Junji Ito Teases New Details About Uzumaki Anime

With the work of Junji Ito, one of the more terrifying authors/artists in the world of manga today, audiences are dragged into some scenarios that are too horrific to even comprehend. Such is the case with Uzumaki, one of Ito’s most notable tales that follow a young girl attempting to decipher her town’s mysterious obsession with “spirals”. With Adult Swim and Production IG announcing that they will be releasing an anime adaptation next year, the man himself Junji Ito has laid out some additional details behind the upcoming release of this unnerving tale.

Reddit User Hippopadu shared the five minute interview with Ito, wherein the master of horror reveals a number of new details about the terrifying story that introduces such horrible things as slug people and clouds formed from the ashes of a deceased body.

Some of the details that Ito dives into is that the series itself will be four episodes, attempting to cover the story that was laid out within the original manga that was released in 1998. Ito also described how the director and producers broke down how they wanted the anime to be black and white, remaining as faithful to the source material as possible. It’s clear, even from the brief footage we’ve seen so far, that Uzumaki is going to be extremely faithful to the manga with the animation looking insanely akin to the comic panels.

Ito’s most recent anime series, The Junji Ito Collection, was received with a mixed reception, with many believing that it didn’t live up to the creator’s jaw dropping, detailed artwork. Uzumaki definitely looks like it will buck this trend, creating animation that looks to be almost drawn by the creator himself.

Will you be catching Uzumaki when it arrives next year? What’s your favorite Junji Ito tale? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and Junji Ito!

Originally created by Junji Ito for Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits in 1998, Uzumaki takes place in a small town suddenly plagued by a mysterious curse involving spirals. Viz Media has licensed Uzumaki for an English language release, and they describe it as such:

“Kurozu-cho, a small fog-bound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in everything from seashells and whirlpools in water to the spiral marks on people’s bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi’s father and the voice from the cochlea in our inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurozu-cho are pulled ever deeper into a whirlpool from which there is no return!”

Via Crunchyroll