‘Uzumaki’: Into the Vortex of Terror

Possession is a common phenomenon in the horror genre. Be it a demonic possession or a ghostly possession, it promises a harrowing experience for the possessed, man, woman or child.

But what about a cursed shape that possesses the mind of an entire town? How could that be scary? The answer to that lies in the master of horror manga, Junji Ito’s iconic epic Uzumaki うずまき (Spiral).

Uzumaki is the tale of how a simple, innocuous spiral shape causes the downfall of an entire town called Kurouzu-cho. Nothing is spared from the hypnotic whorl that draws everything into its ever-hungry jaws.

“You might say I’m exploring mysteries, or you could call it curiosity about things I don’t understand. It’s like when you see something scary, or you’re wondering what is beyond the darkness. I want to know these kinds of things. I feel a shiver when I imagine that kind of thing. Things that are strange, things we don’t understand — curiosity about those things is the attraction of horror, I think,” Junji Ito said about the creative process behind the manga in an interview on the American television streaming medium Adult Swim where the Uzumaki anime is currently airing.

This is not the first time Junji Ito’s work has been translated into the animated medium. In 2018, an anthology of his selected short stories was turned into an anime — The Junji Ito Collection by Studio Deen. Just last year Studio Deen came out with Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre. But neither of these were able to capture what makes Junji Ito’s world of horror so unique and terrifying. Tomie, another manga centering around the unkillable femme fatale who goes by the same name, has been adapted into a nine-film series.

Uzumaki, unlike the others, is a more cohesive story than stand-alone short stories and it follows a linear narrative which makes it ideal for an adaptation.

In the year 2000, Uzumaki was adapted into a video game for the WonderSwan console and also a live-action horror film. But neither of them caused a ripple.

Unfortunately, whenever someone tried to adapt Junji Ito’s work, no matter the medium, it always, always failed to make the cut. That is the curse that comes with adapting his stories. Of course, there will always be attempts to translate his works onto a moving medium given the fact that his work has become a worldwide phenomenon.

The beauty and the terrifying nature of his stories lie in the art. The closely packed thin lines that ring the eyes of his unfortunate protagonists, the etched darkness waiting to swallow an unsuspecting victim, the gruesomely detailed body horror, the physical suffocating atmosphere of the world he creates. It is unsettling, eerie, otherworldly with an uneasy sense of foreboding doom. There is no escape no matter how much you try to run or hide. It is nigh impossible to replicate the terror his work embodies.

Adult Swim along with Production I.G. announced in 2019 that they were going to adapt Uzumaki into a four-episode anime. Ito himself had observed at the time that a four-episode series would be too short to contain the entire story. But he expressed confidence that the makers of the anime would be able to do justice by “rearranging” the storyline a bit.

Thus began the curse of Uzumaki as the production hit roadblocks one after the other. The production team even went to the Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku, Tokyo seeking blessings and protection for the crew and the success of the show. Considering that Uzumaki is a horror anime dealing with a spiral curse, they did not want to take any chances.

And now finally, six years later, the anime made its way onto our screens at the end of September 2024.

Unlike the other adaptations, Adult Swim has remained truer to the art style of the source material. The anime is highly detailed and entirely in black and white like the manga. They achieved this via rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is an animation technique where the animators trace over existing video footage frame by frame to create realistic and stylized animation with very detailed, lifelike movements. Director Hiroshi Nagahama had already employed this technique for his anime adaptation of the manga series Flowers of Evil. For Uzumaki, motion capture was used to build everything in CG before it was painstakingly overdrawn to mimic the highly detailed line work which is the signature style of a Junji Ito manga.

The Uzumaki anime initially succeeded in doing what the other adaptations failed to do, which is to capture the quintessential aesthetic that makes Junji Ito’s art so unique. There are so many moments faithfully recreated straight from the pages of the manga. The smothering atmosphere of Kurouzu-cho that’s so strange from the spiral blades of grass to the ominous dark smoke that spirals upwards from the crematorium chimney sets the atmosphere.

Even the character models were replicated masterfully. Especially the iconic scene of Azami Kurotani spiralling into herself in the park at nighttime, translates as horrifyingly as in the manga.

But after the first episode things took a frighteningly bad turn. There was a change in the animation studio from Fugaku (episodes one and four) to Akatsuki (episodes two and three). The ethereal haunting charm from episode one had vanished. From the character models to the background, everything was lackluster and out of sync. The lifelike movements of the animation were now replaced by static pictures. Even the spirals had decreased in quantity. This is especially surprising since Uzumaki has been in the works for so long.

But this wasn’t a surprise for the production team, if we were to go by the now-deleted post on Bluesky from Uzumaki producer Jason DeMarco. 

He wrote: “It’s fine, we knew this would happen. I can’t talk about what went down, but we were screwed over, and the options were A) not finish and air nothing and call it a loss, B) Just finish and air Episode 1 and leave it incomplete or C) run all four, warts and all. Out of respect for the hard work we chose C.”

Uzumaki is a slow-burn terror novel. It is vignettes from the town that build up one after another until it culminates into something truly terrifying. The curse of the spiral is supposed to sneak up on the unsuspecting residents. In the anime, a lot of the stories run in tandem, with the first 20-minute episode condensing three tales in one. As a result, the pace at which the narrative spirals forward is accelerated since the brief is to pack it all into a four-episode series.

The result is that the plot feels entirely rushed, there’s barely any time given for the true extent of the horror plaguing Kurouzu-cho to really settle in. Since characters and plots were moved around and condensed, a lot of the nuance and ennui were entirely stripped in the process. The gradual build-up of the spine-chilling atmosphere is completely lost in the whirlwind of events.  

The dip in animation quality along with the shift in pacing takes away what makes Uzumaki a masterpiece in horror. Nonetheless, the first episode of the anime still stands a testament to the closest any adaptation has come to translating Junji Ito’s stories into another medium. It is a shame that the project was doomed from the get-go.

The parallels between the residents of Kurouzu-cho and the Uzumaki anime run deep. One could technically say that the anime adaptation of Uzumaki was struck by the same curse that befalls any attempt to adapt Junji Ito’s work.

For those who haven’t experienced the terror behind the spiral, the manga remains the best introduction. The anime works as a supplement at best, even with the last post-credit scene in the final episode.

Regardless, the very nature of the spiral is to mesmerize and draw the unsuspecting victims in — be it a whirlpool or a tornado or a spiral-shaped scar on a beautiful girl’s forehead. The terror of the spiral will suck you in, from which there is no escape.