2024
For years, fans of horror manga master Junji Ito have been waiting for a worthy adaptation of his spiral-obsessed masterpiece, Uzumaki. Well, the wait is over. The Uzumaki anime adaptation is finally here, and wow wow wow, it’s a wondrous, terrifying realization of Junji Ito’s work.
Uzumaki unfolds in the small town of Kurouzu-cho, where an incomprehensible, spiral-related phenomenon begins to take hold. In this first episode, we’re introduced to high school student Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend Shuichi Saito, who find themselves at the forefront of these bizarre occurrences. As inexplicable events unfold around them, what starts as unsettling quickly escalates into a nightmare that threatens to consume the entire town.
The adaptation wastes no time in plunging us into this unsettling world. The opening frames make Kurouzu-cho feel like a character itself – a decaying, isolated place that oozes malevolence, perhaps teetering on the edge of madness. Or maybe it just feels that way to me because I already know the story? Anyway–they nailed it. Even the most ordinary scenes feel tinged with menace. I’m impressed by how the animators have infused every scene with this feeling of impending doom, even before the spiral motif kicks in.
Yet, beneath this ominous veneer, daily life in Kurouzu-cho carries on with an eerie semblance of routine. This jarring contrast between the town’s menacing aura and its mundane activities creates a cognitive dissonance that’s central to the horror of Uzumaki. In this deceptively ordinary yet nightmarish setting, we follow Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi as the creeping dread of the spiral curse unfolds.
Kirie meets Shuichi at the train station and on their walk home through the town, he voices his concerns about there being something amiss in Kurouzu-cho before we even get a chance to grasp the situation ourselves fully. While doing so, whirlpools appear in the canal next to their walking path, and an eerie whirlwind whips by as if to illustrate his point. As the town continues its everyday routines, Shuichi’s unease, exhaustion, and paranoia increase, and it’s incredibly unsettling to see the immediacy of how his fears clash with the surface-level normalcy around him.
He confides in Kirie that his father has been acting weird…holing himself up in his study for hours with a collection of spiral-shaped objects, stirring spirals into his soup at dinner as if in a trance, eyes rolling madly around in their sockets. No wonder Shuichi is distressed–his father’s descent into spiral obsession is excruciatingly disturbing – I found myself genuinely disconcerted watching how the curse relentlessly burrows into the psyche before it starts twisting bodies.
But the real horror, for me, lies in the spiral threat’s dual nature: it’s both unstoppable and utterly incomprehensible. It’s everywhere and nowhere at once, infecting reality itself, yet defying any rational understanding. From Shuichi’s father’s manic fixation to how Kirie’s friend Azami seems to hypnotize all the town’s boys, the spiral’s influence permeates every aspect of life, its purpose as inscrutable as its power is undeniable.
This cosmic force operates beyond human comprehension, leaving the characters (and us viewers) grappling with a terror that can’t be reasoned with or escaped. It’s clear that this isn’t going to end well for anyone, and the worst part is, we may never truly fathom why.
I think Hiroshi Nagahama’s (Mushi-shi, Flowers of Evil) direction perfectly captures the suffocating atmosphere of Ito’s work. The fluid animation, when set against those stark character designs, creates an uncanny effect that really heightens how wrong everything in Kurouzu-cho feels. The choice to go with black-and-white visuals is obvious! I can’t imagine it any other way. Who would have even considered a color version of this?
But it’s not just about being faithful to the manga – beyond fidelity to the source material, it adds a layer of unreality that really fits the story. I know the 3D animation might be divisive, but I think it works. It adds an otherworldly quality that fits perfectly with the eldritch atmosphere of Ito’s work. And when you pair it with that haunting sound design? It’s an immersive experience that I think fans of the original work are going to love.
This first episode establishes a tone of inescapable doom and promises a descent into cosmic horror that’s both mesmerizing and terrifying. It feels like Ito’s vision has finally been faithfully and effectively translated to the screen.
As a long-time fan of Ito’s work, I’m thrilled to say that this adaptation might be the one that truly does justice to the master of manga horror. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this spiral of madness unfolds, especially since I read the manga quite some time ago, and my memory of it is delightfully hazy. It’s exhilarating to experience the existential terror and weirdness anew.
Day Seventeen of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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