Title: Uzumaki
Author:
Junji Ito
Literary
level: Intermediate
Rating: 5/5
Serialized by the seinen magazine
Big Comic Spirits and authored by the famous Junji Ito between 1998 and 1999.
Uzumaki is a horror—and at times cosmic and body horror—manga that features
spirals as its main theme. In a small town called Kurouzu-cho, Kirie Goshima
watches as her town goes mad and insane with the constant imagery of spirals,
cursing, and causing terror amongst the people. Kirie’s boyfriend, Shuichi
Saito, knows from first-hand experience that spirals will cause trouble no
matter where they are. This is an anthology of various stories grouped together
by one plot that slowly but surely comes together in the end. It is filled with
20 chapters of distorted body parts and an ancient evil presence that continues
its existence as a spiral repeating the cycle every one-hundred, one-thousand,
or maybe every ten-thousand years.
This is a fantastic story of strange
imagery and the most cursed drawings someone can make. Things you will find
while reading are human snails, people that can control twisters, mosquitoes
that make pregnant women crave blood from other humans, and tons more. Junji
Ito never fails to bring terrifying designs of humans in unnatural positions or
scary situations that will make you squeamish and uncomfortable. Often compared
to the cosmic horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, but instead of wording the
unfathomable impossibility of cosmic horror, Junji Ito drew and visualized it;
he conceptualized the aspect we could not understand with Lovecraft in 20 chapters.
Of course, it is not a story for everyone due to the high intensity of body horror in
each panel, as well as the story itself. It all depends on the perspective of
horror for me to recommend Uzumaki, but it will change your view once you read
it.