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Such a shame… The idea of creating a black and white adaptation in manga style was great, and the animation, though not quite up to expectations, was acceptable. The real problem was trying to adapt it in just four episodes, which completely killed the atmosphere, turning it into a bunch of creepy scenes glued together.
For me, it’s the best anime adaptation of a Junji Ito story, which makes me realize just how bad the others are. The curse struck again here too. :c
Decent Adaptation.
The story as a whole remains a 4/10 though.
... I can't recall the differences off memory, but I like the original epilogue of Shuichi and Kirie's genderswap reincarnation confirming to be stuck in the spiral for eternity.
I first read the manga in Sep 24, 2022.
I've read all of Junji Itou's work except for The Liminal Zone Volume 2, that new monthly manga, and his No Longer Human adaptation (all of his adaptations are bad).
I love his work for the most part. Big fan. But... Uzumaki is surprisingly his most overrated and most popular work.
It's too nonsensical to say the least.
Sure, the spiral is chaotic, but the plots individually aren't all great and don't compliment each other.
The start is great, and so is the finale, but some of the buildup and plots are dull and as a whole doesn't feel right and perfect. Most of it is too ridiculous and random. They don't fit.
Anyway, here's my incredibly lengthy original manga review;
After reading all of Junji Itou's collections, and finishing most of his work,
excluding No Longer Human, Gyo, and The Liminal Zone.
I decided to read his longest manga last, starting with The Spiral, which is praised as his best and most popular manga to date.
I am somewhat shocked at how mediocre, overrated and extremely disappointing it was, and regret buying it instead of reading the non-high quality scanlation.
Most, if not all of Itou's horror work are "great" in how they're fascinating, creative and intriguing with their concepts and how he displays the horror in his stories. Some better than others, while most are left inconclusive to the unknown in their finale.
The mystery is often "disappointing" for wanting to fully comprehend the story, but most of his horror stays entertaining regardless.
The problem that I dislike and is a legit flaw from The Spiral and possibly all of his long stories or rather bad works is how unstructured and awkward they can be.
I'm a fan who's fondly enjoyed and continue to enjoy reading his work as I'm close to finishing all of his work,
but unfortunately this one is one of the few bad ones.
So far out of his series of long stories that I enjoyed are; Tomie, Souichi, Fashion Model, The Bizarre Hikizuri Siblings, The Intersection Boy and, Remina.
None are perfect, and all are inconclusive... but at least they're intriguing and captivating,
while Tomie has sense with good plots to its trope, unlike The Spiral.
... The Spiral is mostly boring, and underwhelming in its depiction from most of the plots of what exactly the Spiral is and why it creates these specific phenomenoms.
The art and display of the horror is great as is common from Itou,
while the characters even though critisized as unsophisticated from fans, serve their purpose well in displaying a realistic attitude and interaction of people which I think is an overlooked talent from Itou that most people don't realize, even if his characters aren't extraordinary.
On the contrary, I think they're realistic in his own style, even if other mangaka have a different style of character interpretation that's arguably more realistic in other manners.
Anyway.
The timeline of events is somewhat interesting for the mystery of how the spiral affects the townspeople differently, but as a whole, the difference and lacking relation of sense to the phenomenoms together till the ending overall is unfulfilling and disappointing.
The main plot of the town's dragonfly pond with a spiral figure under it causing these phenomena and somehow causing the town to loop into a spiral of time is awesome!
Although, again, the events in relation to the main plot is underwhelming as a whole to the story.
Shuichi's father's obsession is what starts the story, which introduces a decent intrigue to this upcoming obscure mystery. Which surprisingly is never revealed how he first became affected, but no matter.
The bizarre attitude of his father while creeping out the characters is fairly good; from his eyes seperately rolling, his tongue curling, and unnaturally curling his body inside a round box as he dies, later haunting his wife with spirals from his death, with his ashes smoking into a spiral figure in the clouds- which is all good.
The issue afterwards is how random most of the events are with little to no logic to the spiral itself and its supposed meaning which I don't know what it is aside from a loop that enjoys to suck people in.
The girl with the scar who's attracted any boy ever since she's had it, ending up being sucked in by her own spiral in her forehead.
Shuichi's parents as spirits burning in Kirie's father's kiln... his father calling him to join him, while her mother screams to him for help, along with other spirit victims of the spiral who've died.
The couple intertwining together like snakes against their enemy neighboring family who don't accept each other.
Kirie's hair locks curling into spirals, with her friend gaining the same ability craving to show off and ending up dead by her living hair sucking out her life.
The boy who has a crush on Kirie, attempting to prove his love by having a car stop in front of him, causing him to die with the car's spring in his spine as he was curled on the front wheel, to then his undead corpse springing into to her after Shuichi tried to kill him before reanimating.
