Adult Swim and Production I.G’s planned translation of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki has been postponed until next year, which is sad news for horror anime fans. The good news is that they’ve also published the first trailer for the program, which looks gorgeously scary and disturbing. The announcement was provided by Jason DeMarco, the show’s co-creator and Executive Producer (who is also a producer on the recently announced War of the Rohirrim anime film), who delivered the terrible news regarding the show’s delay owing to COVID and changes to animation processes.

Along with the announcement, DeMarco posted a video in which Hiroshi Nagahama, the anime director, apologized for the lack of content. COVID, according to Nagahama, had had a considerable influence on the Japanese anime industry, particularly on the production of Uzumaki, since they had to reorganize their whole plan for the show, which required twice as many animators as their typical projects at Production I.G. Even when live-action productions were present, animation won out. 

The world came to a halt, and Japanese studios were far more cautious than studios in the West accepting work-from-home arrangements. Thankfully, it appears like progress is being made, as seen by the fantastic debut trailer, which captures the black-and-white, hand-drawn look of Ito’s original work, culminating in a genuine manga come to life. The figure movement animation looks odd and eerie, which fits the tone of the original narrative and Colin Stetson’s Hereditary-Esque ambient music.

It is a well-known name in Japanese horror, and his manga Uzumaki is one of his most terrifying and famous works. It follows the residents of a fictional city tormented by a mysterious curse involving spiral patterns of all types, which quickly becomes fatal as inhabitants begin dying horrible deaths. Uzumaki is a psychological thriller that depicts the town’s residents gradually going mad, yet there’s plenty of frightening body-horror imagery to please hardcore horror lovers. “There are tonnes of terrifying and nasty scenes,” Nagahama promises in the trailer.