Joseph Luster
September 24, 2024 
Junji Ito first made a splash with North American fans back when the excellent and still-missed PULP magazine was serializing the Uzumaki manga. His inimitable work in the field of horror manga has well and truly exploded in recent years, and now an adaptation is once again attempting to conjure that same idiosyncratic magic and carry it to the screen intact. This time, however, it actually worked.
Following the acts of Gyo, as well as the woefully mediocre Junji Ito Collection and Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, the latest anime to bring Ito’s work to life comes from Production I.G, the folks at Adult Swim and Flowers of Evil director Hiroshi Nagahama. The director’s unique presence is immediately felt as we fade in on Kurozu-Cho, a town beset with the ever-increasing presence of mysterious spirals. They can be found in everything, and once you notice them you won’t stop seeing them throughout your daily existence.
Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, start to encounter these spirals and their twisted malevolence in full force as soon as the story begins. One appears on a classmate’s forehead. Another can be found on the back of a student who has been, quite literally, a bit sluggish lately. Shuichi’s father, in particular, is absolutely obsessed with them, and his eventual demise in the first episode is just one of many horrific images to come. Ito has always been the master of the shocker—panels and splash pages with an unforgettably disturbing image front and center. The first episode of Uzumaki alone has so many that, if you don’t remember where the manga goes, you might wonder if they’re showing all their cards within the first 23 minutes.
Thankfully, there’s way more horror to come in the episodes that follow, and the show quickly proves Nagahama as the ideal choice of director. Perhaps all those delays were worth it, because the combined efforts of the staff have finally produced an anime adaptation worthy of Ito’s name. The stark black and white aesthetic, the delicate animation that appears to be at least lightly rotoscoped and/or CG-assisted, Colin Stetson’s haunting score; it all comes together just as it should.
The only adaptation to come close is director Higuchinsky’s 2000 live-action Uzumaki, which covers many of the same beats and presents them with a tone befitting Ito’s style. As enjoyable as it is, it hasn’t held up quite as well over the years, but I don’t have that same concern with the anime, which finally made its debut on Adult Swim near the tail end of September 2024.
I have a special place in my heart for the work of Junji Ito. If it weren’t for Uzumaki’s English home mag PULP, I literally would not have the job I do now. Feel free to ask me about it sometime if we ever run into one another, but you’ll have to scour the deepest, darkest alleys. You’ll have to open that distended barrel, nestled halfway into a crack in the wall at the dead end. You’ll have to steel yourself as you lean forward, hands shaking, to open the door and find the inevitable inside. Just waiting to be seen. Waiting to pass its own unique curse along to the next willing witness. See you in Kurozu-Cho.
© Junji ITO, Shogakukan / Production I.G., LLC
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