The whole Itou Junji thing is kind of weird for me. I’ve never gotten him, that’s fair to say. No idea why he’s considered to be a master of horror by many. The caveat is that a consensus exists that almost every effort to adapt his work into anime has been a disaster, so that might have something to do with it. I’ve tried Itou in manga form too a couple of times (including this series), though, and it still didn’t take. The side of me that hates being left out has always been rather irritated by all this.
Enter Uzumaki, the new four-episode adaptation of one of Itou’s most famous works. It’s sort of a hybrid creation, commissioned by Cartoon Network for Adult Swim but produced at Production I.G. with a bunch of Americans in key staff positions. Also of note is that it’s directed by Nagahama Hiroshi, who’s yet another odd element for me. I think his work on everything Mushishi is some of the finest in anime history, and I’ve literally never liked anything else he directed. A lot of it comes off as pretentious drivel, if I’m honest.
Here’s the question that keeps running through my mind watching Uzumaki. Is this *supposed* to be funny? I always talk about how personal comedy is, it either works for you or it doesn’t. Oddly enough I think horror is a genre that has some of that too, except that when it doesn’t work for you it often comes off as unintentionally funny. So this is really a meeting of those two syndromes for me. Am I getting humor I’m supposed to be getting, or laughing at something I’m supposed to find deadly serious? I can say with absolute Gods-honest truth that I have no idea which. But I can also say I found a lot of this episode really hilarious.
I also have to wonder (and I know from experience that I’m not alone in this) why the hell anyone stays in this jacked town. Like, seriously – bug out for the dugout, people. Including Shuichi, the protagonist, who literally asks why the hell anyone stays in Kurozou as he stays in Kurozou. He has family entanglements, it’s true, but even so. Normally I groan at the notion of middle-aged actors playing teens but Miki Shinichirou is still Miki Shinichirou and somehow this whole thing is so absurdist that it’s almost logical.
There’s some genuinely creepy stuff here, okay. And some freak-out moments like Shuichi’s mom cutting off her fingertips to get rid of the spirals. Mostly though I just found it to be incredibly silly, and both Nagahama’s direction and the overwrought acting style (not to mention the Svengoolie soundtrack) mesh with that. It is a handsome show at times with its monochrome palette and minimal animation, but Nagahama is doing a lot of showing off, as he tends to do. Before I decide whether I can go anywhere with Uzumaki I have to figure out just how exactly I’m going to take it. And good luck with that.
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