When Adult Swim announced, way back in 2019, that it was co-producing a TV adaptation of Junji Ito’s body-ruining masterpiece Uzumaki, there was some mild skepticism about whether Ito’s uniquely awful blend of surrealism and gore would survive the translation to the screen with all its peculiar fascinations intact. We’re now happy(?) to report that the series has certainly captured at least the look of Ito’s work, about a village that collapses into madness after being inflicted with an obsession with spirals, and as revealed in the full trailer for the miniseries, out this week.
It’s harder to know, from a trailer, whether the four-episode series will successfully capture the tone of the book, which derives a large part of its horror from the slow, steady development of themes relating to feeling trapped by processes you do not, and possibly can not, understand, even as they incorporate you, inexorably, into them. (It derives much of the rest of its horror, from, well, you presumably watched the trailer, right? That.) A co-production between Williams Street and Production I.G USA, the series will air its subtitled version on Adult Swim’s Toonami block at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 28, arriving on streaming service Max the following day. An English dub will reportedly air a week later.