Uzumaki - Could this be the first good Junji Ito adaptation?

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I just finished watching it. I think it was okay for a first episode. Compared to other Junji Ito animation adaptions, I like this one the best so far. I'm trying to keep my expectations realistic since I know that no animation will ever come close to the manga.

There are things I didn't like about this episode. My biggest gripe is the use of 3D, some scenes were very distracting when everything suddenly goes to looking like clunky 3D models and clunky 3D movement. Like when the mother was freaking out at the funeral or hospital, that looked really off.

My other issue was how certain scenes came off silly looking rather than creepy. Like the first time Shuichi meets Azami in the alley way and he saw her scar. Was there really no other way to portray that scene? It was supposed to be creepy but it simply wasn't.

Despite my complaints above, I did enjoy watching the first episode. My favorite scene was probably the ash cloud scene at Shuichi's dad's funeral. That looked cool.
 
First episode is pretty good. Shuichi's dad's eyes rapidly spinning in two different directions looked silly but I suppose there's only so much they can do to translate the manga panels accurately.

GrammaNazi dijo:
I'm only speculating about those stories being shortened. I read in an interview that get the manga to fit into a two hour series, some concessions were made. Between the trailer and preview for part two, there was no mention of jack-in-box, which gives me the feeling it's cut down to a minute or two.
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Damn, I always thought jack-in-the-box was one of the freakiest chapters so I hope that's not the case. You're probably right though.
 
Trollblade69 dijo:
Why are the pages flipped?
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Two possible reasons.

Many youtube creators flip videos horizontally to get around copyright restrictions. The second and most likely reason is the pages are flipped to line up with the English way of reading left to right, that way the speech bubbles still line up correctly in the panels.
 
CoolFool dijo:
I just finished watching it. I think it was okay for a first episode. Compared to other Junji Ito animation adaptions, I like this one the best so far. I'm trying to keep my expectations realistic since I know that no animation will ever come close to the manga.

There are things I didn't like about this episode. My biggest gripe is the use of 3D, some scenes were very distracting when everything suddenly goes to looking like clunky 3D models and clunky 3D movement. Like when the mother was freaking out at the funeral or hospital, that looked really off.

My other issue was how certain scenes came off silly looking rather than creepy. Like the first time Shuichi meets Azami in the alley way and he saw her scar. Was there really no other way to portray that scene? It was supposed to be creepy but it simply wasn't.

Despite my complaints above, I did enjoy watching the first episode. My favorite scene was probably the ash cloud scene at Shuichi's dad's funeral. That looked cool.
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That reminds me, was Azami sympathetic in the manga? The anime version seemed to be way more sympathetic than I remember her being....
 
MirrorNoir dijo:
That reminds me, was Azami sympathetic in the manga? The anime version seemed to be way more sympathetic than I remember her being....
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In the manga she's painted as being crazier than in the anime. She harasses Shuichi daily and even buys an apartment next door to him so she can more easily harass and scream about how much she loves him. Kerie tells Azami to stop being crazy and to stop trying to steal her boyfriend, Azami says she doesn't care what anyone says or thinks, she is madly in love with Shuichi and she will not give up trying to win him over.
 
I haven't read the book.

My main issue so far is how everything goes from 0-99 in a few minutes and everyone is so nonchalant about it. Also much of the dialogue and interactions seem stilted and awkward. Its a real shame that this brings down the fantastic imagery.

It seems that this is symptomatic of a story that has been hacked up and crudely reassembled in the interest of saving as much time as possible with poor localization being a distant secondary factor. Can someone who has read the original confirm this or do these problems exist there as well?
 
I adore the artstyle, when it's not 3d, and the mood is great but christ nothing has any room to breath. Azami barely felt like a character, her decent into madness was a vertical drop. It just felt like they where desperate to get to that iconic frame in the first episode since that's what most people know of the series, it's not like it's surprising since it the fucking thumbnail and main advertising image despite the entire point of it is being a shocking sudden reveal. I know it's an uphill battle since they don't have the mechanic of a physical page turn but they could at least not plaster the image everywhere they can.
It's a shame since despite my criticisms the presentation is truly incredible and scenes like the funeral and the hospital worked amazingly especially the finger tip part. If they drop the ball on probably the best possible hope for a junji ito anime just because they arbitrarily decided it had to be just 4 episodes it'll truly be a tragedy.
 
grump dijo:
I haven't read the book.

