Over the 2024 Labor Day weekend, director and animator Hiroshi Nagahama was invited to attend the local San Japan 2024 convention in San Antonio, Texas. He is better known for his directorial depiction of surrealism in works such as Mushishi and The Flowers of Evil, but became the series director of Uzumaki‘s first episode. Ahead of Uzumaki’s premiere, Nagahama shared some personal stories as a creator and held an open discussion with the fans at the convention, specifically praising Redline’s director Takeshi Koike for his work.
The “Learn The Anime Industry with Anime Director Hiroshi Nagahama” panel provided a fire chat-style discussion for Nagahama and fans to talk about their love and passion for anime. It began with Nagahama asking fans to share their favorite anime. In his casual demeanor, he began asking the audience and having them shout out various anime titles. When a fan mentioned Redline, Nagahama reminisced on why Redline was memorable with its level of detail and work, and shared his respect for director Takeshi Koike at Madhouse.
As more fans began to shout out other familiar titles, Detroit Metal City came up, which was one of Nagahama’s early directorial anime series. Eiko Tanaka, founder of Studio 4°C, was in the crowd while Nagahama talked about the production, and she followed up by noting how she knew about Nagahama’s recent work, Mushishi, and got him to be the director.
After the fire chat-style discussion, Nagahama began live-sketching the Detroit Metal City character Soichi Negish, partly out of nostalgia and to pay homage to Tanaka-san’s production studio. Unlike many live-drawings events that include a simultaneous Q&A component to it, the 20-minute sketch from Nagahama captivated the audience enough that they remained relatively quiet throughout.
The Uzumaki anime series premiered September 28 on Adult Swim and stream on Max in the United States. The 4-episode limited anime series was produced by studios Fugaku (for Episode 1 and Episode 4) and Akatsuki (for Episode 2 and Episode 3). Colin Stetson (Hereditary) served as the music composer and Aki Itami (Forest of Piano, Flowers of Evil) is writing the scripts. Production I.G USA and Adult Swim co-produced the anime. An official anime trailer was recently released ahead of the premiere.
Junji Ito‘s Uzumaki horror manga was originally serialized from 1998 to 1999 in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits and is collected into three tankoubon volumes. Viz Media describes the plot as:
Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world. The bizarre masterpiece horror manga is now available all in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!
A live-action film adaptation was released in 2000.
