Uzumaki

GREAT SERIES... if you're looking for a silly body horror comedy.

this series started off fine but got extremely bad FAST. Messy pacing and timeline, horrible animation and too many content in too little time. this series is extremely funny because of how messy it is you can't take anything seriously because of how messy the pacing and animation is. this series is a perfect body horror comedy, you will be laughing your ass off from ep 2 onward. the characters faces look so ridicules it's actually distracting from what's happening in the plot, like you will be more interested in the weird faces of the ... background characters more than what's supposed to be the focal point of the scene. The only good thing about this series is the ending ost and that's it. In the end if you want to experience the real horrors of Junji Ito's Uzumaki you should read the manga however if you're interested in some silly body horror fun then watch this.

Following My Deer Friend Nokotan's disastrous flopping I'm starting to think maybe "hype" is the death of shows. Personally I would like hype to mean something in the way of inciting discourse, excitement and anticipation towards upcoming animanga, and considering Uzumaki was in that privileged position however niche, the delivery is unacceptable. At one point during ep two I was convinced "cel animation" is making a comeback, in retrospect the thought might've been disrespect to the cult classics of a bygone era, in honesty ep 2 got so atrocious I could've produced it overnight in candlelight as the partially blind half of a bedridden conjoined ... twin with only 2 opposed fingers and it would've still turned out as a sack of shit but still better that what I was subjected to by Production I.G.

From what I can deduce so far, Uzumaki comes across as more creepy than scary, creepy with a degree of disassociation from the word scary, which of course does nothing to ease my confliction with the disorganized adaptation, somebody mentioned that it has been in production for five years (insert a sarcastic no shit) honestly the jokes write themselves, but alas I would be doing myself a disservice if I don't point out some glaring issues here.

One of my biggest gripes is simply the varied mediocrity of the production quality on the eps, what's even more painful is the fact that its 4 eps total, yea it ain't even a 12 ep production run, its 4 ffs, it goes without saying for a cramped adaptation like that they were inevitably going to skip content, so we can't even get one or the other, its crap production values plus cut content by the boatload, marvellous. This whole situation is not helped by the fact that Itou's works are notoriously difficult to adapt so the production team has a fall back right! Well to hell with that, we all saw Wistoria, a crap run of the mill power fantasy story adopted to perfection, it just goes to show what can be done if the bare minimum production values are met.

But it's not all doom and gloom, for instance Shuichi's mom's freakouts are glorious to behold, just brandish a mosquito coil like item and instantly busk in her crescentic shrieks, lmao she's anti spiral to the core, its almost too funny.

However convoluted the adaptation has been its worth giving a short if only the reason is to see Shuuichi's mom for the last frames she'd be in. Thus the verdict here is, horror rarely translates well to anime, coupled with the fact that this is one of Junji Itou's works, the prospects are already looking pretty grim, but for what it does right it lands decently, its enjoyable in parts, so if you are deliberating on whether to binge the 4 eps just go for it, hell smoke a blunt beforehand or get a friend to administer a mild concussion for some zero iq brain dead fun.


Similar Recs:
* Another
* Higurashi
* Dark Gathering
* Monster
* Shiki

This is probably the most disappointed I've been by an anime in a while. If not for the hype prior to release as "the first good Junji Ito adaptation" I may not have been as let down, but here we are. Can't go anywhere without talking about the animation, even after the first trailers I was already skeptical about the use of CGI, yes its possible for it to look good, and episode one I would say is once of the better uses of CGI in anime I have seen, it still wasn't right. For going as far to be black and white to be ... closer to the manga, the CGI and smooth movements were too off-putting, but not bad, good even, but not perfect. Then we get to the rest of the episodes, I'm not even going to waste my breath on this, it was horrible, insane downgrade in quality and a very big let down. The issues don't end there though, the pacing was also changed from the original manga, while not all bad, a lot of it threw off the tension that the original had building as it progressed further and further down the spiral. Some content had even been completely cut or shortened to where it just lost all of its impact. There are no redeeming qualities in this anime other than I would say it soundtrack, and at that point, put the soundtrack on in the background and read the manga.