In 2019, Adult Swim and Toonami announced their plans to adapt Junji Ito’s iconic horror manga, Uzumaki, into an anime. Given the outstanding reputation of the original manga, this was a cause for celebration for many anime fans. However, ever since the lockdowns hit, the series has been in a perpetual state of delays, production issues, and rewrites.
While pandemic delays were hardly out of the ordinary, the ones surrounding Uzumaki lasted well beyond 2020, and the anime has been trapped in an increasingly dire development hell for five years. Here is a breakdown of the original manga and the storied history of getting its adaptation off the ground.
Junji Ito’s Original Manga
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In 1998, acclaimed horror mangaka Junji Ito published one of his most iconic works: Uzumaki. The graphic novel tells the story of a quiet seaside town overtaken by an insidious curse: a spiral. It starts with a few people falling into a mania before a Lovecraftian cosmic force overtakes the entire town. The story was praised by horror and manga fans alike and became one of the most awarded entries in the genre.
Twenty years later, the adult animation giant Adult Swim would finally greenlight a four-episode anime adaptation. In preparation, the executives assembled a dream team to bring the work to life. The animation studios Drive and Production I.G. would create it, Hiroshi Nagahama would direct, and they got Hereditary composer Colin Stetson to score the project. Overall, the miniseries had the tools needed to create an iconic horror anime. Before this, the manga received a live-action adaptation and two video games.
The Pandemic Delays
However, the pandemic would hit in early 2020. Most readers are already intimately familiar with the lockdown’s ubiquitous effects throughout the entertainment industry. Many films, such as Black Widow, were delayed by a year, while shows like Stranger Things had to start from scratch. Soon enough, this anime became another casualty. As a result, Nagahama confirmed that they had to “restructure” the entire anime due to the delay.
Even after work resumed after the lockdowns, Uzumaki’s production continued to spiral into further delays. Adult Swim dropped bits and pieces of information for the next four years, followed by news of the release date being pushed further back. At one point, it was announced that the anime would arrive in 2023, only for the window to pass without explanation. As a result, many fans became frustrated with the lack of a solid release date.
Uzumaki’s Eventual Release
While the anime’s delays were frequent and prolonged, they would eventually end. Adult Swim and Toonami finally announced the anime’s arrival at the San Diego Comin Con. The anime premiers on September 28th in Japan and October 3rd in the United States. Additionally, Abby Trott and Robbie Daymond were confirmed as the English voices of the leading duo.
While it’s certainly good news that the animation will finally be released, development hell usually comes with a series of caveats. More often than not, “development hell” is a bad omen for a movie or game’s quality. This is because the original vision is usually lost in rewrites. Prominent examples include Cyberpunk 2077, Daikatana, Netflix’s Death Note, and many others across genres. Even if Uzumaki had a legitimate excuse for its delays, the animated miniseries must prove itself against its skeptics.
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