Uzumaki - Episode 1 (Review)
spoilers (duh)
finally watched the first episode of the highly anticipated "uzumaki" anime adaption and it's...
good???
let's just get this out of the way. the animation is absolutely stellar. it really does look like someone ripped all of junji ito's beautiful art right from the pages and gave it motion. i have no idea how they did that on the technical side, but it looks incredible. it captures the dread and horror of what's going on so well. i've read and re-read uzumaki several times by now, but i still flinched at some of the scenes in this adaption because they were so well-animated. if you've never read the manga before i think this gives an adequate experience of what it's like reading "uzumaki" for the first time. this isn't a replacement for reading the original manga (for reasons i'll get into) but it's a damn good style direction. this is how ito's work was meant to be adapted. live action and the typical anime format can't even begin to touch ito's masterpiece. this is what fans of ito have been waiting for. it doesn't just capture the horror but builds on it, adding brand new elements that can only exist in a moving format.
now onto the...less than good parts.
when i first saw the episode count (4 episodes?? 22 minutes each??) i was skeptical. and then pleasantly surprised, when i saw how much story they were crunching into the first episode! we got multiple arcs/chapters of "uzumaki" happening all at the same time in just 22 minutes! on paper, this was a very smart decision. in practice? it's...very mixed bag. on the one hand, as a manga-first fan, i feel like every chapter should have been it's own episode. the pacing is very very fast. with the chapters being so spread out in the manga, you got a real since things were happening over a long period of time. in the adaption, this sense is completely gone. it feels like several chapters' worth of story is happening in the span of a few days. and while that kind of frantic fast-paced horror can work, in this case it means the characters never have time to recover and breathe. i understand ito isn't really about developing multifaceted characters with nuanced personalities, and in a way this works for the adaption! the characters were just a vessel for the story being told, their personalities interwoven directly into the narrative. so the adaption really hammers this in, with how quickly everything happens and how there is absolutely no room for development/character examination between things happening. although this also kind of destroys any space for deep analysis of the story/themes, because it really is just things happening on top of things happening over and over again relentlessly.
it almost feels like a "uzumaki greatest hits" showcase, you know? i'm sure this will spawn a bunch of clips (and possibly memes) all over youtube and other places, just showing off how beautiful the animation is and comparing it side by side with the manga. i also feel like there's an element of crunch, with how this would have worked better as a series of maybe forty-minute episodes (one episode per chapter) instead of cramming all that story into twenty-two minute episodes. but the studio/studios wanted this out fast as possible. yeah, i would have waited three or four or five years extra years for this adaption to be more perfect/paced as well as the manga, but unfortunately (as passionate as the team behind it is) there's always Capitalism to contend with. to be honest, i wish they'd just done the whole thing as a two-hour movie and released it all at once. weekly episodes seems like an odd choice, although probably more profitable/good for numbers.
would i recommend this? YES. you should absolutely watch this, it's a lovely adaption. but if you're expecting the same pacing/vibe as the manga, prepare to be disappointed. it's not perfect, but then again the original "uzumaki" wasn't without it's flaws. what i'm saying is. don't treat this adaption as a substitute for the manga and vice versa. if anything, view this adaption as a teaser/taster for the manga. if you've never read the original manga, watch the adaption first (if you're okay with spoilers ofc) then read the manga.