‘Uzumaki’ Anime Sets Out as an Unsettling and Darkly Picturesque Adaptation

The animated adaptation of perhaps one of legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved collections of macabre tales, Uzamaki finally arrived on Adult Swim this month. Uzumaki was initially going to release in 2020, yet production delays plagued this adaptation until finally a completed version met fans the end of September. The first episode gloriously arrived and here are my first impressions via a short review! Spoilers Big and Small, Up Ahead!

The Vibes The audience tuning in to watch Uzumaki will be quickly introduced to a place that is not quite right. The small town of Kurouzu-cho is home to both Shuichi Saito and Kirie Goshima who are students and children of families soon affected by the madness overtaking the town. The town has been…contaminated by a spiral–and an eerie feeling has been picked up by Shuichi, and he attempts to explain the wrongness of the place. Kirie, his girlfriend, doesn’t take him seriously when he says “Let’s leave this town together”, and as time passes she begins to understand the place is doomed. In just a few minutes of this first episode of Uzumaki , the audience is awash in the ideal that this place ain’t right as spirals can be seen in a stream where students are walking, in the sky high in the sky and even with a well-timed burst of wind that interrupts a conversation. The tension is further amplified with the deterioration of a loved one and the introduction of an outsider with a dark agenda. The longer and longer I watched, the m…