A classmate who comes to school turning into a snail from a spiral on his back which turns into his shell.
The lighthouse's burnt dysfunctional light somehow causing fire to spread inside whenever it starts, with the stairs almost being an endless loop.
Female mosquitoes biting pregnant women and causing them to become blood-suckers to feed their babies, with the babies having the ability to talk and want to return in their mother's womb, and their umbilical chord turning into a mushroom-like spiral.
Typhoons, Whirlpools, Whirlwinds. A cursed house causing ones inside to gain horns throughout their body leading to death.
The townspeople gaining the ability to cause mini gust of tornados with any impactful movement or sound, with some having the skill to fly through a self-made tornado.
To finally people curling into themselves inside the built home extensions, curling together to the past of the town, eating snail people to survive, with time speeding for the main characters, and in the finale, the couple going down to the source of the spiral figure and intertwining together themselves after Kirie finds her parents turned into stone after years have passed seperate from their time together.
... There are kinda great plots and events in this story, but it's shamefully unstructured, illogical, and boring to some extent which is ultimately very disappointing.
Shuichi's sense of danger as the sole character who's noticed since the beginning for attending school elsewhere is great as the only medium who's aware of the spiral.
His wish to flea with his girlfriend together and constant failing to do so from her denial until its too late is well done.
I was mostly entertained after Chapter 10's Mosquitoes for how the horror started becoming grander in creativity, which got better in some form after the characters were struggling to survive and the town went into chaos.
I keep repeating myself, but even if some events are great individually, as a whole it just does not function.
A lot of it is greatly entertaining, but...
Azami, the girl with the scar spiral on her forehead arguably lacks explanation to her character's point of the story, exactly how and why she's the only one to get sucked in into herself, even though her demise of horror is fucking great. I think to the logic of the story, because (as Shuichi deduced) the spiral is in all of them, by becoming arrogant with ego to fail in charming Shuichi, the spiral sucked her in. Why though.
Shuichi's spirits and the other deceased. How are they trapped from passing away peacefully. The Twisted Souls Chapter of the couple intertwining is self-explanatory and a good introduction to the foreshadowing of the townspeople intertwining together later, even though the spiral affecting their family with hate unlike the couple is left a mystery to me.
Jack-in-the-Box is probably the stupidest event of the story. The boy's corpse reviving and springing to his crush Kirie was idiotic and meaningless to the story. The tornado being attracted to Kirie doesn't make sense at all either.
The Snail People is great to an extent. The way it's used to induce the plot of people eating them to survive is interesting... but I don't exactly understand the logic of how being slow or whatever causes specific people to turn into slugs. The tranformation itself is also fascinating.
The Black Lighthouse is bizarre in how it burns people to death, but, it's a decent introduction to travel having the occurence to be neverending causing one to be stuck in the same place.
The Mosquitoes' concept alone is great, but babies having the ability to talk and yearning to go back to their mother's womb doesn't make sense to me even if I feel there's probably a sense of loop in relation to the spiral, but I don't fully understand it's probable hidden meaning.
The cursed house is very random, and I don't understand why the old buildings are incable of being destroyed while stronger buildings are easily destroyed in comparison.
The last quarter of the story is fairly entertaining. The way in which practically everything in town is destroyed, with people trying to survive, kids previously being tied up, blowing things to destruction, with gangs flying, survivors eating snails, others intertwining in the safe buildings, Kirie and Shuichi attempting to keep her little brother safe before the cannibals attempt to eat him as he escapes as a snail and is saddenly never reunited with his sister in the finale.
That whole struggle, with others dying from being blown away by others is pretty good.
The finale itself though isn't bad. The doom that it's a bad ending is good, with the fact that The Spiral is a neverending loop, but I don't understand how it's a loop that could cause them to somehow repeat this cycle, or how time works in and out of the spiral from being in the hill out of the town for them to continue to travel time while in town afterwards, or even why some townspeople are turned into stones in face of Thee Spiral. I guess it's because they're stuck in time, to eventually revive later...
All in all... Flawed and Overrated. 4/10.
Although, if I completely neglect how the story and events lack logic, arguably 5-6/10.
I mean, This last episode was better than the previous two atleast. The first and last episodes were the best tbh. Oh well, Atleast the final scene and the drawings this episode were done really well.
Another disappointment. It was better than previous Junji Ito adaptations, but that's not difficult to achive. Still I'd say that the first episode proved that it's possible to adapt Ito's work into an anime. Sadly everything went downhill after that.
