Adult Swim announces animated adaptation of Junji Ito's stomach-and-soul-churning Uzumaki
Aux Features Coming Distractions
Among the works of Japanese artist and author Junji Ito—he of such deeply unsettling, psychologically fraught stories as Tomie, Gyo, and The Enigma Of Amigara Fault—few are more packed with relentlessly unpleasant imagery than 1998's Uzumaki. (Literally: Spiral.) Blatantly Lovecraftian in its inspirations, the novel centers on a town that falls under the effects of a cursed obsession with spirals—in the sky, in the world around them, and, increasingly, as things go hideously off the rails—within their own flesh. There’s no villain, no giant monster destroying people; just an inescapable madness that creeps into the minds and bodies of everyone it touches, twisting and destroying them as it goes.
So, hey, good news: Now you, too, will be able to experience Uzumaki’s encroaching insanity—in animated form! Adult Swim announced today at Crunchyroll Expo that it was partnering with Japan’s Production IG to produce an animated version of Ito’s classic, which it’ll air as part of its Toonami line of shows. They also released a teaser trailer, and while it’s mostly just still images from the manga with some animation added in, it’s still enough to get our stomachs churning. (That girl with the hair. Ugh!)
The four-part series will debut in 2020.
57 Comments
Uzumaki is absolutely amazing, and this isn’t being made by the same studio that did the super mediocre “Junji Ito Collection” anime so colour me cautiously optimistic
I had not gotten a chance to see the other Junji Ito anime, sad to hear its not worthy of his work. But this already looks promising, and just a few days ago some new short-form streaming service announced a series of Tomie shorts from horror director Alexandre Aja so its a good week for Ito fans!
I watched it all and highly enjoyed it; afterwards, I was surprised to see the reaction online was mostly pretty negative. It’s a mixed bag, but so is a lot of Ito’s work. For fans, I’d recommend at least episodes 2, 4, 6, and 7; in particular, “Window Next Door” creeped me the hell out. Also, this Colin Stetson score sounds intense.
Sorry, I gotta dispute you here. The Window Next Door is probably the Ito story whose page-turn gets to me the most, and in the anime, she just looked a little gross.
Different strokes, and like I said, I’m already resigned to having a relatively unpopular opinion about JIC (plus I hadn’t read that manga before I saw it), but when she announced she was coming over, I audibly gasped. Something about that vocal performance…
Yeah, I heard all about that one from the youtube channel Super Eyepatch Wolf.
Always good to see a fellow Super Eyepatch Wolf fan out in the wild. <3
This is from the director of Mushishi and is animated by Production IG. IMO both are marks of high quality – this is going to be good!
JIC was largely unremarkable, but had a few bright spots (Honored Ancestors and Smashed both translated fairly well)
That said, even the lesser episodes I’d still place over the disappointment that was the Gyo anime.
It’s horrifying and disturbing, yeah.
But there’s also a few bits that go off the rails and just get goofy. People flying around, and the whole mosquito thing.
I mean, that’s Japanese horror for you (and Ito especially). There’s a tradition of sheer incongruity, things that are scary even if they seem kind of light and whimsical from the outside, because they just don’t fit. (One could argue this says something about Japanese culture’s emphasis on order and tradition, but here in the West we’re scared of clowns so it’s not that alien a concept.)The movie House (1977, not 1986) is a good example of this.
Sounds like the anime movie Paprika. Whimsy sliding to unease flipping to horror.
Kon was especially good at striking that balance (see also: Paranoia Agent – for fuck’s sake, GKids, you’d better be saving this from license Hell along with his movies!)
Paranoid Agent was so good at perpetuating dread and confusion, I had to stop watching. Just too much tension for me.
Junji Ito stories are pretty much the opposite of that. They start out horror, but if they go on too long they turn into unintentional comedy that seems to think it’s still horror. It’s a problem.
I usually just call it Hausu to limit confusion.
It’s a real problem with Junji Ito. Once his stories reach a certain length, they erase their own horror with desperate goofiness.
This looks so much better than the previous anime adaptation. I think keeping it black and white retains the feel that much better. And that music felt quite fitting!
Unless there’s an announcement otherwise, not taking this as a guarantee the series will be b&w. Given this is almost all stills from the original manga, taking this as more of a ‘concept’ trailer than an actual showing of finished product.
Cool. I’m probably not gonna have the guts to watch it, but cool.
