Uzumaki - Episode 2 Discussion

[ben0119]

5 minutes ago, Dark_Cloud_Overhead said:

I'm surprised there's anybody left that isn't at this point with all the crazy shit that's happening in that town already. It's only second episode, too. Can't imagine anyone's gonna survive the entire series at this point. How many episodes is this supposed to be anyway?

If the main couple don't at least survive it'll be a waste and I'll be extremely annoyed.

[saito34]

7 minutes ago, Dark_Cloud_Overhead said:

I'm surprised there's anybody left that isn't at this point with all the crazy shit that's happening in that town already. It's only second episode, too. Can't imagine anyone's gonna survive the entire series at this point. How many episodes is this supposed to be anyway?

That's a damn good question. I have no idea. The thing with Junji Ito's stuff is that it's idea rich and explores a lot of weird scenarios that tend to strain credulity at a certain point. The one's I've watched (there's an Ito collection on Crunchy Roll) don't have traditional story arcs. They just kind of explore a concept and it usually plays out in a horrible way. I never read the Uzumaki manga but I'm hoping we get some type of actual story instead of just a series of whacky events.

Edited October 6 by saito34

[saito34]

4 minutes ago, ben0119 said:

Is it really meant to be black and white?  Most manga is black and white, doesn't mean it's literally meant to be black and white.  They will have color spreads and first pages, color covers of course, some will even get full color chapters.  This is just eh, not a fan. 

I can appreciate black and white live action movies and older animation that didn't have a choice, but this feels like it's forced and going out of its way.

That's a good point so I don't really know. I just assumed all Ito's work was B/W and It was more of a stylistic choice than a purely financial one. If it turns out there are color spreads, b/w makes even less sense.

[DangerMouse]

Apparently not a financial decision, I remember the interviews and I think it was also mentioned in here maybe too that came out last week said it was stylistic one for matching old horror and since the manga is apparently entirely black and white too (never read it myself though).

In fact I think they said it was harder and actually more expensive to do it this way. One of the articles mentioning it and some of the other challenges

https://fandomwire.com/why-is-uzumaki-in-black-and-white-adult-swim-svp-has-a-compelling-answer-that-works-perfectly-for-the-horror-masterpiece/

Edited October 6 by DangerMouse

[ben0119]

1 hour ago, DangerMouse said:

Let the creepy shit begin.

Side note, Dan Da Dan's first ep and dub were pretty great, can't wait for more.

Was it?  I was thinking of watching it.

[DangerMouse]

Just now, ben0119 said:

Was it?  I was thinking of watching it.

Yeah, really fun start. Looks like it's gonna be crazy.

[saito34]

9 minutes ago, DangerMouse said:

Apparently not a financial decision, I remember the interviews and I think it was also mentioned in here maybe too that came out last week said it was stylistic one for matching old horror and since the manga is apparently entirely black and white too (never read it myself though).

In fact I think they said it was harder and actually more expensive to do it this way. One of the articles mentioning it and some of the other challenges

https://fandomwire.com/why-is-uzumaki-in-black-and-white-adult-swim-svp-has-a-compelling-answer-that-works-perfectly-for-the-horror-masterpiece/

Nice...thanks. Now that you mention it, I remember that tidbit about b/w being more challenging.

[viperxmns]

Teacher's a snail, NO SCHOOOOL

[ben0119]

23 minutes ago, DangerMouse said:

Apparently not a financial decision, I remember the interviews and I think it was also mentioned in here maybe too that came out last week said it was stylistic one for matching old horror and since the manga is apparently entirely black and white too (never read it myself though).

In fact I think they said it was harder and actually more expensive to do it this way. One of the articles mentioning it and some of the other challenges

https://fandomwire.com/why-is-uzumaki-in-black-and-white-adult-swim-svp-has-a-compelling-answer-that-works-perfectly-for-the-horror-masterpiece/

I'll have to check that out later, but if that's the case, alright.  So it's a style thing.  Still not a fan of it, though.

[Sketch]

I guess it was overly ambitious to believe every episode would look as nice as the first one did. The story is still compelling though.

[Toonamiguy321]

I gave episode one the benefit of the doubt, there were some questionable budget saving choices like the CGI mocap, but it kinda worked with the creepy vibe. Now here we are at episode 2, and it’s the exact same shit we get with every original where the budget drops like a lead weight. Half the episode felt like someone just holding manga panels up to the camera, while the actually animated parts were abysmally low quality. The punch early in the episode and all of the running animation in this episode makes Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer look like top notch animation work. 
 

What the hell were they doing for 5 years? 

[[classic swim]]

Yeah, kinda.

