❝Spirals.... this town is contaminated with spirals.❞
𖦹 · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · · 𖦹
Well. That was certainly an interesting experience, to say the least.
Historically all Junji Ito adaptations have sucked. It's hard to translate the gorgeous illustrations into moving pictures, and part of the reason behind this is that Ito's drawing are meticulous and insanely detailed; only on paper are you able to fully take in all the minuscule features and convert that into fear. Every adaptation until now has either been live-action or used a very generic anime style that subtracts any horror and just leaves you underwhelmed. So when I learned that this version of Uzumaki would have a different art style I was excited, but I should've known.
Episode 1 was perfect: it was exactly what every fan was expecting. The art was stunning, the voice-acting was good, and the pacing was great. And then came episode 2. What a train wreck. The animation looked like it'd been done by a 10 year old in comparison to the previous episode, and there was so much time spent on a very trivial sub-story. Episode 3 was slightly better, and I started to get my hopes up, but of course the universe decided I couldn't be happy, because episode 4 didn't have a big jump in quality and overall was a disappointing finish.
As a longtime Junji Ito fan, Uzumaki was a huge let-down. I wish the original studio had been able to continue after episode 1; it was obvious to see the passion they had, and while it couldn'thave been easy for the other studio to take over and finish everything on time, I'd rather they just cancelled the series altogether. It's hard not to mourn what could've been.
❝Spirals.... this town is contaminated with spirals.❞
𖦹 · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · · 𖦹
Well. That was certainly an interesting experience, to say the least.
Historically all Junji Ito adaptations have sucked. It's hard to translate the gorgeous illustrations into moving pictures, and part of the reason behind this is that Ito's drawing are meticulous and insanely detailed; only on paper are you able to fully take in all the minuscule features and convert that into fear. Every adaptation until now has either been live-action or used a very generic anime style that subtracts any horror and just leaves you underwhelmed. So when I learned that this version of Uzumaki would have a different art style I was excited, but I should've known.
Episode 1 was perfect: it was exactly what every fan was expecting. The art was stunning, the voice-acting was good, and the pacing was great. And then came episode 2. What a train wreck. The animation looked like it'd been done by a 10 year old in comparison to the previous episode, and there was so much time spent on a very trivial sub-story. Episode 3 was slightly better, and I started to get my hopes up, but of course the universe decided I couldn't be happy, because episode 4 didn't have a big jump in quality and overall was a disappointing finish.
As a longtime Junji Ito fan, Uzumaki was a huge let-down. I wish the original studio had been able to continue after episode 1; it was obvious to see the passion they had, and while it couldn'thave been easy for the other studio to take over and finish everything on time, I'd rather they just cancelled the series altogether. It's hard not to mourn what could've been.