My main issue so far is how everything goes from 0-99 in a few minutes and everyone is so nonchalant about it. Also much of the dialogue and interactions seem stilted and awkward. Its a real shame that this brings down the fantastic imagery.

It seems that this is symptomatic of a story that has been hacked up and crudely reassembled in the interest of saving as much time as possible with poor localization being a distant secondary factor. Can someone who has read the original confirm this or do these problems exist there as well?
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You are correct. In 22 minutes they used elements of 5 stories from the manga, as far as I can tell. Two of which (around 40 pages each in the manga) were completed by the end of the episode. It has no build up, there is no sense of dread leading up to a climax, just one or two short scenes for a set up and then a very faithful recreation of an iconic image from the manga (Spiral head girl, or Shuichi's dad).

If the animation and artstyle was even slightly worse than what we got. I'd rate this as trash, because of how chopped up it was. As it stands, I can at least appreciate the work they've done to translate Ito's illustrations to animation.
 
The animation is fine, but you can tell when they just are using 3D models rather than actual animation. The slide show of some of it pissed me off because they do animate some shit. They dress them up, but it’s something I notice because they don’t blend well with the background as well.

Uzumaki hits that weird spot of it being silly in its horror, but all Junji Ito stuff does that. The one noose balloon one has that with the Dad being set on going to work despite the noose balloons. Or the fish one where the girl friend becomes a fart balloon.
 
HodgePodgeRogerDodger dijo:
The animation is fine, but you can tell when they just are using 3D models rather than actual animation. The slide show of some of it pissed me off because they do animate some shit. They dress them up, but it’s something I notice because they don’t blend well with the background as well.
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I noticed this, too, but I liked it? It worked, in an unsettling way.

I've only read the story with the mom, from the manga, and I'm excited to maybe see it come to fruition.
 
HodgePodgeRogerDodger dijo:
The animation is fine, but you can tell when they just are using 3D models rather than actual animation. The slide show of some of it pissed me off because they do animate some shit. They dress them up, but it’s something I notice because they don’t blend well with the background as well.

Uzumaki hits that weird spot of it being silly in its horror, but all Junji Ito stuff does that. The one noose balloon one has that with the Dad being set on going to work despite the noose balloons. Or the fish one where the girl friend becomes a fart balloon.
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The Hanging Balloons was adapted in Junji Ito: Maniac on Netflix. That series is pretty good.
 
I liked what I saw so far but at the same time, Ito's art is really best suited for manga only. There's something extremely weird about seeing it in motion. (no I don't plan on watching the Junji Ito colletion because I've heard nothing but bad things about it)
 
Putting little spirals and stuff in the background (beyond the obvious) and even in the crosshatch shading was a fun touch. There's also a face that pops up in the background over Shuichi's shoulder.

Loved it.
 
Hot take.

It would have benefited tremendously if the series was colorized. Yes, it might have added another decade to the development, but seeing these things in color, with the direction and artistic design they went with would have elevated it to the point where cut content wouldn't have mattered.

The counter point to this is the other adaptations like the horror collection. To that I say, those didn't suck because they were in color, they sucked because the animation studios who made them were shitty.
 
Did anyone watch the English dub on Thursday night? Technically, Friday morning at 12:30am. It was worse. The English did not make anything better, and felt less like a Japanese manga adaptation and more like a bastardized American version of something great from another country.

Saturday (actually Sunday morning at 12:30am) part 2 will air. The entire 30-second preview commercial is focused on the hair story. It doesn't raise my hopes for the manga to be properly represented. The studio most assuredly cherrypicked certain stories for their iconic images.
 
Screenshot_20241004_205407_YouTube.jpg
This is the lighthouse arc, right?
 
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