A strange Japanese town, two teenagers trapped in it, and disturbing events that unsettle its residents. While Junji Ito certainly needs no introduction, many agree that Uzumaki is his masterpiece. After a live-action adaptation in 2000, the anime series was supposed to reach our screens in 2020, but it needed four more years to escape its spiral. This is the official trailer.
The story tells us that Uzumaki debuted in the publication Big Comic Spirits in early 1998. The volumes appeared between August of that year and September 1999, and in just over a year it received its first English translation. The live-action reached the big screen in February 2000, has a different ending, and is considered an inferior experience to the manga. The next step was obvious: Uzumaki deserved a quality anime…
Uzumaki: Escaping the Spiral
The original announcement dates back to the Crunchyroll Expo of 2019, and everything pointed to a release in 2020… but the world had other plans. On one hand, the people at Adult Swim and Production I.G. are particularly detail-oriented (Ito's designs are incredible, and any half-baked adaptation could ruin them), and on the other, the pandemic halted work for almost a year. Add to that the challenge of producing the entire series in black and white: Other adaptations of Ito's works such as Japanese Tales of the Macabre (Netflix) and Junji Ito Collection (Crunchyroll) used color, but they didn't have as much impact (others suggest the problem was Studio Deen's animation).
So far, everything seems to indicate that this long wait was worth it. The trailer looks great, and it definitely serves as an introduction for those who don't yet know (!) Junji Ito. Uzumaki will have a total of four episodes, with the first scheduled for the upcoming September 28 on Adult Swim, with availability via Max (HBO) the following day.
