Adult Swim has been a bastion for western anime fans for decades, especially thanks to the efforts of their late-night Toonami programming block. The late-night cable television block has been dedicated to broadcasting hit anime for years, but now, it’s taking things to the next level by co-producing original anime projects. We recently learned that one such project is an original anime being produced with Crunchyroll and Samurai Champloo director Kazuto Nakazawa titled Fena: Pirate Princess. Another exciting Adult Swim project that we’ve already known about for a while, though, is an animated adaptation of the timeless Junji Ito horror manga Uzumaki. The recent online Adult Swim Con gave us an update on the project, including the unfortunate news that it has been delayed to 2021.
The trailer above is an updated version of the initial Uzumaki announcement trailer from August 2019, with the video title and description sharing that the project is set to debut in 2021. When it’s finally ready, the four-episode mini-series will premiere first on Toonami before later airing in Japan. Mushishi director Hiroshi Nagahama is directing the series at Studio Drive, with co-production work from Production I.G. USA. In an interesting global collaborative twist, music for the anime is being handled by Hollywood film composer Colin Stetson of Hereditary fame.
While we don’t know any English voice talent attached to the series yet, we know of the following Japanese voice actors for Uzumaki so far:
- Uki Satake as Kirie Goshima
- Shinichiro Miki as Shuichi Saito
- Toshio Furukawa as Kirie’s Father
- Takashi Matsuyama as Shuichi’s Father
- Mika Doi as Yukie Saito
- Mariya Ise as Azami Kurotami
- Katsutoshi Matsuzaki as Katayama
- Wataru Hatano as Okada
- Tatsumaru Tachibana as Tsumura
- Kouichi Toochika as Yokota
- Ami Fukushima as Shiho
- Gen Sato as Boy 1
- Shunsuke Takeuchi as Boy 2
- Anna Nagase as Girl
- Kōsuke Okamoto as Attendee 1
The original Uzumaki manga ran in Japan from 1998-1999, with Viz Media eventually collecting the manga in three volumes for overseas release from 2007-2008. MyAnimeList describes the series as follows:
In the town of Kurouzu-cho, Kirie Goshima lives a fairly normal life with her family. As she walks to the train station one day to meet her boyfriend, Shuuichi Saito, she sees his father staring at a snail shell in an alley. Thinking nothing of it, she mentions the incident to Shuuichi, who says that his father has been acting weird lately. Shuuichi reveals his rising desire to leave the town with Kirie, saying that the town is infected with spirals.
But his father’s obsession with the shape soon proves deadly, beginning a chain of horrific and unexplainable events that causes the residents of Kurouzu-cho to spiral into madness.
Source: Anime News Network
