Uzumaki Premiere Review
Uzumaki premieres Saturday, September 28 at 12:30 a.m. ET on Adult Swim. Both the Japanese and English dub will be available to stream the next day on Max. English-language encore airings will debut every Thursday at 12:30am beginning October 3.
Adult Swim’s adaptation of Junji Ito’s 1998 manga Uzumaki was worth the wait, which is probably a massive shock if you’re familiar with other attempts to put his stories into motion. Despite taking a winding path to release and emerging in a world that’s much more warped than when it began production, the anime shows a clear understanding of what makes its source material work while making necessary, perhaps rushed, alterations for the pacing of television. Fortunately, it still retains most of its twisted spirit.
Uzumaki is widely thought of as the mangaka’s most important work (though it’s the chilling short story The Enigma of Amigara Fault for me), a unique read that’s gruesome and tense and yet balanced with pockets of camp silliness. It’s a work that includes sickening deformations of bodies, and, inexplicably, a chapter about how sometimes your new haircut can be a little too sexy. The animated series it inspired centers on two teenagers who begin to notice strange events in their hometown of Kurouzu-cho, with Shuichi Saito especially worried about his father’s growing obsession with spirals; any lines that swoop around on themselves, wherever they’re found, gain his utmost focus and attention. The manga tackles each new weird discovery in town one by one, while the Adult Swim version threads a few of the plot lines from all over in this first episode, adapting some of the early chapters almost entirely and introducing plot points from further down the timeline. Though none of the material feels out of place, this episode is certainly trying to do too much at once. In just 22 minutes there are four separate plots, where three of them could probably make great episodes if given time on their own, and one could probably have found more breathing room further down the line. (There’s also an argument to be made that changing the chronology of some events makes for a slight plot-discrepancy, but that’s one for the video essayists.)
If you’re only passively aware of the manga, you might know some of its most iconic images – and you’ll see many of them in this 20-minute premiere, given loving attention with additional, horrible, gory detail from the additional movement. One of these made me physically wince – that’s a positive. Adult Swim pulls no punches with the depiction of graphic harm here, but its Uzumaki is also playfully silly. Scenes like a slow-moving boy trying to return-serve a volleyball could be an odd fit, but they’re a reprieve in an intense highlight reel of some of Ito’s strangest visuals.
The animation is at its best when it’s adding additional flair to images that are already horrific on the page. There’s a moment where a character’s tongue stretches unnaturally in size and it’s so cool to see in motion. In some shots characters move like they’re rotoscoped, and that uncanny real-but-not-real feeling worked well at making me on-edge through many of the episode’s less dramatic scenes.
In condensing and intertwining these chapters, there are a few skipped bits of characterization. Shuichi’s mother doesn’t get much to do in the early half, and the extent of the father’s obsession lacks as much fleshing out. I didn’t especially miss these excisions, but I mention them to make clear that this is not a one-to-one translation of Ito’s manga. Smart changes to help with pacing have led to one of my favorite additions: a brief shot of lead character Kirie attempting, unsuccessfully, to match the unnatural speed of Shuichi’s dad’s disturbing eye movements. It’s a cute show-don’t-tell moment of who this person is that’s perfectly executed for the screen.
I checked out the episode in both available languages (save yourself from commenting “Sub or Dub?” I’ve got you) and it works well either way. The Japanese version has a fine voice cast, but no shining star. The English dub’s players provide standard booth reads, but there’s an episode-defining performance from Aaron LaPlante, who captures a feeling in Shuichi’s father of obsessive excitement that’s more unsettling for not knowing how intense he’s being about something that doesn’t really matter at all. Watch whichever you’d normally choose, but I’d hate for you to miss just how good LaPlante’s scenes can be.
Uzumaki was worth the wait.
You’re probably noticing from the screenshots accompanying this review that Uzumaki is presented entirely in black and white, emulating the original manga. It looks cool, but it’s hard to say whether it’s necessary. It’s not like it’s core to Ito’s vision: There are incredible full-color splash-pages in the Viz hardback edition of Uzumaki. Making this choice does give the anime a distinct deliberateness, and air of prestige, though I think it’s more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. I don’t think it’s better for foregoing color, I don’t think it’s essential for capturing the tone, I don’t think it’s either good or bad. I think it just kind of is.
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