Does The Uzumaki Live Action Follow Junji Ito'S Manga Plot?

I get asked this a lot when I'm hanging out online with fellow horror fans. My take: the live-action adaptation follows the manga’s broad storyline and central horror premise, but it diverges in important ways. 'Junji Ito''s 'Uzumaki' is almost a mood piece made of many short, escalating episodes that revel in visual absurdity; film and TV need a through-line, so the adaptation stitches those episodes into a tighter narrative. That means some scenes are combined, new connective tissue is added, and character motivations are often amplified or softened to make audience investment feel earned.

Visually, adaptations try hard to recreate Ito's grotesque images—spiraling pupils, people turning into snails, whorled architecture—but some of the raw impact comes from his page layouts, the silence between panels, and the imagination that fills in detail. On-screen, sound and performance replace that white space, which can either enhance the horror (a creak or a whisper can be devastating) or blunt it if effects are overused. Also, note that endings sometimes shift: filmmakers may alter or clarify resolutions to suit pacing or audience expectations.

In short, the live-action is faithful in theme and major moments but not slavish in plot details or structure. I’d say watch it expecting an interpretation: you’ll recognize the source, but you’ll also be seeing someone else’s cinematic reading of Ito’s spirals.

I binged the live-action after reading the manga and felt like I was watching a remix: the core premise and big moments from 'Uzumaki' are there, so fans will nod along, but the storytelling is reshaped. The manga’s fragmentary, escalating horror is made more linear for TV, with extra scenes and emotional beats added to connect everything. Some grotesque images translate brilliantly, others lose a bit of the uncanny edge because films can’t replicate Ito's exact panel-by-panel tension. Personally, I loved both: the manga for its pure, surreal dread and the live-action for its atmosphere and the way it humanizes Kirie and Shuichi. If you want the truest flavor of Ito’s vision, read the manga; if you want a different, cinematic spin on those spirals, watch the show.

Whenever someone asks me if the live-action version of 'Uzumaki' follows 'Junji Ito''s manga, I grin because it’s such a deliciously messy question. On the surface, the show keeps the core obsession: spirals as a creeping, infectious motif that warps bodies, minds, and the town itself. Key beats and the main characters—Kirie and Shuichi—are present, and many of the iconic set pieces (the spiral-obsessed townspeople, increasingly grotesque transformations, and that growing sense of inevitability) are adapted in recognizable ways. So yes, the bones are there.

That said, the way those bones are put together changes a lot. The manga reads like a collection of escalating vignettes and visual shocks; Ito’s panel work creates a pacing and dread that you can’t directly copy into live action. The series tends to smooth things into a more linear, character-driven arc, expanding relationships, adding scenes for emotional context, and sometimes inventing subplots to fill runtime. Some scenes are altered or rearranged to make sense on screen, and practical or CGI constraints shift how grotesque moments land. I felt both thrilled and a little wistful—thrilled because many moments landed with uncanny eeriness, wistful because some of the quiet, surreal pacing of the manga had to be traded for coherence and continuity.

If you love the manga, treat the live-action as a reinterpretation: it honors the spirit and major motifs but takes liberties in structure, tone, and some specific outcomes. I re-read parts of the manga after watching, because Ito’s linework delivers tiny horrors that no camera quite replicates. But the adaptation has its own pleasures—sound design, acting choices, and the slow construction of a human story around the spiral obsession—so I’d recommend enjoying both on their own terms rather than expecting a panel-by-panel recreation.