The inception of fear and dread is rooted in the dark expanse of the world unknown, the imposing stature of which emphasizes the insignificance of our existence. Modern horror legend, mangaka Junji Ito, had tried to capture the nature of this undefinable source of terror in his masterpiece, Uzumaki, by subverting the existing positive connotations of the shape of a spiral in Japanese culture into a primal, ominous, sinister, and destructive cosmic source of energy. The scariest aspect of Ito’s meditation on spiral horror is how dread is traced through the trivial, banal aspects of human life, and through nature—which contributes to its effective horror experience by making the dread appear as a cosmic plan beyond human control.
The fact that a work like Uzumaki had been considered for an anime miniseries adaptation, which aimed to capture the authenticity of the source material by animating the intricacies of the black and white panels of the manga, was ambitious enough. As the miniseries streams on Netflix this week, the first episode very much seems like a pioneering success in anime adaptations. However, as we move on to the rest of the three episodes, glaring drawbacks like janky, weirdly animated sequences and extremely rushed story arcs begin to make their presence felt—conveying what a monumental task it was to attempt adapting Ito’s masterwork in the animated medium.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1: The Beginning Of Spiral Dread
Nestled between sea and mountain, in the quaint countryside town of Kurouzo-cho, something ominous has started to make its presence felt through the shape of a spiral, as observed by a high-schooler resident of the town, Shuichi Saito. Shuichi reveals to his girlfriend, Kirie Goshima, how his father has become totally captivated with the primeval enigma of the shape of the spiral, and shares his wish of leaving Kurouzo-cho for good, as he assumes the obsession has roots in the very existence of the town. Mr. Saito asks Kirie’s father, Yasuo, a potter by profession, to create spiral-shaped objects for him—and appreciates the mastery of his craft. Mr. Saito’s mania turns morbid when he has an epiphany about how the presence of spirals is all-encompassing, and he meets a horrible end while trying to emulate the shape of the spiral within his body. Shuichi and his mother, Yukie, are horrified to see the smoke emanating during Mr. Saito’s cremation take his human spiral form and settle on the surface of nearby Dragonfly Lake. Memories of her husband’s spiral obsession horrify Yukie and drive her to lunacy, resulting in her being admitted to the hospital.
One of Kirie’s classmates, Azami Kurotani, who bears a crescent-shaped scar on her forehead, becomes obsessed with Shuichi after he repeatedly avoids her, considering her to be cursed by the spiral. Azami’s scar grows into a spiral vortex, drawing everything within it, which ultimately ends up devouring Azami from within. The first episode is a remarkable example of how to seamlessly combine multiple arcs within a short span of time, as making a compact four-episode miniseries out of twenty-odd chapters of a manga was always going to be a daunting task. However, the same cannot be said for the other three episodes.
Episode 2: The Many Faces of Spiral
The second episode of Uzumaki highlights the myriad ways the shape of the spiral has been a symbol of misery, and the episode tries to stitch together several different arcs that at times feel disjointed. Also, a noticeable drop in animation quality takes place in the second episode as well. Still, some of the most memorable, chilling sequences of graphic body horror manage to evoke the overwhelming atmosphere of dread and desperation—reverberating with the core theme of the iconic horror manga in the process.
Kirie’s classmate, Katayama, gets viciously bullied by Tsumura for being a slowpoke. The spiral manifests in Katayama as he turns into a snail, much to the disgust and horror of his peers, and even his parents refuse to acknowledge him as their son. The eerie effect induced by the snail-people arc reaches new heights when Tsumura turns into a snail as well, mates with Katayama, and their union results in the creation of a batch of snail-people eggs. Class teacher, Mr. Yokota, destroys the eggs, considering them abominations, only to later on get transformed into a snail person himself. The body horror spectacle in this episode continues as Kirie’s old friend Kazunori and his beloved Yoriko, both of whom come from impoverished row house resident families, decide to escape their ever-quarreling families by getting intertwined as snakes do during their mating ritual. The inseparable loving couple makes their way to the sea, having their ‘together forever’ moment in the most bizarre way possible. The commentary on how the common experience of living in misery had led both their families to entangle in a meaningless conflict is quite telling of Ito’s awareness of social consciousness.