In general, I enjoyed this anime. I read Uzumaki manga years ago and I think its anime adaptation was rather proper. It's a shame that the quality dropped so hard after the first episode. This show could've been grand and artsy, had it had better production quality. Unfortunately, it ended up as just alright anime adaptation that most likely won't be talked about once this anime season ends.
Or nah, wait. Its infamous quality drop will be discussed more than the show itself, which is even more tragic, given how cool the source material is, and how cool was the first episode of this anime
Very cool ending of this great story. Again fell asleep yesterday watching this but it was still great. Animation was pretty good again here luckily and the cosmic horror aspect was incredible.
The first episode was amazing, second episode in terms of animation was absolutely horrendous, the third episode was a little bit better and in this one, the pacing seemed all over the place. It was acceptable. Was gonna say enjoyable, but the last these last two episodes were pretty disappoiting.
Another show I was overhyped for and got burned. The first one being Chainsaw Man. No more.
Aight, pacing is really out of place but ig in a weird way it was kind of interesting? The horrifying and gruesome parts were enjoyable to see at least. Anyhoo, this was an unpleasant experience to watch with there being little positive and many negative aspects of this show.
I'll give it a 5/10 mostly because I'm not in favor with the ending and each episode more negatives showed up rather than the positive ones. So overall this anime is ranging around average. It's not bad or even like real bad by any means but episode 2 and 4 + the ending rlly hurt me to score this.
I mean there where parts that was creepy and cool. But the other areas with bad animation and no plot. Every time when someone died, injured, or left the screen you never saw them again. Gets hit by a twister, " I'll go get help." Never mentions them again. Come on....
I mean there where parts that was creepy and cool. But the other areas with bad animation and no plot. Every time when someone died, injured, or left the screen you never saw them again. Gets hit by a twister, " I'll go get help." Never mentions them again. Come on....
I'm so conflicted. I love Junji Ito's style, and I loved that I was able to see it animated. But there were a few scenes that just felt so rushed. Even the pacing of the show was so rushed.
Feels like lumps of this is missing.
Good job i read the Manga ages ago or i would have been lost.
Thought they were in the Mountains for Years?? even though it felt like Days to them.
Oh well, the wait wasn't worth it, thought they would have made a Classic in the 4 Years of waiting.
Overall the series was a good story, the animation had huge drops in a few scenes but overall it seemed like what Adult Swim was capable of. These people are all dumb though like wtf. No chance you staying in town lmao.
That is the case happening in this unassuming town, Kurozu-Cho.
The town is down for, an endless torrent of curses, misfortunes and destruction from outside and within have flattened all but the remnants of what used to be an array of row houses that resemble a spiral, an Uzumaki. The outsider's point of view from Chie was interesting but soon, she adapted to the town's irregularities along with the townsfolk. This episode is bleak and filled with despair. No matter what you do or what the authorities do. Those who are IN the town is doomed to perish... None can get out, and if you were to die trying to get in, count yourself as lucky, for the fate that awaits you is worse than natural death by accident.
In this episode, after losing both her parents, Kirie along with Shuichi, her little brother and Chie tries to escape this town, but it's too late for them. The curse of the spiral has enveloped the town completely, space and time included. And the reason why lays quite literally beneath their feet. Once the dragonfly pond is dried of its water, the path to the truth is revealed. An ancient sentient Spiral structure. We don't know why it's there, why it's created and if it's even from Earth. One thing I could deduce is that the machine of sorts compels intelligent lifeforms living near it to be obsessed towards it and be connected as one, effectively dying and merging with the machine. Are they used as fuel? Or is this machine an instrument for unifying intelligent lifeforms into one sentient body with transcendental reach, capable of controlling time and space?
The answers are unclear, what's clear is Shuichi and Kirie no longer has the energy to continue, so they might as well envelop and embrace one another as they succumb to the ancient machinations of this repulsive instrument. And so the curse ceased its effects, lying dormant for the next century until it once again return with more UZUMAKI.
So literally what happenes is everyone dies and it;s all over. Wasted my frikin time this ep i dont even get how its interesting
Maybe its just me but it just seems like the author just likes drawing messed up stuff and putting it into an "anime" to show it off. I mean that stuff can get certian types of people interrested, but i think those people are only watching for that stuff and not the story
I didnt even get the message of the story at all...
Just like the Manga. 4/10.
As entertaining and intriguing as it is, the plots/events as a whole to the spiral itself aren't all great or compliment each other well.
It's too badly random, and kinda mostly dull.
As his most popular work, it's not his best and is highly overrated.
Interesting final episode, it was like I said.... or they explained everything in this episode or they didn't explain anything and well that's how it was left haha open to free interpretation.
It seems like it's some kind of curse that is activated every X amount of time, although with that ending where everything starts all over again but with changes, it gives the feeling of being a “loop”.
