Adult Swim Producer Claims ‘Uzumaki’ Quality Drop The Result Of Production Team Being “Screwed Over”, Says Series Was Aired Instead Of Being Cancelled “Out Of Respect For The Hard Work”
According to Toonami boss and Adult Swim producer Jason DeMarco, while the network’s new anime adaptation of Uzumaki does see an embarrassingly steep drop in quality after its first episode, he felt airing the series in this state was better than binning it all together and disrespecting the “hard work” of its production team.
Produced in collaboration between Japanese anime studio Production I.G and the American TV programming block Adult Swim, the four-episode Uzumaki promised to not only provide viewers with an animated adaptation of the eponymous Junji Ito horror manga, but do so with an aesthetic style that would make it seem as if the iconic mangaka’s art had leapt right off the page.
While an admittedly tall ambition, following a delay-ridden five-year dev period, when the series finally premiered to Japanese audiences on September 29th, it appeared as if its respective production teams had actually managed to deliver on their promises, with the first episode blowing audiences away with the skill and dedication it had shown in recreating both Ito’s seminal art style and its intended ‘creepy’ atmosphere.
And then, a week later, came Episode 2.
Premiering on October 6th, upon its airing, fans were baffled to discover that while its predecessor had featured some of the best animation in recent memory, not even an inkling of this quality was present in its follow-up.
As seen below, rather than an intricate treatment of Ito’s work, the second episode was instead a master class in cutting corners, its runtime filled with poorly-timed run cycles:
Off-model characters:
And low-frame-count animations:
Amid a subsequent barrage of criticism and questions from audiences regarding this downgrade, the aforementioned DeMarco took to his personal Bluesky account on October 7th to provide insight into the entire affair.
In a now-deleted thread made in apparent response to a comment made by another user regarding the backlash, the Toonami head asserted, “It’s fine, we knew this would happen. I can’t talk about what went down but we were screwed over and the options were A) Not finish and air nothing and call it a loss, B) Just finish and air Ep 1 and leave it incomplete or C) Run all four, warts and all. Out of respect for the hard work, we chose C.”
“After waiting so long, it makes sense people would be mad,” he continued. “Unfortunately I can’t tell them who to blame it on…but someone is definitely at fault here, and we all just had to do our best when things imploded. Maybe others would have made different choices. We did the best we could with what we had.”
Drawing his thread to a close, DeMarco ultimately affirmed, “But again, a lot of people worked very hard on this show and I didn’t think the actions of just one or two people should be the reason it never saw the light of day.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong choice, I truly don’t know,” he conclued. “But those people have a right to be annoyed and disappointed. I’m glad you are digging it.”
The last two episodes of Production I.G. and Adult Swim’s Uzumaki misfire are set to across the next two coming Sundays, October 13th and October 20th.
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