Uzumaki

The anime's biggest flaw is pacing, it lacks coherence, it's like the purpose of this show is just to animate Ito's scenes from the manga like a kill count compilation rather than telling the story with more clarity, the worse of all is that those scenes only went better on ep1, the rest were mostly "ok" or "meh...". To give more clarity about the absurdity the manga has 19 CHAPTERS it was shortened to 4 EPISODES each with 20 min and ep4 having 30 min.

My expectations on the anime were high, it took 6 years to develop this thing, just to have the best official adaptation of Junji Ito only in the first Episode. Indeed a curse on Adult Swim animes, starts great and then falls flat at the end just like Ninja Kamui or Housing Complex C (which was flat all the way). I didn't watched the other shows like R&M anime or FLCL reboot but as I have seen community review are just not nice with these shows.

Continue to make your west shows Adult Swim, stay away of Japan.

But I am giving it a 5 because for one thing this anime served purpose was to introduce people into Junji Ito's work. Read the original Uzumaki manga for yall that is reading this and perhaps read his other entries as well.

Until then we wait for a Junji Ito adaptation to fall in good hands...

So let me start off by saying, I am unfamiliar with the manga. I don't know a single clue about the storyline so I went in blind.

Let me start off with the positives. The animation is top tier. It seems like it would be easy to pull you in and the atmosphere is really great. The storyline itself seems really interesting, and it was enough to make me continue watching.

As for the rest, I'd have to agree with others when I say it's moving too fast. Halfway through the episode it lost momentum. You don't get to know the characters or anything before the story starts moving forward. From what I've seen, they crammed a few chapters into one 20 minute episode, and you can really tell. I'm going to continue because I'm intrigued, but if they slowed down the pacing, it would make for a more atmospheric and more enjoyable experience.

Well I really want to give this a 7 because this isn't horrible, but I can't. This is a okayish series, but the worst thing is that it's just super disappointing.

It started well with the first episode. It was in my opinion pretty great. Then the drop in quality in episode 2 was very disappointing. Then the quality never got better for the rest of the series.

Animation quality dropped the most, but the pacing also got worse. I have to say though that episode 3 did have okay pacing, but still the animation quality was poor. Episode 2 and 4 felt pretty rushed in my opinion and had pretty bad pacing.

So is this series worth watching? Maybe. It's a short series and if you want to watch a okayish horror anime it might be worth checking out otherwise don't bother.

If episode 2-4 were the same quality of the first episode I'd be willing to rate this an 8 or 9 but the quality fell off a cliff after the first episode. And the pacing ruins any tension the show is trying to build. So it just goes from wacky thing to wacky thing.

This should have been a non-traditional run length with stories that needed to be longer would be longer episodes and stories that were more side stories wouldn't feel the need to maintain a full episode length. But at least then the story would be contained.

Instead this anime adaptation feels like it happens in a matter of days instead of a longer period. It's just a shame because this manga of all of Junji Ito's works deserved a faithful adaptation.

I'm a fan of this kind of horror setup-the slow, creeping dread and the bizarre, nightmarish world and that's probably what kept me hooked for as long as it did. But the lackluster execution in later episodes really started to take away from the experience.

In terms of the art style, the first episode showed so much promise. The use of rotoscoping, while unusual for anime, fit the eerie, unsettling nature of Junji Ito's story. It added a layer of surrealism that felt appropriate for the twisted world of Uzumaki. But after that, the art became more of a distraction than an enhancement. The movements felt stiff and unnatural, and the once eerie tone of the show quickly faded into frustration. It's disappointing because the story deserves better, and the art should have elevated the horror instead of dragging it down.

In the end, this adaptation leaves much to be desired. If you're truly interested in experiencing the twisted world of Uzumaki, you're better off sticking with the manga. At least there, the horror comes through as intended.