Life comes at you fast. Just last week, the anime community was poised to celebrate Adult Swim and animation studio Production I.G‘s anime adaptation of horror auteur Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, which had long been delayed, as a triumph over the curse of subpar anime projects. However, it now appears that it too suffers from lackluster animation quality. What’s more, its fall from grace occurred in the span of a single episode.
Over the weekend, Adult Swim released the second of four episodes in its Uzumaki limited series. In a similar fashion to its smash hit premiere, episode two undertook the herculean task of adapting roughly six chapters of the source material into a 27-minute episode. Reader, I fear we’ve fallen into a real life spiral because episode two of Uzumaki is a far cry from the impression its first episode left.
If one were to summarize the animation quality in Uzumaki episode two, it would be “wildly inconsistent.” The rotoscoped charm and bounce of its bouncy black and white characters and the granular detail of the shadows that danced across their faces in abject horror have given way to flat CG renderings of character models that feel more akin to low polygon NPCs in a video game.
What’s worse, the show’s brisker pacing highlights this sudden animation drop off by cutting from poorly detailed shots of supporting characters to high-quality vanity shots of protagonist Kirie. If anything, episode two feels synonymous with taking an SAT test you barely prepared for, skipping questions for later, and filling in bubbles in a panic at the last possible second in hope that your 1/4th chance of selecting the right one is in your favor. Unfortunately, Uzumaki episode two fails with flying monochromatic colors.
In keeping with the video game analogy, the CG modeling of character movements in episode two is so rigid that it turns any narrative body horror occurring on screen into an awkward visual horror in its own right. No scene exemplifies the drastic decline in animation quality in Uzumaki episode two more than this clip of a teenage couple running away from their parents on the beach.
My day is ruined… https://t.co/vHLW1HWoOZ pic.twitter.com/dgJtIFvxCZ
— _doffylamingo (@doffylmingo) October 6, 2024
Suffice it to say, Uzumaki‘s sophomore episode had fans collectively scratching their heads, leading to the big question: how did we get here? While most fans posit armchair animation theories that Production I.G either ran out of animation staff and budget to consistently animate Uzumaki to the degree of its premiere, others simply feel misled into believing that there would ever be an anime that would properly adapt the purposeful horror of Ito’s works. And who could blame them, seeing as how one of the show’s self-administered delays was to give the studio more time to recreate “the quality of the intricate designs and detailed line work” of Ito’s best-selling manga. Hell, even the man himself, Ito, claimed to io9 that Uzumaki was “most complete demonstration of my artistic ability and imagination.”
Uncharitably speaking, Uzumaki‘s second episode retroactively makes its premiere look like the studio put its best foot forward, lulling viewers into having faith that it would be the one to break the anime adaptation curse. Playing devil’s advocate, one might say that with only two episodes of Uzumaki remaining, the end is nigh, and perhaps mercifully so. On the bright side, the only direction for the show’s animation quality is up, hopefully mirroring the finesse of the first episode rather than the second’s less stellar showcase. In the event the series continues to falter, viewers can find comfort in the fact that only an hour of television remains to brave its terrors before they can put this ordeal behind them and return to recommending Ito’s original manga.
io9 has reached out to Adult Swim for comment or clarification on what happened with Uzumaki episode two; we’ll update this post if we hear back.
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