The release of Uzumaki was first planned for 2020, but it got delayed three times before coming out.
Adult Swim released today’s official trailer for its much-anticipated anime based on Junji Ito’s horror manga Uzumaki. It looks like it’s going to be super scary and exciting.
Uzumaki is a four-episode anime from the studio behind Ghost in the Shell, Production I.G. It tells the story of Kirie Goshima, a high schooler, who faces terrifying events as a strange spiral pattern haunts her town. At first, the townspeople find the spiral weird but harmless, but soon it takes over their lives, leading to creepy and disturbing body horror.
Advertisement Uzumaki was originally set to air on Toonami in 2020, but it faced three delays. Production I.G. shared on their official X/Twitter page that they needed more time to perfect the black-and-white CG style, making sure it captured the detailed artwork from Junji Ito’s manga.
Recently, Jason DeMarco, who is the executive producer of Uzumaki and a senior vice president at Adult Swim, shared in an interview with Vulture about the many problems they had while making the series. One major issue was that the COVID-19 pandemic stopped work on the anime.
DeMarco told Vulture that the pandemic shut down production for almost a year, calling it the biggest problem they faced. The crew was small, so when a few members and their families got seriously sick, it really affected the work and everyone’s spirits. He said it was tough to get the show going again.
DeMarco also shared that Flying Lotus, a long-time music partner with Adult Swim, suggested making Uzumaki in black-and-white CG to capture the scary feeling of Ito’s manga pages.
“I thought it was a great idea and mentioned it to director Hiroshi Nagahama during our first meeting,” DeMarco said. “It turned out he had been thinking the same thing and was excited that I brought it up.”
“Nagahama wanted to use motion capture, create everything in CG, and then re-draw it all. He believed this would help the animators handle Ito-sensei’s very detailed artwork,” DeMarco explained. “Choosing to make the show in black and white caused some production challenges, but it definitely looks amazing.”
Adult Swim’s choice to go black and white is a big contrast to other anime adaptations, like Junji Ito Collection and Junji Ito Maniac from Crunchyroll and Netflix, which were in color and didn’t get the best results.
At the end of the interview, DeMarco shared that he and the team at Adult Swim are relieved to finally be done with the tough production of Uzumaki. But he joked that they might be under the same curse as Kirie.
“I still see spirals. Everyone who worked on the show does—millions of them,” DeMarco said. He mentioned that the team even visited a shrine to break the curse. “It didn’t work! Honestly, we all believe the spiral cursed our project. It’s a miracle we finished and survived it.”
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Uzumaki will debut on Adult Swim on September 28, and you can stream it on Max the next day.
Source: Gizmodo