Uzumaki is a popular horror manga from the late 90s that fans have always wanted to see in an anime that does justice to the incredible art of creator Junji Ito’s original work. Recently, it seemed like Adult Swim was finally finding success with an adaptation that took five years. The first episode definitely lived up to the hype, then the second episode was dropped, leaving fans scratching their heads at the shocking drop in animation quality.
According to the latest episode of Uzumaki Aired this week, the reactions started rolling in. “The drop in quality in Episode 2 of Uzumaki “It’s actually embarrassing, wow,” wrote a fan. “My day is ruined…” wrote another. Clips of stilted scenes went viral on social media. In some places it was so bad that it seemed as if only a major production error could have been responsible.
Then Adult Swim executive producer Jason DeMarco made a cryptic statement about Bluesky (above Gizmodo), which was later deleted, but not before it made the rounds on Twitter and Reddit. “I can’t talk about what happened, but we got screwed,” he wrote. “The options were A) not finishing and not airing anything and calling it a loss, B) just finishing episode 1 and airing it and leaving it incomplete, or C) playing all four, with all their flaws. Out of respect for the hard work, we chose C.”
It seems as if the production team was aware that the series would be criticized, but perhaps not as harshly as the actual reactions ultimately turned out to be. DeMarco teased that there were specific people who were responsible for the shoddy work, but wouldn’t say who they were. “I didn’t think the actions of just one or two people should be the reason it never saw the light of day,” he wrote.
Adult Swim did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Uzumaki is about a quiet Japanese village afflicted by a curse in which mysterious spiral forms take over, causing paranormal effects and corrupting people’s lives and their surroundings. This unique horror premise is a perfect, yet extremely challenging, concept to illustrate in motion. The assumption, first expressed in 2019, was that five years meant everything had been carefully crafted for the four-episode Toonami series in the fall.
“The pandemic completely halted production on the show for almost a year. “It was the biggest impact,” DeMarco said told vulture last month. “Our crew was small, so having even a few members and their families become fatally ill was a huge blow to production and our morale. It was a big challenge to bring the show back from the dead.”
But even at that point, there was no notion of any last-minute sacrifices or compromises on the overall production. Now fans are left to wonder what exactly happened to derail the team’s ambition, and whether things will pick themselves up or get just as difficult in episode three. Is Uzumaki another victim of David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery brutal cuts? Does it have to do with bits and pieces of Cartoon Network? disappears randomly in the last month?
The secret, like that UzumakiThe vortices remain. At least for now.