[Toonamiguy321]

“So sorry we have to delay this for 5 years to make sure every single frame of animation looks amazing”

 

The animation -

[Jman]

So, who wants to watch DanDanDan next Thursday?  Or Ranma 1/2 on Netflix?

I’m sure that the meat of the series of fine, but man, Junji Ito adaptations are cursed.

[Mr. Idea Box]

10 minutes ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

“So sorry we have to delay this for 5 years to make sure every single frame of animation looks amazing”

 

The animation -

I'm sure the MASSIVE pool of animation directors is why this week's episode looks like that. But if the rest of the series has a similar-sized pool, this cannot end well from the viewer's perspective.

[Jman]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Idea Box said:

I'm sure the MASSIVE pool of animation directors is why this week's episode looks like that. But if the rest of the series has a similar-sized pool, this cannot end well from the viewer's perspective.

Let’s hope it’s a bit more manageable, because this is the second most disappointing sequel Warner has released this weekend.

[Jman]

15 hours ago, ben0119 said:

Would be cool, but don't know if a remake is necessary.  Even with cutting filler, it would be a ton of material to cover.  What I really want to see continue is Burn The Witch.

Thousand Year Blood War's cour 3 debuted today with quite a bang.  I guess Demarco is standing outside the bakery, looking in the glass, and inhaling the scents, but can't buy anything?  If Demarco is waiting til the series is over to get it, that is just dumb. 

He’s got another thing coming if he thinks Disney will let it go.

[Toonamiguy321]

1 hour ago, Mr. Idea Box said:

I'm sure the MASSIVE pool of animation directors is why this week's episode looks like that. But if the rest of the series has a similar-sized pool, this cannot end well from the viewer's perspective.

That’s the exact reason. Episode 1 was handled by real, expensive talent. Episode 2 was farmed out to China/Korea while the huge wad of Demarco’s money they saved went to hookers and blow to enjoy during one of the many delays. 
 

Thats why I was constantly warning people that more time does NOT equal a better product. The best animation has just been the stuff from the promos, which wouldn’t surprise me if it had been made specifically for the promos. 

[Top Gun]

...where are you finding that list of "animation directors"? It doesn't even make sense, there are several company names on there.

[PokeNirvash]

Visually watching the end credits, where else?

As someone who unironically enjoyed the Biscuit Hammer anime through all its visual missteps, even I have to admit the drop in quality this episode to, dare I say, sub-Collection levels was painful to witness. And yeah, the characters introduced this episode were on the underdeveloped side, I'll admit that too. Those aside, it's not like the episode didn't unsettle me when it wanted to. The horror was definitely there, even if the budget wasn't able to keep up. I also liked the little bit of foreshadowing at the beginning of Kazunori and Yoriko watching the snakes mating; not for their eventual entwinement, of course, but of the gay snail sex and eventual external mpreg that resulted. (Merry Kinktober, btw.) And even if we'll never reach the highs of episode 1 again, here's hoping the next two come out better and this remains Uzumaki's technical nadir.

[mmm, fresh copypasta]

Edited October 7 by PokeNirvash

[viperxmns]

Wonder if demarco has seen the memes, wouldn't know if he comments at all on his bluesky

[Jman]

13 minutes ago, viperxmns said:

Wonder if demarco has seen the memes, wouldn't know if he comments at all on his bluesky

Probably blocking anyone spreading them.

[PokeNirvash]

Funny thing about that...

 

[Jman]

7 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

Funny thing about that...

 

So he just admitted the rest of the series is going to be a shit show.

They legitimately might have more goodwill if they just aired The Penguin instead.  We know DanDanDan is off limits.

[PokeNirvash]

Again, all we can hope for is that episodes 3 and 4's animation sucks less. It'd be a crying shame if the downward spiral, fitting as it is for the show's aesthetic, was as bad as that of Togainu no Chi.

[Jman]

8 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

Again, all we can hope for is that episodes 3 and 4's animation sucks less. It'd be a crying shame if the downward spiral, fitting as it is for the show's aesthetic, was as bad as that of Togainu no Chi.

I think the best comparison will be its third episode vs DanDanDan’s second.  If that keeps up its pace, then Uzumaki has a DeMarco problem.

[PokeNirvash]

Sure, if you wanna cheat.

[Toonamiguy321]

59 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

Funny thing about that...

 

For YEARS and multiple delays, Demarco always made snide remarks to people asking about Uzumaki, telling them that quality takes time and they are working hard on it every day. Now that it’s out and people think it’s shit, he is saying he actually has known it would be shit for a long time. And of course, when Toonami related news is negative, Demarco wasn’t responsible for it at all. 
 

Demarco needs to get out of the TV biz and start doing politics. He has the perfect dishonest temperament needed for it. It was the same way with FLCL last year where we conveniently didn’t learn each was only 3 episodes until the first one was ending. 

