I love a lot about this episode, despite it moving at a breakneck pace. Kyrie is the highlight of the episode as it does a great job of emphasizing her ceaseless ability to empathize with others. The scenarios do not have time to breathe, but incredibly fast pace does create the effect of spiraling anxiety that there is no reprieve from. After all, a lot of what Uzumaki is about is how much the universe is apathetic to our sense of what makes sense and what is fair. Kyrie tries her best to maintain her sanity and help others which is admirable despite the meaninglessness of the spiral's takeover of the town.
Like I said before, the pacing is a real problem and I am confused as to why this only has four episodes. I guess that Junji Ito's work is popular but not profitable? Sometimes it shakes out like that. This lack of budget also extends to the decreased quality of the animation in this episode. There is quite a bit less detail here than in the previous episode and some of the character movements look awkward (but in a way that is unintentionally kind of hilarious- something that works well for horror; i.e. See the moment where Shuichi runs from Kyrie to get some scissors).
I don't know what is going on in television right now but it feels like a gosh darn mess. It is sad that animators are paid so little and worked in to exhaustion. It's sad that studios take on too many IPs so that audiences have to wait years and years for a new season. It's sad that, in America, companies are increasingly undervaluing writers and cutting their time to work on scripts which causes the season to fall apart (after the wins for the WGA this may get a little better- in America, at least). This show clearly loves the manga but is held back by material realities outside of its control. I fear for the future of art in general, to be honest, and this episode did nothing to assuage those fears.
