Adult Swim is adapting Junji Ito’s terrifying Uzumaki
By Dan Selcke
Ever heard of Junji Ito? He’s a Japanese manga artist behind some truly horrifying stories, including Tomie, Gyo and The Enigma of Amigara Fault. His stories often deal in the horror of the unknown — oftentimes, there isn’t a monster per se, but rather a mysterious force beyond human understanding that drives the characters to madness. When brought to life by It’s deeply unsettling artwork, these stories are among the best horror tales to come out in the past few decades.
All that said, Ito isn’t widely known in the west, although a lot of his best-known stuff came out in the 1990s and 2000s. That could be changing soon, though, as Adult Swim has announced that it’s partnering with Japan’s Production IG to adapt one of his most chilling stories, Uzumaki, as a four-part series to run as part of its Toonami line of shows.
Told in three volumes, Uzumaki is one of Ito’s longer stories. It’s about a town that falls under the spell of a strange obsession with spirals — you know, the shape. Spirals start appearing everywhere, in the water, in the clouds, and eventually, in the flesh of the characters. Without knowing why, the townspeople become hopelessly, dangerous obsessed with spirals, resulting in some horrific imagery guaranteed to keep you up at night.
Adult Swim released a teaser for its adaptation, although right now it’s little more than images from the manga with some animation added in:
Uzumaki was adapted before as a live-action movie in 2002, but not particularly well:
In fact, studios have had a hard time adapting Ito’s stuff in general. There was an anthology anime series based on his work released last year, but it also fell short of expectations.
Can Adult Swim break the curse? Uzumaki will drop in 2020.
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h/t The A.V. Club