Human emotions get manipulated and amplified with the presence of the spiral as well, and the malevolent influence of the shape encroaches into every different aspect of life. Kirie’s hair grows to form spiral shapes and becomes sentient which has a mesmerizing effect on the people looking at her. Any attempt to cut her hair results in Kirie getting assaulted by the spiral hair entanglements, and the town gradually starts to get bewitched by her hair—which prompts her classmate to get caught up in extreme jealousy. Sekino is able to manifest spiral hair as well and decides to challenge Kirie to become the center of attention. In the end, Shuichi is able to save his girlfriend as he manages to cut her hair, but Sekino isn’t able to make it as her spiral hair drains her life force out of her body. Both physical and psychological degradation are characterized by the spiral hair conundrum, which aces the theme of body horror Ito wanted to showcase. Dread of the spiral creates a harrowing imagery when mischievous Yamaguchi, known for his ‘Jack in the Box’ tricks, gets his body mangled in a car tire like a spiral in his desperate attempt to win Kirie’s heart through his zany antics. By the end of the second episode, the prankster is seen rising from the grave, almost springing up like his trick toy.
The black lighthouse on the shores of Kurouzo-cho represents more of a Lovecraftian horror iconography, as the spiral-morphed fresnel lens burns and melts everyone in the vicinity, from which Kirie manages to rescue her brother, Mitsuo, in the nick of time.
Episode 3: At The Mercy of Spiral
While the second episode majorly focuses on the individual, isolated events connected with the theme of the spiral appearances, an ever-growing, pervasive machination of the unknown, omnipresent spiral force starts making an impact from the third one. Shuichi’s mother, Yukie, appears to be on the road to recovery when her husband’s memories, the spiral-obsessed undead spirit, call her to the other side through nightmares and start tormenting her by mentioning how the shape is grafted into the human body itself—in the form of the cochlea inside one’s ears. Yukie stabs herself in the ears to fatally injure herself, and as she departs, leaving Shuichi an orphan, the smoke during her cremation joins Mr. Saito’s restless spiral spirit before settling into the Dragonfly lake.
Sustaining injuries while escaping from the lighthouse, Kirie gets admitted into the hospital, where she witnesses the most disturbing series of events. All the pregnant women admitted to the hospital, including Kirie’s cousin, Keiko, wake up in a spiral-possessed frenzy during the night to drill a hole in the bodies of hospital staffers and patients and drink their blood—like female mosquitoes do. The idea is that female mosquitoes drink blood to get energy to lay their eggs; hence the pregnant women under the influence of the spiral are doing the same to sustain their stillborn children. Kirie narrowly escapes becoming a victim by using the mosquito repellent spray that Shuichi had left her with, but reporting to the hospital authorities about the horrid incident produces no result. The more disturbing, grotesque transformation of the bizarre spiral-induced life cycle is observed when the pregnant women give birth to children who grow placenta on their own in the form of mushrooms and appear to be willing to make their way back inside the womb of their mother for perpetual security from the outside world. Seiko’s child is put back inside her womb, and her belly is stitched back by the doctors, which creates a harrowing visual, to say the least. The theme of corruption of innocence and loss of humanity is palpable with the arc of mushroom children and their bloodsucking mothers. Kirie manages to escape the hospital unscathed, as the town braces for worse situations from here on.
Invited to Kirie’s house for dinner, Shuichi notices her father, Yasuo, who still cherishes late Mr. Saito’s appreciation for his craft, has fallen for the allure of the spiral. The mud of Dragonfly Pond, which Yasuo brought to create his ceramics in the kiln, had apparently brought the spirits of the departed, including those of Shuichi’s parents, who continue calling upon their son. As Shuichi ends up breaking the fire pit, the kiln catches fire and the spirits trapped inside escape in unison.
Nature itself begins to impose the order of spiral, as a typhoon continues to raze Kurouzo-cho, with its ‘eye’ fixated upon Kirie. Shuichi manages to save Kirie and her family by taking her to safety as the typhoon gets sucked inside Dragonfly Lake. Having their home demolished in the typhoon, Kirie’s family shifts to a row house, where a new form of monstrosity welcomes them—as a perverted peeping tom of a neighbor, Wakabayashi, turns into a monstrous entity with conch-like outward spirals growing all over his body. Wakabayashi attacks Kirie, who is saved at the end as the storm raging outside takes the monster with it, and Yamaguchi’s rotting corpse appears briefly—which appears to have transformed into a real-life macabre creation of a jack-in-the-box toy. Compared to the manga, Yamaguchi’s arc has been shortened a bit, which is understandable, given the way the series had to rush things up at the end.
