ImImNotAnOtaku1
October 20, 2024
Mixed FeelingsWell-written
The human mind is home to every single one of the greatest inventions that we, as a species, have seen; be them practical devices or amazing stories, there's a near infinite amount of beauty which originates in the brain of many a-homo sapiens sapiens out there. The human mind is also home to whatever the fuck this is, so it more or less evens things out to a middle-ground between "wonderful" and "God please we need another great flood and this time without Noah's ark". Junji Ito is, undeniably, one of the greatest horror writers in recent history, and Uzumaki is by many considered to behis magnum opus, his créme de la créme, and for those who don't understand Latin nor French: his bestest, goodest work. It takes a single man's mind to come up with such a story as that of Uzumaki, and when I mean "a single man's mind", it is in the sense that absolutely nobody else would have imagined such blasphemy which would have gotten him burnt at the stake a few centuries ago. In simple terms, he should consult a psychiatrist.
Uzumaki provides a rather basic horror plot: "some small rural town has a curse!", but the main thing about it is that the curse in Uzumaki is one that revolves around spirals, which at the time in which this story was originally written, were generally seen as a good or positive symbol in Japanese society, which prompted Mr. Ito to subvert said notion to create the basis of the story's plot. The first problem you'll find here is that such notion is, well, part of Japanese society, and perhaps also too localized in time (1990s), which makes at least a part of this anime's appeal be lost, since there's no real perception being subverted as a ways to achieve greater impact on the audience given that most Western audiences and perhaps many Asian/Japanese audiences do not (any longer) have any "positive" perception of spirals; in fact, while spirals might refer to cycles, beauty or nature in Japanese aesthetics, they are often associated with negative connotations in western audiences, such as madness, hypnosis, chaos and else, which in turns, completely nullifies any attempt at having a cultural impact on most of the younger people, specially those who are not from the Japans.
Now, the cultural impact of Uzumaki's plot might be an important root for the story's whole existence, but it is far from being what truly seeks to make an impact on those consuming it. This piece of Junji Ito's works does not rely on cultural cues to make the audience feel horrified, but on sheer visceral depravity: the type of events that are seen throughout Uzumaki will certainly make a lot of people want to look away due to the incredibly disgusting and morbid nature of it: ever wanted to see two humans turn into giant snails and then mate? Here you will get to see it... lord, believe me, you WILL get to see it. Such morbidity is what Uzumaki relies on for shock, and while it is certainly its most interesting aspect, it is, however, one of its greatest problems: the nature of everything revolving around spirals, and the rapid onset madness of the plot, which in turn leads to the aforementioned morbid events, make it so that it very quickly becomes predictable and much less impactful, which will make those with a stronger stomach rapidly find the anime to lose appeal given that whatever remains to be seen won't feel as horrid as that which has been already showcased earlier.
The horror genre is a complicated one: it is certainly hard to write a story that's convincing, after all, most horror relies on supernatural phenomena, which in turn needs to provide a coherent argument as to why such phenomena happens which can then cancel any necessity for suspension of disbelief by those consuming it: having a story about a ghost haunting a house, and not providing a coherent reason why the people who live in the house just don't go live fucking elsewhere, makes for lazy writing, since it'll require the audience to ignore all logical thinking in order to be capable of enjoying the story, which certainly makes it harder to take seriously. Perhaps the greatest problem with Uzumaki is that it cannot be said that it manages to do just that; watching this miniseries implies a rather large amount of suspension of disbelief, because the characters tend to act irrationally, and no explanation is ever given for such behavior. For reasons not explained (or at least not explicitly-enough so), most of the characters have highly illogical reactions to even highly more illogical events: it'd seem as if everyone wants to pretend everything is a-ok in a town where people are dying in inhumane ways and in which everything is clearly NOT ok by any interpretation of the word. Because of this, Uzumaki's plot quickly becomes void of rationality, which in consequence makes the story feel highly forced and convenient, thus, it makes it appear to be badly written, which will certainly bother those who are here for things other than human snail mating or watching people's body contort and deform way past natural limitations.
As stated at the very beginning of the previous paragraph, creating horror is complicated, and this is because the sense of "horror" consists of many negative feelings which need to be transmitted onto the public: anxiety, despair, restlessness, disgust, and many more emotions and states of the mind are the building blocks of a good piece of horror media, and to achieve them, you need to build an atmosphere through many audiovisual aspects, and in the case of an anime, these include the animation, color palettes, soundtrack, sound design, character design, voice acting, the plot, and many other bits and tads which make up the whole picture. Uzumaki, however, lacks much of them. The sound design is mediocre, the soundtrack mostly absent, the character design ranges from regular to absurd, the voice acting is at many times devoid of effort, the animation is hit or miss... there's just too many issues here. Uzumaki's production value is less consistent than a bipolar teenager's emotions, and it is not only clear throughout the 4 episodes of the anime, but it varies even throughout the very same episodes: the first episode starts off well, but the second has some horrendous animation quality, while the third and fourth tend to switch between good and bad. The whole anime is in black and white, and while this manages to make the entire thing a bit more unsettling, it also feels like a lazy way to avoid greater detail through color, lightning and other visual cues. The fluidity of the animation creates a bit of an uncanny valley feeling; it attempts to feel human-like, but it is not nearly fluid enough to feel convincing, which makes it perhaps be more awkward than anything else. All of this makes Uzumaki feel annoying to watch, since it creates no real atmosphere, no real horror, no real "art"; it instead feels like a bad attempt at adapting the story and adding the label "avant-garde" to justify the crappy production, crappy plot, crappy pacing, crappy you, crappy me, we are a crappy family!
No, Uzumaki is hardly a "good" anime in technical terms, it is just simply shock content disguised as horror, with a lackluster production and lots of issues everywhere; it is a pathetic adaptation of an acclaimed manga, but as bad as it is, it still somehow manages to provide a decent amount of entertainment, and it is not bad at making you go "Jesus what the fuck is this shit, I feel bad for those poor bastards who were asked to animate this" in many occasions. That said, it only works as entertainment, not so much as an impactful story or something memorable for anything other than its horrid morbidity. Give it a try if you got guts, but don't show it to your kids, like, really, that's not a good idea.
