Uzumaki – Episode 1

Content warning: Body horror, fatphobia, mental illness (psychosis), extreme bullying, suicide, stalking, sexism

What’s it about? Kyrie’s boyfriend Shuichi has started noticing something strange about their hometown, Kurouzu-cho. Shuichi’s father, and slowly the rest of the town, are becoming pathologically obsessed with anything spiral shaped. As this obsession begins to border on violence, can they protect the people they care about from the encroachment of the ever-present spirals?

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Well, it’s here. In some ways, we should all be celebrating that it’s here at all. Given all the productions that have been caught up in production hell or even canceled lately, it seems that even being a license to print money like Madoka Magica or Yuri on Ice does not prevent the industry from industrying. It was starting to seem like Uzumaki would go the way of Ice Adolescence, but here it is at last. And it has, in my opinion, been well worth the wait. Stunningly animated, with the kind of avant-garde soundtrack you almost never hear in anime, and genuinely stomach churning, if you are any fan of Ito’s style of horror you would do yourself a favor by pausing reading this and watching the show right now.

This show made many controversial choices–but, in my opinion, every single one paid off. This review may in fact read a bit like a series of caveats that turn out not to be caveats at all. The first: the pacing is, in fact, very quick. Part of this is somewhat due to the adaptation, which takes some scenes that would have happened in plain view of the camera and puts them in the mouth of a character telling them to us with visual illustration. This makes some of the dialogue come across as more exposition dump than character building, particularly from Shuichi. 

The exposition dump style of the dialogue isn’t necessarily entirely a problem, however, as it contributes to an atmosphere of paranoia–having Shuichi tell all the terrible things happening to his family to his girlfriend Kyrie contributes to the sense of conspiracy, as he desperately wants to be believed. And the consequences for being believed or not could not be higher.

The visuals sell the horror in a truly spectacular fashion. Much of the show uses a complex combination of 2D and 3D, where live-action actors performed the scenes in motion capture suits, the whole series was mapped and first animated in 3D, and then it is traced over in 2D again. This has been an extremely controversial choice–especially given how people remember Nagahama’s rotoscoped production, Flowers of Evil, many were uncomfortable with the idea of Ito’s art being put through such a seemingly arcane process. It certainly was not efficient, and, when you put together the line-heaviness of the character designs from the manga (Kyrie’s hair alone!) and the fluidity of the animation, it makes perfect sense that it took so many years for this show to come out.

In contrast to those who dislike it, I think this 3D-2D combination works phenomenally well. The technique both creates a sense of uncanniness to the whole production, and it also allows the subtlety of the acting choices to give the often somewhat archetypal characters an added sense of reality and depth. It is especially eerie to see Ito’s original character designs move so fluidly, and when the truly horrific moments happen, there is a clear transition into traditional 2D animation that sticks out all the more. It makes the grotesque feel even more alien to this world when the world feels so much more real.

In terms of characters, as I said above, many of the characters are largely archetypal. Shuichi is the Cassandra who will never be believed as he warns people to leave, Kyrie is his caring girlfriend who is attempting to come to grips with this new reality, and the rest of the world is madness. 

The archetypical characterization only really creates problems once characters from truly marginalized backgrounds enter the story–the second the fat character Katayama enters the screen, he is immediately subject to nasty comments about his alleged lack of physical ability, and then becomes the subject of violent bullying. While somewhat par for the course for much of horror media, you should be aware going in that this is a series that will not just save its horror for the supernatural. The disgusting parts of human society will also be examined–and sometimes, that examination feels a bit sexist, as in the case of Azami, who comes across as a pretty stereotypical femme-fatale who chews boys up and spits them out.

Before I end, I have to give a shoutout to the absolutely gorgeous score by Colin Stetson. The saxophonist-composer uses his instrument to create soundscapes that are unlike anything else you’ve ever heard–his horn becomes abstracted into a sound design element, with the rising and falling arpeggios of the bass saxophone seeming to call to mind the titular spirals of the series itself, or the flowing of the wind as it spins into a tornado.

Needless to say, I will be watching more of this. Whatever mess the show is doing is more than outweighed by the astonishing aesthetic depth. Nagahama, you’ve done it again. Thank you.

[Editor’s note: This article was correctly shortly after publication to clarify that the animation technique was not rotoscope as previously stated but combination of 3D motion capture and 2D animation.]

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