- Uzumaki, Junji Ito and Adult Swim’s upcoming anime now has a full trailer ahead of its release later this month.
- The trailer shows some of the major beats of the story after a long period where nothing was being heard about the series.
- The series hits Adult Swim’s Toonami on 28th September, with streaming platforms seeing it on the 29th but only in Japanese.
Mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved and perhaps most reviled horror tale has taken a real long time to be adapted into an anime, by an American company no less. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Adult Swim is producing Uzumaki and has finally shown off a full trailer ahead of the anime’s 28th September release date.
Just in time for spooky month.
The four-episode miniseries is set to adapt the three-volume manga that absolutely terrified Japanese readers in 1998 and 1999 and the first full trailer reveals how the main characters are dealing with the strange goings-on in the town of Kurouzu-cho where everyone suddenly becomes obsessed with spirals.
You can watch the nearly two-minute trailer below, but it does get pretty weird so you have been warned.
Oh, and if you didn’t know by now, the entire adaptation is, like the novel, in black and white.
Ito has become one of Japan’s most famous mangaka in the west, known for his surreal art style and ability to make seemingly anything absolutely terrifying, including a diary about his home life with his cats.
The visuals in his novels have reached audiences the world over, even in South Africa where local artists sell items based on his works.
The first-ever teaser for Uzumaki was released five years ago when Adult Swim revealed it was working on the adaptation. It also revealed it would be directed by Hiroshi Nagahama (Fruits Basket) with music from Colin Stetson (Hereditary, The Menu).
This short taster really gave hope that the anime could capture the essence of the manga and even now five years later still makes the hairs on our arms stand on end.
After this initially teaser, we heard absolutely nothing of the series for five long years, to the point where some fans were even wondering if it was still coming out. Then just one month ago, another teaser was released showing just how well everything was coming together with some snap shots of key scenes.
According to Ito in several interviews, the series will change the sequences of a few events in order to condense the three volumes into four episodes.
“Four episodes is way shorter than the original manga. They did a good job of rearranging the series. For example, someone who dies early on now plays an important role later on. They did a fantastic job of crafting things together like that. The screenwriter is a very talented individual,” he told Bleeding Cool in 2020.
Uzumaki is set to release on Adult Swim Toonami on 28th September 2024, with it launching on streaming platform Max a day later. With Showmax and Max having a partnership, we may see the series land there for South Africans to watch on the 29th.
Importantly, this will be in Japanese with English subtitles, as the English dub version will only released after 3rd October.