Now the final episode itself was okay... the story doesn't seem far-fetched to me but it was interesting and entertaining even though it was left in ambiguity.
The only thing that didn't convince me of this ending was the theme of the whirlpools and that they were used as a means of transportation xd
PS: This is the case (for me) where the journey was better than the ending, I'm not saying it's bad but I liked the way better
The animation did not fully regain the status of the first episode except for some traits of the facial expressions which seem to improve quite some much and the fantastic scenery of the forests along with some bird-eye shots of the city and the underground realm. Nonetheless I found the animation of the tornadoes quite static and a lazy way to solve the issue of fast movements which, in general, are very robotic. The story quite is rushed missing the opportunity to go deeper into the survival adventure mode that seemed quite interesting almost in a post apocalyptic environment. The final part seems to give some space for a possible sequel which is interesting which I hope will improve the series that had great potential, a fantastic first episode, but was plagued by low quality animation, with exceptions now and then that did not correct the norm, and a rushed story that could've been represented may be in eight episodes instead of four in a better way.
Cidade amaldiçoada, impossível de escapar, monstros bisonhos, moradores condenados eternamente e sirenes... Sim, esse é o equivalente de Silent Hill nos animes... AMEI! Só não dou 10 por animação fraca em alguns eps, e aquela merda ridícula de gangue voadora haha.
Continuing yesterday, the situation in Kurouzu City is not good. A very large and long-lasting storm occurred, causing many typhoons. Of course, all of this caused chaos in Kurouzu city. The typhoon's "fury" destroyed everything in its path. Housing, vehicles—all were completely destroyed by the typhoon. For this reason, the occurrence of many fatalities cannot be avoided.
The MC, Shuuichi, believes that what is causing all this is "Spiral". Although I myself don't really understand what this "spiral" is? Is it a disease? Nature's anger at human's bad deeds? Or is it actually karma? I don't know; the further we get here, the less clear the story becomes.
However, the essence of this episode is "trying to survive". Those who enter and stay in Kurouzu town cannot leave the town. Due to the presence of a big storm and the emergence of typhoons, of course food supplies, etc. are running low. Those who remain must do anything to survive, including eating "snail people."
Kirie's group (including Chie and Shuuichi) decided to try to leave Kurouzu city by walking through the mountains. But it seems they just circle the same place over and over again. Or not, they can only walk without finding a way out (trapped in Kurouzu city by the spiral curse).
After walking for a long time, they found a city that looked like a spiral. It turned out to be the Kurouzu town. Very surprising, right? Not a long time ago, they left with the city in ruins, leaving a few row houses. However, they returned to see a town full of houses neatly arranged in a spiral, with Dragonfly Pond as the center. It turns out, time passes more slowly when they are about to leave Kurouzu city. What is the evidence? When they returned, they met Tanizaki, who apparently had aged quite a lot.
In the end, only Shuuichi and Kirie remained. They both made it to the "heart of the spiral", which was the center of the spiral. They both found a huge spiral ruin instead of the Dragonfly Pond. Realizing that they couldn't do anything, they decided to give up here, I suppose. And finally they "become one" in a spiral; it all ends here.
It's not my favorite genre but it's watchable without any problems
Futoku no Guild season 2 Help
hi guys
I have read various posts on the forums of both Japanese and international channels, it seems that for the second season nothing is known yet, so I ask for help from all the fans, let's try to support the anime but also the manga, LET'S SPREAD THE WORD
if you have ideas it would be fantastic.
official anime account:https://x.com/futoku_anime (@futoku_anime)
official manga account:https://x.com/magyo_ (@magyo_)
if you want to contact me:https://x.com/futoku_guild
Thank you very much everyone.
#不徳のギルド
I don't understand why anyone would want to move into a town that's in shambles. History keeps repeating itself. Why hasn't anyone gone, "huh sure is weird this town was turned into dust and no one is living here"?
Crazy to think this took 5 years to produce. It's pretty disappointing. The pacing felt off and there was very little time to process what happened and there were no explanations. Sucks that Kirie and Shuichi didn't make it out. I hoped they would survive since they were there since day one.
5/10 for me. It was overhyped.
As a wise man once said, "No one hates anime more than anime fans"
the reactions to this were way overblown, as seems to be a recurring theme with Ito's anime adaptations. There were a few parts that looked noticeably bad, but not enough to detract or break immersion from the story. It's actually a good watch.
I have a third testicle that gives me psychic powers
It was great actually, but the context weren't complete. Because manga has more context in it and it feels like this adaptation isn't completed. It's 4 episodes but as a horror anime it's great, there is some obnoxious things in it and this is what I like in horror animes.