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The animated adaptation of perhaps one of legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved collections of macabre tales, Uzamaki finally arrived on Adult Swim this month. Uzumaki was initially going to release in 2020, yet production delays plagued this adaptation until finally a completed version met fans the end of September. The first episode gloriously arrived and here are my first impressions via a short review!
Spoilers Big and Small, Up Ahead!
The Vibes
The audience tuning in to watch Uzumaki will be quickly introduced to a place that is not quite right. The small town of Kurouzu-cho is home to both Shuichi Saito and Kirie Goshima who are students and children of families soon affected by the madness overtaking the town. The town has been…contaminated by a spiral–and an eerie feeling has been picked up by Shuichi, and he attempts to explain the wrongness of the place. Kirie, his girlfriend, doesn’t take him seriously when he says “Let’s leave this town together”, and as time passes she begins to understand the place is doomed.
In just a few minutes of this first episode of Uzumaki , the audience is awash in the ideal that this place ain’t right as spirals can be seen in a stream where students are walking, in the sky high in the sky and even with a well-timed burst of wind that interrupts a conversation. The tension is further amplified with the deterioration of a loved one and the introduction of an outsider with a dark agenda. The longer and longer I watched, the more I saw a place stuck in the middle of an outbreak of mania all dedicated to a spiral–and a town held prisoner to it.
Spiraling Out
The black and white color scheme for this animated adaptation here in Uzumaki adds to the overall, eerie tone of the project, for sure. (Flying Lotus, a long-time Adult Swim music collaborator, suggested it as mentioned here!) I love that this idea made it to the final version of what we finally were able to see as it brings us closer to the original manga pages where the story first was born. This visually aesthetic choice makes some of the manga’s most macabre scenes from the first half of Ito’s original work pop on screen brilliantly, turning up the drama and impact. This first episode of Uzamaki shows a myriad of emotions at play: madness, cruelty, disgust, pride, fear, infatuation, desire, and heartbreak.
Even big reveals that I once saw on the page on the manga by Junji Ito, now animated, still shook me and left me flinching away from the screen. I really enjoyed the addition of Colin Stetson to the creative team and his original score for the series. “I absolutely adored my time making this music and inhabiting the strange, gorgeous, horrifying, and spectacular spiral world that Ito-Sensei created” was a statement that he gave in an Instagram post earlier this summer.
Stetson, a composer perhaps best known to American audiences for his work on 2018’s Hereditary, adds a musical score that compliments the darkness and madness that fits Uzamaki like a glove. I especially felt that the music for the sequence where Kirire meets Shuichi’s father was a delightfully frightening sequence where the music played up the terror so well. The way it continued afterwards after she was gone to Shuichi’s scary encounter really connected the two teens in their moments of terror.
Last Thoughts on Episode One:
Uzamaki has finally arrived, and the first episode’s outing earns its stripes by way of it being a creepy, unsettling, and picturesque way that only a Ito manga can be. With a haunting original score, a black and white animation color scheme and voice acting talent not afraid to scream and sound off in distress, it was perfect to watch on a lone Sunday evening. The long-awaited adaptation of one of legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved works, means the second episode has a lot to live up to for older fans and newer fans alike. Hopefully, the series estimated to be four episodes manages to pull off the dire dread that the original work pulls off so effortlessly.
Uzumaki: The Animated Series premiered September 28 on Adult Swim, next day on Max. Based on the original graphic novel “UZUMAKI” by Junji ITO published by Shogakukan Inc. © Junji ITO , Shogakukan / Production I.G.,LLC
About Adult Swim:
Watch Adult Swim on Max, www.adultswim.com or by downloading the Adult Swim app. Binge marathons or watch selected episodes of many of your favorite shows including Rick and Morty, SMILING FRIENDS, The Boondocks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and many more.
Watch Adult Swim on Max: http://bit.ly/3Gy0aXA SUBSCRIBE: https://youtube.com/adultswim1?sub_co…
Connect with Adult Swim Online:
Download the APPS: http://www.adultswim.com/apps/
Visit Adult Swim WEBSITE: http://www.adultswim.com
Like Adult Swim on FACEBOOK: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on TWITTER: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on INSTAGRAM: / adultswim
Love anime? So do we! See what else we have to offer on the site via anime here!
