Uzumaki - Episode 1

At a time when I didn't consider myself a fan of either manga or Japanese animation culture, I bought Junji Ito's Uzumaki as a hardback on Amazon and was fined at customs, only to pay double for the hardback version. It was well worth it, though, and to this day I can still see the spine of the book from my chair in our small home office.

I love Uzumaki's mysterious set-up and Ito's monochromatic drawings, I love the grotesque images, the way the mundane meets the fantastical - yes, there are many aspects that have really stood the test of time, but when people talk about Ito, they usually talk in visual terms. It's about design, about individual cells of the overall comic that have become part of the artist's iconography.

This new Adult Swim-based interpretation takes these creepy, freaky images and lifts them straight off the page and into an anime context. If you either haven't seen them before, or maybe you have and want a fond rewatch, that's exactly what this series gives you - no more, no less. This is a direct interpretation of Uzumaki's twisted tale, with only animation quirks. And maybe that's enough?

The reason I position Ito as more of a visual designer is not to undermine his storytelling ability, but this series version of Uzumaki highlights both the strengths - and weaknesses - of the original work, with fairly classic narrative techniques like pacing, coherence and dialogue clearly being Uzumaki's weakest link alongside the unique, suspenseful standalone scenarios that only appear more cohesive and effective here as anime.

In particular, Uzumaki's almost anthology-like structure doesn't fit quite as well in an animated context, and while each of the twisted stories contribute to a sinister whole, Kurôzu-Cho's gradual journey through the spiral (both figuratively and literally) and systematic decay still appears just as fragmented as in the comic. There's more cohesion here, thankfully, and that's where the people behind this interpretation take the biggest creative risks, by reinforcing the connective tissue between the separate narratives, but it's still not quite enough. My girlfriend Klara, who has no relation to the source material, noticed the fragmented pacing immediately and considered it a bit of a turn-off, even though the individual scenes can be eerily intense, and of course extremely creative visually.

As I said, it's in these individual shots that Ito, and by extension this one-to-one interpretation of the comic, flexes his creative muscles, and precisely because no risks are taken with these crucial scenes, they are just as powerful as when I saw them in the monochromatic comic pages almost 10 years ago.

This is only a review of the very first episode of the series, but it's very, very clear what kind of interpretation this is, it's the most faithful one, and that's worth respecting, but in doing so, the little missteps have also been copied over pretty directly. You should take that into account, but you should also experience Uzumaki - one way or another.