Once an incredibly anticipated series, Adult Swim's anime adaptation of Junji Ito's supernatural horror manga Uzumaki has failed to live up to fans' expectations. Produced by Production IG USA in partnership with Adult Swim, the series debuted on September 28th, with the second episode following on October 5th.
While the first episode certainly lived up to the hype, which had been building since the adaptation was first announced back in 2019, the series took a turn for the worse with its second episode. Fans immediately took notice of the series' drop in animation quality with Episode 2.
No one was quite sure what exactly went wrong or who was to blame for the drop in quality; however, Adult Swim executive producer Jason DeMarco offered a bit of insight in a now-deleted post on Bluesky.
He wrote:
"It's fine, we knew this would happen. I can't talk about what went down, but we were screwed over, and the options were A) not finish and air nothing and call it a loss, B) Just finish and air Episode 1 and leave it incomplete or C) run all four, warts and all. Out of respect for the hard work we chose C. After waiting so long, it makes sense people would be mad. Unfortunately, I can't tell them who to blame it on... but someone is definitely at fault here, and we all just had to do our best when things imploded. Maybe others would have made different choices. We did the best we could with what we had.
But again, a lot of people worked very hard on this show, and I didn't think the actions of just one or two people should be the reason it never saw the light of day. Maybe that's the wrong choice. I truly don't know. But those people have a right to be annoyed and disappointed. I'm glad you are digging it."
Uzumaki's drop in animation quality has been pointed out by many on social media. But it perhaps should not have been totally unexpected.
As I mentioned above, the series was first announced back in 2019. It had undergone multiple delays and setbacks during its production. DeMarco had even previously joked about the series' "cursed" production. Although DeMarco did not go into detail about what went wrong, he made it abundantly clear that someone is to blame. Maybe one day we will find out who.
For now though, fans can look forward to two more epsodes of the series. But it doesn't sound like we should expect an improvement in quality. If anything, it sounds like it may get worse.
Based on the supernatural horror manga, the synopsis for Uzumaki reads:
“Let’s leave this town together,” asks Shuichi Saito, a former classmate of Kirie Goshima, a high school girl who was born and grew up in Kurouzu-cho. Everything from a strange whirlwind, billowing smoke from the crematorium, and the residents is turning into spirals. People’s eyes spin in whirls, a tongue spirals, and the bodies twist unnaturally. In an attempt to escape the curse of the spirals, Kirie decides to flee from Kuouzu-cho, but can she get away from this turmoil?
Have you watched any of the episodes in the Uzumaki television anime series? If so, let us know your thoughts on the qualit.