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The post ‘Uzumaki’ Anime Sets Out as an Unsettling and Darkly Picturesque Adaptation appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
The animated adaptation of perhaps one of legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved collections of macabre tales, Uzamaki finally arrived on Adult Swim this month. Uzumaki was initially going to release in 2020, yet production delays plagued this adaptation until finally a completed version met fans the end of September. The first episode gloriously arrived and here are my first impressions via a short review!
Spoilers Big and Small, Up Ahead!
The Vibes
The audience tuning in to watch Uzumaki will be quickly introduced to a place that is not quite right. The small town of Kurouzu-cho is home to both Shuichi Saito and Kirie Goshima who are students and children of families soon affected by the madness overtaking the town. The town has been…contaminated by a spiral–and an eerie feeling has been picked up by Shuichi, and he attempts to explain the wrongness of the place. Kirie, his girlfriend, doesn’t take him seriously when he says “Let’s leave this town together”, and as time passes she begins to understand the place is doomed.
In just a few minutes of this first episode of Uzumaki , the audience is awash in the ideal that this place ain’t right as spirals can be seen in a stream where students are walking, in the sky high in the sky and even with a well-timed burst of wind that interrupts a conversation. The tension is further amplified with the deterioration of a loved one and the introduction of an outsider with a dark agenda. The longer and longer I watched, the more I saw a place stuck in the middle of an outbreak of mania all dedicated to a spiral–and a town held prisoner to it.
Spiraling Out
The black and white color scheme for this animated adaptation here in Uzumaki adds to the overall, eerie tone of the project, for sure. (Flying Lotus, a long-time Adult Swim music collaborator, suggested it as mentioned here!) I love that this idea made it to the final version of what we finally were able to see as it brings us closer to the original manga pages where the story first was born. This visually aesthetic choice makes some of the manga’s most macabre scenes from the first half of Ito’s original work pop on screen brilliantly, turning up the drama and impact. This first episode of Uzamaki shows a myriad of emotions at play: madness, cruelty, disgust, pride, fear, infatuation, desire, and heartbreak.
Even big reveals that I once saw on the page on the manga by Junji Ito, now animated, still shook me and left me flinching away from the screen. I really enjoyed the addition of Colin Stetson to the creative team and his original score for the series. “I absolutely adored my time making this music and inhabiting the strange, gorgeous, horrifying, and spectacular spiral world that Ito-Sensei created” was a statement that he gave in an Instagram post earlier this summer.
Stetson, a composer perhaps best known to American audiences for his work on 2018’s Hereditary, adds a musical score that compliments the darkness and madness that fits Uzamaki like a glove. I especially felt that the music for the sequence where Kirire meets Shuichi’s father was a delightfully frightening sequence where the music played up the terror so well. The way it continued afterwards after she was gone to Shuichi’s scary encounter really connected the two teens in their moments of terror.
Last Thoughts on Episode One:
Uzamaki has finally arrived, and the first episode’s outing earns its stripes by way of it being a creepy, unsettling, and picturesque way that only a Ito manga can be. With a haunting original score, a black and white animation color scheme and voice acting talent not afraid to scream and sound off in distress, it was perfect to watch on a lone Sunday evening. The long-awaited adaptation of one of legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most beloved works, means the second episode has a lot to live up to for older fans and newer fans alike. Hopefully, the series estimated to be four episodes manages to pull off the dire dread that the original work pulls off so effortlessly.
Uzumaki: The Animated Series premiered September 28 on Adult Swim, next day on Max. Based on the original graphic novel “UZUMAKI” by Junji ITO published by Shogakukan Inc. © Junji ITO , Shogakukan / Production I.G.,LLC
About Adult Swim:
Watch Adult Swim on Max, www.adultswim.com or by downloading the Adult Swim app. Binge marathons or watch selected episodes of many of your favorite shows including Rick and Morty, SMILING FRIENDS, The Boondocks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and many more.
Watch Adult Swim on Max: http://bit.ly/3Gy0aXA SUBSCRIBE: https://youtube.com/adultswim1?sub_co…
Connect with Adult Swim Online:
Download the APPS: http://www.adultswim.com/apps/
Visit Adult Swim WEBSITE: http://www.adultswim.com
Like Adult Swim on FACEBOOK: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on TWITTER: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on INSTAGRAM: / adultswim
Love anime? So do we! See what else we have to offer on the site via anime here!
Want to get Black Nerd Problems updates sent directly to you?
Sign up here! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram!
