Fear fans mark your calendars and count down the days. The long-awaiting anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s horror masterpiece Uzumaki got a premiere date, along with a teaser, via Adult Swim. The subbed release drops September 28th, and from what the trailer shows, we can hardly wait to see what it has in store.
Junji Ito is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in horror manga, but his works are notoriously difficult to adapt. His intricate and grotesque art style often doesn’t marry too well with designing for animation. While we don’t think that the Junji Ito Collect or Junji Ito Maniac animated series are totally without merit, it’s undeniable that the animation was a visual downgrade from the manga source material.
It seems Drive, the studio behind Uzumaki anime, took this to heart. The visuals we’ve seen so far for the anime look incredibly similar to the manga, right down to the greyscale color scheme and sketch lines.
Will this finally be the adaptation that does the original art style justice? Well, guess we’re waiting until September to find out. Our hopes are pretty high though.
A Doomed Town
For any not yet familiar with the surreal and terrifying ride that is Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, we’ll do our best to explain… though that’s a challenge. The manga centers around the coastal town of Kurozu-cho. A few of the residents feel there’s something.. wrong about the place. Something sinister.
They’re not wrong.
Kurozu-cho is cursed. Not with a monster, or hauntings, or bad luck. It is cursed with a shape. The spiral. Strange happenings begin to plague the residents, all of them tied to spirals. The stairs of a lighthouse, a vortex in a pond, curls in locks of hair… none of them are safe from this inexplicable and horrifying corruption.
The events that follow are bizarre, stomach-churning, and often leave you forever looking at mundane things in a different way.
Please don’t talk to us about the cochlea in your ear. If you know, you know.
If you’re eager to watch, check out Adult Swim.
Want some more anime news? Check out out piece on the Crunchyroll sports anime available for free during the Paris Olympics.
