Heyo folks. Welcome back to Maddie's Movie Reviews. This time I'm not reviewing a movie, but instead I'm reviewing a show; Specifically the pilot episode of a show that I've been very hyped for, and I knew it would be in good hands with Adult Swim of all people. Here's my review for the very first episode of Uzumaki.



I first read Uzumaki last year during my third trimester in school, and I thought it was phenomenal. I didn't know it was possible for a book to somehow jumpscare me, but it succeeded every time. The anime representation of Uzumaki is, surprisingly, extremely faithful to the original manga. The animators decided to make some pretty bold choices in how they present the versions of the panels. First of all, the entire show is done in hard black and white. Some of the scenes that take place in dark areas all use colors from a black to white spectrum, making it feel like the actual manga has come to life. Second, the sound design is REALLY good. Music is very few and far between, only really being present during transitions, as well as the intro and outro. Not to mention, the foley SFX is on point. The writers decided to actually start other chapters while current events are going down, and they manage to do it in a way that you could believe is a fairly conclusive timeline.



The starts of the chapters are initially presented as just filler segments to pad for time, but knowing the horrors makes it all the more suspenseful to see how the other stories are implemented and expanded on in the next episode. Now for the things I weren't really fond of: It looks like some of the show is done using Rotoscoping. I'm not a big fan of rotoscoping, but it seems to only be in certain scenes and for short bursts of time that rotoscoping is used. Still, sometimes it's jarring because with Rotoscoping you can very clearly tell what's hand-animated and what's rotoscoped. Despite this, I feel like the Rotoscoping was used in order to save on the amount of time it takes to convey the MONUMENTAL amount of detail from the original work. There's even some scenes where things as mundane as whirlpools in water are fully animated and detailed to the point where if you took a screenshot it could feasibly pass off as a normal piece of still art. I don't have any problems with any of the voice acting in particular, and the voice actor for Shuichi's father does a very good job at making for a deranged panicked addict

Overall, I give it a solid 8/10.
++ Inhuman amounts of detail in nearly every single shot
+ Iconic scenes from the books are translated great from the original work
- The rotoscoping is a bit strange sometimes