Adult Swim hit the ground floor running initially with the first episode of the highly anticipated anime adaptation, Uzumaki. For years, fans have been waiting to see the television series that many believed was finally going to “break the curse” when it came to Junji Ito adaptations. Unfortunately, the response to Uzumaki’s second episode is one that many felt the recent Studio Drive/Cartoon Network collaboration means it might ultimately miss the mark. While fans have been sharing their thoughts on the animation issues, a legendary animator in the medium, Henry Thurlow, has shared his thoughts on the matter. Considering Thurlow’s body of work, he’s quite the expert on all things anime.
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Henry Thurlow had made quite the name for himself in the anime industry. When it comes to the One Piece franchise, the animator is the first non-Japanese animator to direct an episode. For his resume, his library of titles is almost too large to list in one article but some of the mainstays include Attack on Titan, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Tokyo Ghoul, Overlord, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Gintama, Fire Force, and many more. In a thoughtful series of posts, Thurlow shares his mind of the recent Uzumaki anime adaptation while trying to diagnose what went wrong.
Henry Thurlow Talks Uzumaki
To start, Thurlow expressed the fact that while he has no “behind the scenes knowledge” on what happened, he still has some thoughts on the matter, “I have so much I want to say about the Uzumaki adaptation… but it’ll never fit into a set of tweets. (It’s times like these I miss the vlog series we use to do where I could rant for 20 minutes) all I’ll say then, in short, is this. While I don’t have any actual bts knowledge of the Uzumaki production, it was advertised as a Production IG series for years, only to be marketed as “IG & (not even an IG subsidiary)” at the last moment. I knew there would be a huge gap between the 2 companies work. I’m truly not sure who’s to blame. Of course, artists need time & resources to do great things. If that was taken from IG it’s terrible. It does seem though that IG recently(unlike its glory days) endlessly delays their projects. They go year after year completing very little.”
https://twitter.com/henry_thurlow/status/1843876958029144372
Thurlow Blames Western Producers For Uzumaki’s Weaknesses
Thurlow continued by stating that he loves Production I.G. and that he places the blame squarely on “western producers”, “TO BE CLEAR. I love IG. I’m nostalgic for the days where IG, Madhouse, & 4C were at the top & always outdoing each other. All 3 though seem to have lost their ability to consistently & on-time turn out powerhouse work. It takes them forever to do just a little now. As for the Uzumaki production, at the end of the day it’s almost certainly *some* western producer’s fault. “This is taking too long so force some other studio to finish it I don’t care what it looks like.” I’d bet everything I have that’s how it went down.”
Thurlow than reflected on his own past experiences while even name-dropping the canned “Aliens Vs. Predator” anime, which had been completed but hasn’t seen the light of day, “Again & again these western-produced anime have problems because the western producers are fucking trash. Kawajiri’s last few anime, the unreleased AvP anime, now Uzumaki. Again & again I see Western producers screw over the artists & anime studios here & it’s infuriating.”
Can Uzumaki Turn Things Around?
Uzumaki is already halfway through its anime run, as Adult Swim and Production I.G. had always planned on the series running for four episodes. With this in mind, anime fans are left wondering if the latest Junji Ito will manage to flip the script. What was initially considered one of the greatest horror animes of all time is now one that might go down as a disaster should the animation issues persist according to anime fans.
Want to follow along with the spooky story of Uzumaki? Follow along with Team Anime on ComicBook.com for the latest updates on Junji Ito and his horror world and hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.