[Blatch]

Haven't watched Episode 2 yet, but I did see a tweet with the punch and running animation. Woof. It's amazing how this show managed to persist amidst all the corporate turmoil at WBD, and yet at this point, it would've been better for Zaslav to actually write it off. In a similar vein, seeing this is kind of making me wish I'd waited to start it, so I could look at that jankiness and decide not to watch at all.

12 minutes ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

Demarco needs to get out of the TV biz and start doing politics. He has the perfect dishonest temperament needed for it. It was the same way with FLCL last year where we conveniently didn’t learn each was only 3 episodes until the first one was ending. 

A bit off-topic here, but yeah. He's also got the anger for it: I was actually happy when he stopped regularly posting on Twitter because I didn't have to see his (deserved, admittedly) ranting about the spineless cops in Uvalde.

[Toonamiguy321]

44 minutes ago, Blatch said:

A bit off-topic here, but yeah. He's also got the anger for it: I was actually happy when he stopped regularly posting on Twitter because I didn't have to see his (deserved, admittedly) ranting about the spineless cops in Uvalde.

Stopped following him years ago because most of his tweets (something that was an all day, every day affair for him) was bitching about politics. If he ever posts something about Toonami, someone else will find it and link it. 
 

Back to the topic at hand, I can’t even see why he thought this was a good thing to make public. For one, the timing makes it obvious he spent the past few days reading reviews, and had an “uh oh people hate it” moment and decided he needed to get it out there that this was not HIS fault, but instead some mystery person he may well have just made up. I get that he has to be the hype man for his projects, regardless if they are shitty or not, but to pivot from 5 years of “this is gonna be so fuckin sick bro you don’t even know” to “woah woah woah it’s shit, and the rest of it will be shit, but don’t blame ME” within the very first workday since it aired makes him look like such a soft fool. 
 

Genuinely would have been better off just not saying anything, let it run its course then have people forget about it by November. 

[[classic swim]]

Jesus, he can’t even stand behind his own dump this time. Fuck. That’s bad for the rest of the lot then.

Edited October 8 by [classic swim]

[Jman]

2 hours ago, PokeNirvash said:

Sure, if you wanna cheat.

Well, my reasoning is “Can DanDaDan keep up its momentum?” At the same time, we’re going to “Can Uzumaki turn it around or would Toonami be better off showing The Penguin?”  I think that’s fair, mostly because DanDaDan blew minds with its first episode too.

[Toonamiguy321]

Coming together BEAUTIFULLY 

Team needed more time to get it PERFECT

Thankfully Demarco had turned his Twitter back on a few months ago so we can find these gems.

Also it seems the Bluesky comments have been deleted so he seems to have realized it was stupid to make them. Too late now though. 

[PokeNirvash]

6 hours ago, Jman said:

Well, my reasoning is “Can DanDaDan keep up its momentum?” At the same time, we’re going to “Can Uzumaki turn it around or would Toonami be better off showing The Penguin?”  I think that’s fair, mostly because DanDaDan blew minds with its first episode too.

That's a fair way of looking at it. If Uzumaki 3 is better than Uzumaki 2, even by just a tiny fraction, I'll consider it a draw.

[PenguinBoss]

The funniest part is that Demarco has been doing this for 20+ years and still got fleeced.

[Blatch]

12 hours ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

Coming together BEAUTIFULLY 

Team needed more time to get it PERFECT

Thankfully Demarco had turned his Twitter back on a few months ago so we can find these gems.

Also it seems the Bluesky comments have been deleted so he seems to have realized it was stupid to make them. Too late now though. 

Guess he only meant the first episode.

At this point my hot Uzumaki theory is that some higher-up finally dropped the hammer, and they needed to scramble to get the rest done on the cheap. It's not too elaborate, but sometimes you have to embrace banality. And yeah, I'm crossing my fingers too that this episode ends up being the outlier, but who knows? At least we'll always have the premiere as a proof-of-concept that an Ito anime can work.

[PenguinBoss]

57 minutes ago, Blatch said:

Guess he only meant the first episode.

At this point my hot Uzumaki theory is that some higher-up finally dropped the hammer, and they needed to scramble to get the rest done on the cheap. It's not too elaborate, but sometimes you have to embrace banality. And yeah, I'm crossing my fingers too that this episode ends up being the outlier, but who knows? At least we'll always have the premiere as a proof-of-concept that an Ito anime can work.

Probably. We saw nothing outside of short clips of episode 1, and those only started a little over a year ago. It's difficult to know if they only just finished that episode around a year ago or if they'd finished the others but knew they were hot garbage.

