Episode #1.1

Reading the reviews and background of Junji Ito, the failed Netflix adaptation and the years people have been waiting for this is very interesting. A friend and I were spending a night in a hotel this past weekend and had adult swim on for background noise. I kept seeing the teaser for this show and decided to stay up a bit longer to watch the premiere.

It's a very solid premiere too. I went in very blind and am really digging it. The animation is sublime, absolutely gorgeous. I love the black-and-white aesthetic, but you can just tell so much effort went in to this style. It's different from much of the other anime I've watched. You can tell they were trying to keep the look and feel of the manga accurate and spot-on.

The whole spiral thing is actually really cool and a bit creepy too. I was initially on the fence about a show about spirals, but this changed my mind. Sole very unnerving imagery (the spinning eyes were especially uncanny), and I think it has a very interesting set of characters to boot.

I may try to watch the rest of this, seeing as there are only a few episodes left. Am I going to get a Max subscription just to finish an anime I didn't even know existed until it premiered? I just might, I just might.

Someone finally did it. They managed to adapt a Junji Ito piece properly. Ito's work is notoriously hard to translate to other mediums due to the unique ways it utilizes the medium of manga. Netflix's Junji Ito Maniac and the Junji Ito Collection before it both failed to adequately translate Ito's work into the medium of animation, and they lost the strengths of the original's medium.

Uzumaki thankfully does not suffer from the same results. The animation is hauntingly beautiful, the sound design is creative and fun, and the animation serves to add more details and add creative effect to the original manga. It gains the strengths of the animation medium and it looks amazing doing it.

It is a little strangely paced though. Readers of the original manga will notice that it jumps around chapters a lot, and it is not a 1 to 1 adaptation. They don't necessarily add stuff or remove important things, but smaller moments and character development are left out. This isn't terrible since character development is one of Ito's weak points and some of the less interesting stuff in the original manga, but it leads to it feeling a little rushed. I also think some viewers who haven't read the manga would be slightly confused about the story in the first episode.

Overall, an incredible first episode, so excited to see the next 3. Really wish this series was more than 4 episodes so it had some time to breathe though.

The animation? Wow just amazing, so haunting and unique!

I haven't read the manga, but I found the pacing very chaotic, like in a lot of moments, the show sacrifices story development for visual impact, so I felt very confused through all the episode.

The story moves very quickly from the first moment, which can be annoying at times but also leaves me wondering what is going to happen next? Will it follow the same pacing? Did they want to fast forward to reach some key point in the story?

I have never seen a production like this that from the first chapter had such a crazy pacing, but I hope in the end it will be worth it.

This show sure has a lot to offer. I had no issue with the time it took and will take to release this show as long as the end product is good. And it really is! The attention to detail in animation, stylistic choice and symbolism, metaphors and connotation is highly respectable and commendable. The story is interesting, unsettling and seems to be spiraling out of control 😭 This anime truly inspirals me to think of different unique perspectives and ideas I had previously not considered, it's soundtrack perplexes the listener and viewer to question their own circumstances, physical existence and surroundings. It is truly harrowing, mind-boggiling and nice to watch this show, I highly recommend it simply from the first episode, as this episode proves to me beyond all, that the makers of the series care about putting attention to detail and ultimately making a good show!

Finally, a work that had to be done for a decade, and someone took it and made it perfect, drawings, sounds, and American voices are very well crafted. There is a beautiful mysterious layer on the drawings, I wish they weren't that " literal" sometimes but I don't want to be a perfectionist when at least we are able to enjoy this in another format.

A good note also for the sound design, there is great attention and emphasis on it, and I like a lot how much attention they put because that really makes a huge difference when it comes to an anima of this level. Owning the book makes this even better, I suggest to anyone to read it.