‘Uzumaki’ Episode 1 Recap And Ending Explained: What Happened To Azami Kurotani?

Horror master Junji Ito’s masterpiece, Uzumaki, gets a brilliant anime adaptation, the chilling first episode of which has premiered on Adult Swim, drawing attention from horror fans worldwide. The brilliant black and white animation, which vividly captures all the minute details of Ito’s artwork, impeccably channels the sinister darkness that characterizes the manga. Especially the key moments from the manga, where grotesque body horror conveys the mangaka’s twisted, surreal imagination, have been animated with sheer perfection. The anime adheres to the plot of the manga but takes liberties when it comes to narrative structure as it conjoins several chapters into a single episode. The voice cast so far has been superb across all the involved characters, and the haunting background score pairs pretty well too. The only major gripe I have is that the anime will most certainly conclude within a single season consisting of four episodes, as the makers intended to make the adaptation quite compact.

Spoilers Ahead

Mr. Saito’s Spiral Obsession

The first episode begins with Kirie Goshima, a high schooler, reminiscing about a series of troubling incidents that plagued her hometown, Kurouzu-Cho, some time ago. Settled between mountain and the sea, the tranquility of the township seems more ominous than peaceful. Kirie meets with her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, who goes to Midoriyama, the neighboring town, for schooling. As the duo walk down the streets of Kurouzu-Cho, Shuichi suddenly asks Kirie whether she wants to leave the town. A perplexed Kirie learns that Shuichi has been observing a strange spiral pattern everywhere in the town, from the ferns growing near the hillside to the mini whirlpools in the drain—and even in the occassional dust devils that appear out of nowhere. The reason Shuichi is taking notice of this phenomenon is because his father has become maniacally obsessed with everything related to spirals—he has stopped going to work to spend every waking hour  gazing over his spiral object collection. It’s as if the very shape of the spiral has hypnotized Mr. Saito. Shuichi mentions that now his father can even rotate his eyeballs separately from each other in a circular spiral pattern, which might seem funny when narrated but sure isn’t fun to look at. Shuichi further adds that he feels oppressed by the very existence of the town—the blaring siren, the ominous lighthouse, the imposing mountain—everything seems to be antagonizing him, and he desperately wants to escape from the town. 

Kirie returns to her home to find Mr. Saito frantically speaking with her father about the enigmatic, primeval nature of the shape of the spiral, which has enchanted him recently. Kirie’s father is a potter by profession, and Mr. Saito requests him to make a black spiral-shaped construct after profusely complimenting his skills as an artisan. Days later, Kirie goes to Shuichi’s house to deliver the completed construct, only for Mr. Saito to politely refuse to accept it. He had an epiphany that spirals can be manifested within one’s body itself, which is why he no longer needs external constructs. To show her a demonstration, Mr. Saito protrudes his tongue, which looks abnormally long, and coils it like a spiral—almost like a chameleon. Scared out of her wits after seeing such a harrowing display, Kirie fled. 

Days later, Mr. Saito passes away after falling through the stairs, but during his cremation, Shuichi confides in Kirie the true, disturbing reason for his demise. Shuichi and his mother had found Mr. Saito coiled up in a spiral inside a large wooden tub—the visual of a human body in a coil is as disturbing as one can imagine, and it got etched in the minds of Shuichi and his mother forever. As the smoke emerges from the crematorium, it seems to take the shape of a spiral, and Shuichi’s mother bursts into tears and cries after noticing her husband’s coiled body briefly getting formed by the smoke. The smoke settles in the Dragonfly Lake in the middle of the town, and Shuichi’s mother becomes delirious in agony. 

Azami’s Scar and Mrs. Saito’s Fear of Spiral

Azami Kurotani, one of Kirie’s classmates who lives in Midoriyama, has a crescent scar on her forehead, which she sustained during a minor accident back in the day, and it has become permanent ever since. Azami, who has her classmates swooning over her, believes that her unique scar is part of the reason that they are attracted to her. Kirie takes Azami along while meeting with Shuichi, who inexplicably gets horrified at the sight of Azami. As Shuichi runs off, taking Kirie by his side, he mentions that he can sense a spiral existing within her. 

Azami is shocked at Shuichi’s reaction, which she starts considering to be a form of rejection—and gets desperate for him to like her. The next time she meets Shuichi, he gets even more terrified of her and asks her to leave the town and return to Midoriyama to escape the pattern of the spiral. Azami’s crescent scar has turned into a small spiral by now, and the more it grows, the more she grows desperate to have Shuichi’s validation. Shuichi’s mother loses her mental faculties as her husband’s demise makes her deeply traumatized by the spiral pattern. As she is hospitalized, she tries to frantically distance herself from anything that even remotely appears to be spiral-shaped, to the point that she shaves her head and cuts off the skin of her fingertips. Meanwhile, Azami’s scar continues to grow, and a spiral hole is created on her forehead. 

What Happens to Azami Kurotani?

One of Kirie’s batchmates, Katayama, is often bullied for being a recluse and slowpoke, and strangely enough, only arrives at school when it is raining. One of the class bullies, Tsumura and his friends, goes way too overboard while teasing him, as they strip him naked in front of other students. A spiral pattern is noticed at Katayama’s back, which startles Kirie. While returning to her home, Kirie stumbles across Azami and gets freaked out after seeing the current state of her scar. The right side of Azami’s forehead has been engulfed by the spiral in her head, and her right eye gets sucked inside of it as Kirie watches in horror. Azami had asked one of her batchmates, Okada, to bring Shuichi to meet with her, and as she meets Shuichi once again, her spiral is seen to cover almost the entirety of her face and formed an all-consuming vortex. Azami laughs maniacally as Okada is pulled inside the vortex, and as Kirie arrives to meet a petrified Shuichi, she finds Azami is being sucked inside her own spiral, until she is completely wiped out of existence. 

As the episode ends on a harrowing note, Kirie’s narration conveys that these incidents were merely the beginning of something much more diabolical, which ended up destabilizing their lives forever. The central idea of spiral is all pervading and omnipresent in the world of Uzumaki, and what makes it scary is the fact that familiar events and objects that we barely notice are being presented as signifiers of something sinister. The upcoming episodes will highlight some of the more secrets and hauntings of Kurouzu-Cho, all of which have the common root of spiral in them, and the underlying, cosmic pattern will be revealed eventually.