Welcome everyone to another year of Otakutober 2025! What a wild year it’s been! So wild in fact that we changed our original blogging plan for this year’s Otakutober! Some things we just had to discuss! Like this one! What the hell happened to Uzumaki?? I, Star, will fill you in!
For those who don’t know what I’m referring to, it’s the animated series project of Junji Ito’s story Uzumaki. Referring to not Naruto, but the Japanese meaning of the word Uzumaki which means spiral. So naturally, the series is about an infestation of spirals that slowly takes over a town swallowing it whole. It begins with an obsession and ends with a strong will to live as we follow two highschool students and their families as they try their best to escape the mesmerizing spirals.
The manga had a very intense and complex plot as beautiful and haunting as the spiral, which is the story’s inspiration for the 3 volume series. Unfortunately the timeline for the project was cut short as it suffered disagreements between the creator and the production company which pushed the series to wrap up the plot much faster than intended. It was slotted to be a full 1 season anime with roughly 12-13 episodes. Its final production ended up being 4 episodes long ranging from 23-33 minutes an episode. As avid watchers of anime, we know that isn’t nearly enough time to cover all the twists and turns of the plot and characterization.
In preproduction, Junji Ito rather loved the screenplay adaptation and gave it its blessing. He was a part of the process wanting to bring forth a juxtaposition to the spiral’s use as a positive in most animations to be the opposing side of nature’s use of spirals as whirlpools and mosquito coils. Artistically, it’s a true work of art. Giving omage to Junji Ito’s style. It was haunting and disturbing, as a true psychological thriller with rather grotesque body horror working in tandem with feelings of obsession and overwhelming fear. Many readers of Junji Ito’s work compared him to be a modern HP Lovecraft and Uzumaki to be his “magnum opus”.
So what happened? Was the anime cursed from the start?
While in production they ran into a few complications like COVID 19 that caused a pause from the artists. But there were many other factors like funding that contributed to the finishing of the product and in the end left feeling rushed, cutting certain storylines short. Since they were under the impression of finishing the story they didn’t plan to cut stories short. Ultimately they couldn’t tell the story the way they wanted to. The American producer of Uzumaki posted this on a Reddit forum that spawned suspicion that there was certain other hands at play with much less passion.
One person with experience in the animation field followed up with blatantly honest expectations of what probably happened. And from what I know about why anime are often cut short this is no different and sadly I agree with the person who posted.
Let this be a lesson to those who are ignorantly upset about unfinished products. No matter the passion there are higher powers at work to make a production happen. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end! Perhaps in the future there will be another passionate person to animate Uzumaki in its entirety.
Xoxo
Star
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