerful.

The voice acting is also decent (watched in sub), but to be completely honest, it was exactly how I thought all the characters were going to sound in my head. Screams were pretty high quality. Not much input to add onto this aspect.

Don’t watch this adaptation. Really don’t. It’s not worth your time since it messes up the manga’s pacing, art, and basically everything it stood for. As corny and annoying as it sounds, I would say to read the manga instead. The arcs all happen chronologically, are organized, and you actually get a scare out of Ito’s art. It’s really good for some quick, easy to consume horror media. Hell, I’d say to play Stetson’s OST while reading the manga to immerse yourself even more into the world of Uzumaki. There is literally no reason to watch the anime since it adds nothing on Uzumaki’s legacy except for how not to adapt source material. Why the hell does this adaptation even exist in the first place? As a matter of fact, why the hell are so many of Ito’s works adapted just to be shit entirely? Is it all just for a quick cash grab?

Ito deserves so much better than this.