Horror fans will be more than familiar with the work of Junji Ito, a manga artist who has established himself as one of the greats in the genre. One of his most iconic works is, without a doubt, Uzumaki, a manga that has been adapted to the small screen with somewhat mixed results.
Adult Swim first revealed the official trailer of Uzumaki at the beginning of September. The series was initially scheduled to premiere in 2020, and after three production delays, we were finally able to watch the first episode on September 28.
The episode managed to impress the audience, so much so that some have already dared to label it as one of the best series of 2024. However, the tremendous drop in quality of its second episode was something no one saw coming.
Numerous clips showcasing the low quality of the animations went viral on social media. What had happened?
According to Kotaku, the former executive producer of Adult Swim, Jason DeMarco, gave a series of rather cryptic explanations (now deleted) through his BlueSky profile. However, his thread was saved by users on Reddit and Twitter.
“I can’t talk about what happened, but they screwed us,” wrote DeMarco. According to the producer, “the options were A) not finish and not air anything and consider it a loss, B) Finish it once and air episode 1 and leave it incomplete or C) air all four, as they are. Out of respect for all the hard work, we chose C.”
In his thread, he continues and clarifies that “after waiting so long, it made sense for people to get upset. Sadly, I can’t tell you who should be blamed… but someone has failed here, and we had to do our best when things blew up. Maybe others would have made different choices. We did the best we could with what we had.”
In an interview conducted for Vulture, DeMarco explained that “the pandemic completely halted the production of the series for about a year […] Our team was small, so the fact that some members and their families became almost mortally ill was a hard blow both for the production and for our morale. It was quite a challenge to revive the series.”