I remember seeing a live action version of this that wound up feeling like the Japanese version of “The Happening” – whole lot of reaction takes at spirals ‘attacking’ in the spiderweb crack of an auto accident window, that sort of stuff.Here’s hoping they do better at AS. The movie… wasn’t scary.
Sounds like Spider by Cronenberg, very actory if done subtle. Or like Bird Box if done stupidly. The trailer looks decent and animation has less constraints so maybe better?
The manga is disturbing as hell, the movie just couldn’t match it due to low budget, limitations of running time, and they even stuck in some haunted mirror or something to try and explain things in a traditional narrative way (whereas the manga is scarier by NOT giving a source/explanation for the weirdness). If they just straight up animate the comic, it should be way more effective.
Trailer better than movie.
I watched the live action version of this, my reaction was ‘this was certainly a thing alright’. Didn’t hate it, didn’t love it, wasn’t grossed out, it was slightly weird and that was it. Did the manga have any more substance or story or something else besides… nothing?
I had not heard of this before, but it sounds right up my dark alley.
watch out for your dark alleys, billionaire families go in there for shortcuts.
Colin Stetson, who did the score for Hereditary, is the absolute perfect choice for this.
When the trailer started I thought it was a shameless copy of hereditary’s singular score and then his name popped up and I felt silly.
Probably the aspect i’m most stoked about.
Or: we could not do this
My immediate reaction was “No.”
Feel free not to, whoever you (plural) are.Please, attempt nothing. Better you should never fail.
Just today I was looking through his autobiographical comic about him and his wife’s cats. It’s hilarious because it’s just about him being weirded out by cats while being drawn exactly the same as his horror manga.
The weirdest thing about reading that is, even with his weird creepy/comical over the top art style, when he wants to land those emotional beats, they land. The chapter when he’s on a business trip and gets a message about one of the cats missing him and suddenly feels guilty as Hell…yeah, part of it’s funny, but Goddamn, that is a feeling any pet owner can relate to.
Please be better than the Jinjo Ito Collection.
the music is very unsettling, i’ll give them that
uhhhh… rasengan?
I’ve been coming to Deadspin/Lifehacker/Kotaku/Jalopnik for probably a decade. This is the first time I clicked avclub out of curiosity. You did not disappoint.
I look forward to the confused Naruto fans who accidentally watch this.
This is great news.
Very much looking forward to this but, huh. Warp effects? That’s not great animation.
I feel like it’s more a concept trailer with almost no content from the actual series. Or I could be wrong.
Not really a horror fan at all, but I may watch it since it’s on Toonami.
That music is unsettling but beautiful. Absolutely perfect.
Could be pretty good. I wonder what an animated version of The Enigma of Amigara Fault would be like. The idea of the story looked pretty interesting from what I remember.
Seen a couple of the live-action Tomie entries, there’s five or six of them, and they’re okay if very repetitive, but they do generate some fine promo artwork and images.
If the whole show is animated like in the teaser then I am so fucking down for it. Junji Ito’s work is very difficult to translate into any other medium because of how effective his art is. He’ll literally spend hours working on a single page, layering details on until he’s created some of the scariest of shit you’ve ever seen in your life. It doesn’t work as well in an animated or live action form because when you’re reading it in manga form there is this sense of anticipation you can’t build when its in motion. You choose the pace of the story, you can sit there and hesitate, stewing knowing that on the next page will be something horrifying.Going into a surrealistic minimal animation style however I think will be the most successful attempt.
I thought the manga was a mixed bag, with Ito’s quest to incorporate as many different kinds of spirals as possible resulting in a lot of goofy dead-ends before devolving completely by the end. An adaptation could be good, though, with a few judicious alterations.
I’m just going to listen to the They Might Be Giants song Spiraling Shape instead, if that’s ok with you. (“The spiraling shape will make you go insane/but everyone wants to see that groovy thing.”)
Am I wrong in thinking “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” is the only truly great Junji Ito story?
This is going to confuse and give people unexpected nightmare fuel. I gleefully look forward to it. Junji Ito is a master of WTF horror and this is one of the most bizarre things he ever has done.
Ugh, the most overrated one. Seriously, after three or four chapters, it got repetitive and dumb as hell, and yes, I read ALL of it. I had a summer day to kill. His shorter stories, like the Amigara Fault, are better.
fuck yeah. they can do it right
Junji Ito is similar to H.P. Lovecraft in another way: he’s terrible at writing endings to his stories.
The eerie music in this trailer seems definitely inspired by the Silent Japanese Film, A Page of Madness.