Netflix may have butchered Junji Ito’s Tales of the Macabre, but every horror manga fan has been waiting for Adult Swim’s adaptation of what is considered to be Ito’s most iconic work—Uzumaki.
The series was originally announced back in 2019 expecting a 2020 release, and after multiple delays, the series is finally expected to come out later this month.
Uzumaki: The Curse of the Spiral Unleashes New Trailer
To get fans ready to jump into Ito’s haunted world of spirals, Adult Swim has dropped a new trailer showcasing several of the short stories that helped put together the haunted world of Uzumaki. Check this out:
For context, the Uzumaki series doesn’t have one solid serialized narrative, but is more of a collection of anthology stories that follow a town that is cursed by the ‘Spirals’. The spirals themselves aren’t some kind of sentient villain, but they do connect several highly grotesque terrors that are plaguing the small village of Kurouzu-cho.
Several previews of the series had shown events from the first chapter of the manga, but this latest trailer manages to tease other stories in the Uzumaki book including a young girl who had a spiral growing on her forehead, a boy that is turning into a snail, and a group of pregnant women that want to devour suck blood.
Why Was the Series Delayed?
Though the series was originally set to come out in 2020, Anime News Network reports that the studio had decided to delay the property in order to “replicate the quality of the intricate designs and detailed line work” of Ito’s original manga.
Originally, it was said that the plan for the series was just to minimally animate panels from the manga—not unlike the Way of the Househusband anime on Netflix. Fans never got to see much of what the series was supposed to look like, but seeing the quality of animation in the latter trailers, it does seem like Uzumaki is now a more faithful adaptation.
Not only does the series follow the exact panels from the book, but they even kept to the original black and white aesthetic of the manga to really put an emphasis on the linework.
Junji Ito, Horror Master
Japanese horror has a very specific flavor to it, but Junji Ito is considered to be an icon when it comes to horror manga, and it’s thanks to Uzumaki. Not only does the series contain some of the most disturbing and haunting imagery that has ever been put to paper, but it also manages to instill a fear for something so easily occurring in nature like the spiral.
It’s also worth noting that Ito also has a penchant for drawing very attractive young women to be protagonists for his manga. As per him, it sort of balances out the extreme horror when readers also get to look at a beautiful face.
After years of delays, fans are hoping that Uzumaki manages to deliver on what is considered by some as the gold standard for horror manga. Hopefully, it doesn’t disappoint, and should be a great jumping-off point into the world of macabre that Junji Ito has crafted.
Uzumaki finally comes to Max on Sept. 18.