Personally, I can understand the boss being upset it took 4 years for a 20 minute episode.

[Sketch]

19 hours ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

Coming together BEAUTIFULLY 

Team needed more time to get it PERFECT

Thankfully Demarco had turned his Twitter back on a few months ago so we can find these gems.

Also it seems the Bluesky comments have been deleted so he seems to have realized it was stupid to make them. Too late now though. 

Maybe in 2021 this was still true but it sure didn’t stay that way.

[viperxmns]

DiscussingFilm picked it up, an unnamed executive producer, wonder who that could be hmmmm

 

[saito34]

This just sucks all around. At the end of the day, the fans are the ones getting screwed. CEOs and Shareholders are making cutthroat financial decisions and people lower down in the pecking order are left to pick up the pieces. Often times it is a no win situation for the people on the creative side. Your project gets shuttered completely along with all the work that went with it or you find a way to limp to the finish line. Having said that, it is hard to reconcile the doublespeak from Demarco. I mean at what point should you recognize potential problems on the horizon and temper expectations accordingly? I'm sure it's a complicated balancing act either way, but at a certain point you're just making things worse by actively feeding into the hype.

[Jman]

This is why I’m convinced if War of Rorrhim bombs, Zaslav will fire him.

[Sketch]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

This is why I’m convinced if War of Rorrhim bombs, Zaslav will fire him.

Honestly if that does bomb they kind of have every reason to not only fire DeMarco but also to close down that anime and action animation long-form division entirely because who else are they gonna get to run it and why even have it? They can keep co-funding anime without it, the first Batman Ninja had nothing to do with DeMarco or that division of the WB Animation, the 2nd one and Suicide Squad Isekai were gonna happen without that division as well. I suppose they could wait to see how Rooster Fighter and Lazarus pan out and Ninja Kamui was a successful enough project but between underwhelming critics and not making any real money, the majority of DeMarco's co-pros are a bad enough track record already so failing with Lord of the Rings could easily be the last straw. Unfortunately for him, even if its a great movie, it will not likely have a great box office. Potentially enough to offset production and marketing but it would be unusual for a movie like this to do well in theaters.

[saito34]

Im curious to what extent he was involved with Scavengers Reign because from a quality standpoint and despite c-suite ratf**ing, it was a decent success (I personally loved it). It could have theoretically put a check in the win column for him, but I doubt Zaslav knows it exists.

Edited October 9 by saito34

[Jman]

4 hours ago, saito34 said:

Im curious to what extent he was involved with Scavengers Reign because from a quality standpoint and despite c-suite ratf**ing, it was a decent success (I personally loved it). It could have theoretically put a check in the win column for him, but I doubt Zaslav knows it exists.

I didn't see his name in the production credits, which is probably good because I imagine that would be yet another L on his rapidly reddening ledger.  It was a show that was supposed to be all artsy and fancy, got canceled, got sent to Netflix to drum up support where it got its face beaten in by Hajime no Ippo, and to close out the failure, couldn't win the Emmy opposite Blue Eye Samurai.

[Jman]

6 hours ago, Sketch said:

Honestly if that does bomb they kind of have every reason to not only fire DeMarco but also to close down that anime and action animation long-form division entirely because who else are they gonna get to run it and why even have it? They can keep co-funding anime without it, the first Batman Ninja had nothing to do with DeMarco or that division of the WB Animation, the 2nd one and Suicide Squad Isekai were gonna happen without that division as well. I suppose they could wait to see how Rooster Fighter and Lazarus pan out and Ninja Kamui was a successful enough project but between underwhelming critics and not making any real money, the majority of DeMarco's co-pros are a bad enough track record already so failing with Lord of the Rings could easily be the last straw. Unfortunately for him, even if its a great movie, it will not likely have a great box office. Potentially enough to offset production and marketing but it would be unusual for a movie like this to do well in theaters.

“Lord of the Rings content we made up” is a hard enough sell after ROP’s fanfic, add in it being animated with a Girlboss main character Tolkien didn’t even bother to name in his appendices she was so unimportant has me thinking this will flop hard.  Maybe not Joker 2: Own the Incels hard, but hard enough to have DeMarco out the door before the end of January.

[Jman]

This guy is an animator on One Piece and Boruto.  He would know.

[MasqueradeOverture]

This is legit fucking infuriating.

Should've sensed it coming with the soundtrack being issued on a picture disc (for those who don't know, picture discs are notorious for having god awful sound quality). Perhaps it's fitting that a show about downward spirals goes into a downward spiral. It feels almost intentional, like high art masquerading as a piece of shit.

Uzumaki is this generation's Freddie Got Fingered.

[PokeNirvash]

"The day may come when Uzumaki is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as good."