A week ago we were clapping our ears with the premiere of 'Uzumaki', which seemed to finally break the curse of regulinchis or terrible anime adaptations of Junji Ito's mangas. The first chapter left us with spectacular quality that more than justified the five years it took.'Uzumaki'in development, but This week things had a different story.
Change of studio, change of team, and war flashbacks
The second chapter of 'Uzumaki' arrived at Max this weekend, and immediately set off alarm bells among fans due to the drop in quality. From much less detailed and almost expressionless models, stiff animation with characters sliding while running, and even half-finished and unpolished backgrounds.
Junji Ito fans theorize about changes in production and budget. Especially because the team responsible for the second chapter is completely different and it has even changed animation studios: Fugaku was in charge of the first, and Akatsuki of the second.
“They have directly changed the studio and directors for the rest of the series. This is the fault of the Adult Swim executives, they are amateurs,” he said. a fan on (Twitter), about the team change. Another added. “Junji Ito is cursed to never have a good anime adaptation.”
When the anime was announced in 2019, Drive was originally going to be the studio in charge of the animation. But by 2023, Akatsuki was credited alongside Drive, and for the series premiere Drive has completely disappeared from the credits.with Adult Swim and Production IG USA handling the production itself. So with all this shenanigans, it seems that Fugaku finally took care of the first episode 'Uzumaki', and Akatsuki will take care of the rest of the series.
Additionally, while the first episode had two animation directors (Koichi Sato and Hiroshi Nagahama), in the second you can count up to 25 different directors…With which there is speculation that Adult Swim could have fired the first team after an episode headed by Hiroshi Nagahama that took more work than expected. Then Akatsuki came in with Yuji Moriyama as the new director, and they could have pulled a outsourcing a bit extreme to several studios in China, which would have done their best to release the plans without much coherence or consistency.
Because, as noted, the second chapter still has visually incredible shots. But the quality of the entire episode is very uneven, and the bad moments overshadow the good ones too much. Especially because The drop in quality has not only affected the visual aspect, but also the pace of adaptation.
If already the first episode of 'Uzumaki' condensed two manga chapters into one and left quite a few details along the way, this second episode of the anime has touched on material from up to five chapters of the original manga. The pace has also been very accelerated, and the lack of care with some details has not sat well at all. ““They have ruined my day”said a fan when sharing one of the scenes that has brought the most controversy.
It is quite common for the first chapter of an anime to be made with much more care. But considering that 'Uzumaki'It will be a miniseries of only four episodes, the decline is more noticeable and much more worrying.
“At this point it seems like a scam. They've been showing us amazing trailers and even a spectacular first episode to get us hooked, and then the second episode happens,” he said. a fanwith other responding. “The series has four episodes and they haven't even been able to maintain the same quality all the time. What the hell have they been doing these five years?”
Other fans have pointed out that It is not the first time that there has been a drop in quality like this with an Adult Swim anime. Because, as this user points outthe original anime 'Ninja Kamuy' started with a tremendous first chapter but plummeted in quality throughout the series and left a rather forgettable result. We'll see what happens with the rest of 'Uzumaki', but for now things are not looking good at all.