Episode 4: Descent Into Spiral Madness
The culmination of the spiral dread, as shown in the fourth and final episode of the miniseries, is the realization and acceptance of true desperation, and defeat at the hands of the inscrutable whims of fate. The town of Kurouzo-cho has been transformed into a veritable hellscape after being hit with a series of typhoons, all of which mysteriously settled into Dragonfly Lake, and any attempt to escape from the town results in failure. Essentially a wasteland, it seems as if Kurouzo-cho has come to life and held its residents captive as whirlpools in the sea thwart any attempt to escape through the waterfront, and tunnels leading to neighboring areas get shut off by earthquakes. Whirlwinds and twisters form through rapid movements and loud noises, and gangs of delinquents named the ‘Dragonfly Gang’ wreak havoc upon others by weaponizing this. Row houses built in the Meiji era are the only structures standing tall during all of this, and the surviving residents of the town have taken refuge inside them—huddled like animals for slaughter. Snail-people, who once used to be humans, are eaten as resources and supplies have run dry long ago, and the entire town seems to have descended into the spiral of derangement.
Chie Maruyama, a news reporter arriving in Kurouzo-cho from a neighboring vicinity, gets stranded in the town after her colleagues die following a whirlwind accident. Kirie and her brother, Mitsuo, rescue her and show her the ground reality. The degradation of the human spirit is on display when the townsfolk clash over a place inside the row houses, giving in to their baser instincts by preying on snail-people like savages. Chie, Kirie, Shuichi, and Mitsuo try to escape through the hillside area after Kirie loses track of both her parents following a tragic series of events that further showcase how the residents are gradually losing their collective mind as they turn on each other in fear and desperation for survival. Eventually, time itself becomes trapped in the inescapable shackle of the spiral as the group lives decades within a few hours during their futile attempt to escape from the town. The surviving populace loses their sanity and becomes desperate to build connected row houses in the shape of spirals, and the gruesome, bodily connected residents inside row houses signify the connection the people share in their collective misery. After a bunch of rescuers who have arrived from outside get trapped in the town and lose their humanity to the spiral curse, they try to prey on Mitsuo, who by now has turned into a snail-humanoid being. Leading her brother to a safe escape, Kirie accompanies Chie and Shuichi as they head back to the town and learn that several years have passed since their departure. Kirie tries to locate her parents and learns that they are seemingly busy making pottery in the Dragonfly Lake at the center of the Spiral Town construct, and as the trio ventures to the center, Chie presumably loses her life after becoming trapped inside a row house.
Shuichi comes to this realization that Kurouzo-cho is returning to its original form, which is at the heart of the spiral mystery. The Dragonfly Lake appears to have become a bottomless sinkhole, and following a stairwell leading to the subterranean depths, Kirie and Shuichi begin their descent. Following an attack on Kirie by a spiral monstrosity, both lovers end up falling to the bottom of the sinkhole, where they witness the centre of all evil – giant spiral structures, possibly of cosmic origin, emanating a strange aura and sound. Kirie finds some peace seeing her parents together till the end, albeit having passed away and in clay form—signifying the spiral pottery obsession of Yasuo. Numerous spiral-formed, entangled human bodies lay at the foundation of the spiral structure, which seems to be sentient and enforcing its will by turning the town itself into a massive spiral.
In In Uzumaki’s ending, Shuichi finally realizes that he is helpless against forces that are beyond his comprehension, and as he decides to submit to its will, the Lovecraftian influence appears to be most prominently realized. Kirie decides to join her lover, as the duo entangles as a spiral in a final embrace. With their acceptance of fate, a spiral screw-like structure protrudes from the depths to shut the sinkhole—the very center of the spiral structure—and Kurouzo-cho returns to its original state.
In Uzumaki’s post-credits sequence, the cycle of the spiral appears to be repeating itself, as Kurouzo-cho has once again turned into a human establishment, and this time, a high school girl, Eri, reveals her wish to escape the town to her friend, Satoshi. Kurouzo-cho is cursed to repeat its cyclical pattern of death and rebirth throughout history, and the souls trapped in the cycle are doomed to get subjected to horrors beyond imagination. A cosmic balance connection is highlighted in the manga, in a separate ‘Lost Chapter,’ where galaxies forming spiral connections are linked with Kurouzo-cho’s origin, although it isn’t hinted at in the anime series.
