#Junji Ito Says Episode 1 of the Uzumaki Anime Has Been Completed

The four-episode anime adaptation of Junji Ito‘s Uzumaki horror manga has been in development for a while. It was originally supposed to come out in 2020, but multiple delays later, it remains unclear when it will be released.

A new interview with Ito by The Japan Times, however, has shed a bit of light on the anime’s progress. Apparently, the show is currently slated to air Adult Swim “later this year.” 

Also, after all these years, the first of the four episodes has been completed. The Japan Times says that the episode “lives up to” Ito’s expectations.

The Uzumaki anime was announced in 2019. In 2021, director Hiroshi Nagahama (Mushishi, The Flowers of Evil) said the team had to “restructure” the production due to COVID-19 and that the “way we are making this anime is requiring twice as much staff as we normally use.”

A 2022 update spoke of the team’s attempt to “replicate the quality of the intricate designs and detailed line work” of the source material, and previews of the anime have shown its copious use of hatching.

Aside from those brief mentions of the Uzumaki anime, The Japan Times’ interview primarily focuses on Ito’s inspirations and style. The manga artist told the outlet about his use of body horror: “I believe that the human body, with its complex and incomprehensible mind, forms the basis of all horror. Anxiety is an emotion all animals feel, but the anxiety felt by humans, with our highly evolved brains, is unfathomable. The human body is a symbol of that bottomlessness.”

Ito also shared, “Our minds can become distorted by us placing unreasonable expectations on others or by us striving to live up to theirs, fostering an excessive sense of inferiority. I believe a common trait among my characters is their dependency, which can spiral into insanity and psychosis.” 

The Uzumaki manga was originally serialized from 1998 to 1999 in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits and is collected into three tankoubon volumes. Viz Media describes the plot as: 

Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound 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 According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world. The bizarre masterpiece horror manga is now available all in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!

A live-action film adaptation was released in 2000.

Subscribe to our newsletter for more news stories, plus updates on our user-voted chart rankings.