Uzumaki

I'm a fan of this kind of horror setup-the slow, creeping dread and the bizarre, nightmarish world and that's probably what kept me hooked for as long as it did. But the lackluster execution in later episodes really started to take away from the experience.

In terms of the art style, the first episode showed so much promise. The use of rotoscoping, while unusual for anime, fit the eerie, unsettling nature of Junji Ito's story. It added a layer of surrealism that felt appropriate for the twisted world of Uzumaki. But after that, the art became more of a distraction than an enhancement. The movements felt stiff and unnatural, and the once eerie tone of the show quickly faded into frustration. It's disappointing because the story deserves better, and the art should have elevated the horror instead of dragging it down.

In the end, this adaptation leaves much to be desired. If you're truly interested in experiencing the twisted world of Uzumaki, you're better off sticking with the manga. At least there, the horror comes through as intended.

Uzumaki was the first manga I've read and upon hearing it was getting an anime adaptation back in 2019 I was excited. Especially after seing the first teaser displaying the gorgeous animation. Five years and three delays later I was kinda let down by episode 1. The pacing was waaay to fast for me to connect with the characters and for any horror to be felt. The best horror works; be it movies, games or novels takes their time and simmer up to a boil slowly when this was speeding down a highway in 200km/h covering like 3-4 chapters of the original manga in roughly 20 minutes. However the music by Colin Stetson and the previously mentioned animation work was amazing. That was when I heard that the anime only would be 4 episodes long... a bit bummed out about that I started watching episode 2. That's when I realized that Uzumaki (the anime) is a total and utter failure. Apparently a new animation studio were chosen for this episode and now the animation looks laughably cheap and bad. Like vomit in a pile of manure. And full of animation errors. I am absolutely gutted by this. One of the reasons for delaying the anime three times were, and I quote: "... we don't want to compromise its quality by delivering a mediocre final product." Oh boy, that ship has sailed. This is not a mediocre product, this is just straight up bad. Really bad. I will probably still watch episode 3 and 4, but not because I have any faith that it will be getting any better after this, but because I want to see how far down the spiral of embarrassment this actually goes.

Well I really want to give this a 7 because this isn't horrible, but I can't. This is a okayish series, but the worst thing is that it's just super disappointing.

It started well with the first episode. It was in my opinion pretty great. Then the drop in quality in episode 2 was very disappointing. Then the quality never got better for the rest of the series.

Animation quality dropped the most, but the pacing also got worse. I have to say though that episode 3 did have okay pacing, but still the animation quality was poor. Episode 2 and 4 felt pretty rushed in my opinion and had pretty bad pacing.

So is this series worth watching? Maybe. It's a short series and if you want to watch a okayish horror anime it might be worth checking out otherwise don't bother.

So let me start off by saying, I am unfamiliar with the manga. I don't know a single clue about the storyline so I went in blind.

Let me start off with the positives. The animation is top tier. It seems like it would be easy to pull you in and the atmosphere is really great. The storyline itself seems really interesting, and it was enough to make me continue watching.

As for the rest, I'd have to agree with others when I say it's moving too fast. Halfway through the episode it lost momentum. You don't get to know the characters or anything before the story starts moving forward. From what I've seen, they crammed a few chapters into one 20 minute episode, and you can really tell. I'm going to continue because I'm intrigued, but if they slowed down the pacing, it would make for a more atmospheric and more enjoyable experience.

Most of the good reviews are of the 1st ep. Which by itself, wasn't that good considering the pretty bad pacing, the only thing that saved it was the music and animation. The second ep is out now and oh boy... the pacing... is absolutely terrible, even worse than the 1st, they skip chapters like I skip my homework. They just put creepy scene after creepy scene after creepy scene witouth much care of how they each play with each other, its almost like they're just trying to meet the quota or notebook checking what creepy scenes they got to include, instead of trying to make any kind of buildup to make them actually work. The animation took a real nosedive too, and this is all on ep2... (to note that the anime has 4 eps only and was postponed like 3 times or something...) how is this even possible, did they waste all their budget on ep 1?

I will be watching the final 2 eps, but honestly, I just really hope that I'm wrong and they didn't waste all their budget on ep 1 animation.......... damn, I'm really disappointed.