The post ‘Uzumaki’ Anime Sets Out as an Unsettling and Darkly Picturesque Adaptation appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Adult Swim surprised many fans today at New York Comic Con this year by screening the full premiere episode of Lazarus, the new globe-trotting thriller from Shinichirō Watanabe. When we first got glimpses of the new series last year from San Diego Comic-Con, I was locked in seeing only a taste of a series that I knew that I wanted to watch.
Featuring a character being chased throughout that first short preview trailer from last year, one could see that the animation was smooth, sleek even, and worth re-watching for its short one minute and thirty-one second run time. There was enough Mirror’s Edge-like parkour to make me dizzy and a variety of characters on screen to keep me interested and speculating until we get more.
And we got more this week with a slightly longer clip of English-subtitled first look video of Lazarus this time around with Axel voiced by Mamoru Miyano–running and being parkour God once again.
Adult Swim describes the story:
The year is 2052 – an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity prevails across the globe. The reason for this: mankind has been freed from sickness and pain. Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Dr. Skinner has developed a miracle cure-all drug with no apparent drawbacks called Hapuna. Hapuna soon becomes ubiquitous… and essential. However, soon after Hapuna is officially introduced, Dr. Skinner vanishes.
Three years later, the world has moved on. But Dr. Skinner has returned – this time, as a harbinger of doom. Skinner announces that Hapuna has a short half-life. Everyone who has taken it will die approximately three years later. Death is coming for this sinful world – and coming soon.
As a response to this threat, a special task force of 5 agents is gathered from across the world to save humanity from Skinner’s plan. This group is called “Lazarus.” Can they find Skinner and develop a vaccine before time runs out?
I have really always loved the science fiction worlds in the anime projects that Watanabe has been involved in. He’s also had a great hand in collabs with musicians and artists that I love listening to. Last time around, I took a look at the cats involved and admitted that I was a little star-struck with some big names attached including Kamasi Washington, which made me know that the music was going to be on point.
According to Anime News Network: Senior vice president and head of anime and action series at Adult Swim Jason DeMarco confirmed that Watanabe is directing every episode. Chad Stahelski (John Wick stuntman and director) is designing the action sequences for the science-fiction action anime. The anime will feature a score by jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, and producers, DJs, and musicians Floating Points and Bonobo. Sola Entertainment is producing.
As reported by Gizmodo, here’s a run through of its Japanese voice cast and where you might’ve heard them before:
- Koichi Yamadera (Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop) as Dr. Skinner
- Megumi Hayashibara (Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop) as Hersch
- Mamoru Miyano (Chrollo Lucilfer from Hunter x Hunter) as Axel
- Maaya Uchida (Alluka Zoldyck from Hunter x Hunter) as Chris
- Yuma Uchida (Megumi Fushiguro from Jujutsu Kaisen) as Leland
- Makoto Furukawa (Saitama from One Punch Man) as Doug
- Manaka Iwami (Akane Kurokawa from Oshi no Ko) as Eleina
- Akio Otsuka (Yujiro Hanma from Baki Hanma) as Abel
I am very much looking forward to Lazarus and this hella jazzy (electronic, house and perhaps all the genre mashing) soundtrack it will serve with it. I love sci-fiction, especially in the realms of anime and from the house that Shinichirō Watanabe builds. I love that we’re getting more and more glimpses of the series, even little by little to make us all anticipate this come 2025. I don’t know for certain what Axel’s backstory is or what he’ll bring to Team Lazarus but I enjoy seeing him evade cops, flip and parkour around and just be fun to watch run around on screen. I love how the collective of fans are feeling early 2000’s anime vibes (in a good, not great way) with this newer series which means most of all will be eagerly awaiting Adult Swim’s latest.
Lazarus is slated to premiere on Adult Swim in 2025.
Watch Adult Swim on Max: http://bit.ly/3Gy0aXA
SUBSCRIBE: https://youtube.com/adultswim1?sub_co…
About Adult Swim: Watch Adult Swim on Max, www.adultswim.com or by downloading the Adult Swim app. Binge marathons or watch selected episodes of many of your favorite shows including Rick and Morty, SMILING FRIENDS, The Boondocks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and many more.
Connect with Adult Swim Online:
Download the APPS: http://www.adultswim.com/apps/
Visit Adult Swim WEBSITE: http://www.adultswim.com
Like Adult Swim on FACEBOOK: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on TWITTER: / adultswim
Follow Adult Swim on INSTAGRAM: / adultswim
Want to get Black Nerd Problems updates sent directly to you?
Sign up here! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram!
The post FIRST LOOK: ‘Lazarus’ Coming to Adult Swim in 2025 appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.