DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ANIME DramaUzumaki
ONE SHOT HorrorUzumaki Tokubetsu-hen: Ginga

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  90/100
  Junji Ito's best series simultaneously featuring snail people and talking infants who wish to be returned to the womb.

  Uzumaki is a 2000 live-action horror movie about spirals--

  

  Whoops, I'm sorry. I was staring at spirals on Google Images and got momentarily confused. No, since what happened the last time, we don't talk about live action in these reviews anymore. This is not a review of the live action movie which yes is a thing, there's tons of live action Junji Ito movies apparently, but a review of Uzumaki the manga.

  ---

  Introduction

  

  Uzumaki is arguably Junji Ito's best series out of the three he's done! Opinions are opinions and all, but if someone actually makes the claim that Tomie or Gyo are better, I'll laugh in their faces. Mind you, I like both Tomie and Gyo, but Tomie is just a disguised extended short story collection about this one weird Junji Ito female character and Gyo is... Gyo.

  While Uzumaki is more of a focused thing than Tomie, it does still kind of read like a Junji Ito manga collection but entirely about spirals. It all takes place within this one town and we get to know and stick with a handful of characters... but with each chapter, there's a new thing.

  "The lighthouse is blasting spiral light rather than normal light! People are turning into snail people, oh fuck! Our hair is becoming alive and turning into spirals, LET'S DO POPULARITY BATTLES!"

  There were many moments when I just thought. "This idea could be cut out of Uzumaki entirely and still work on its own in some different Junji Ito collection." But it is actually more cohesive than most of Tomie, and stuff from the previous chapters do actually return or are still evident within the town. Like he just adds more and more insanity to this town with each chapter and it's just completely fucked by the end.

  I just fucking love that by the end of the manga it just becomes a free for all of whirlwind battles and people who are stuck in this town of spirals are hunting snail people for food.

  ---

  The Meaning of the Spiral

  

  It doesn't matter. It literally doesn't matter. I know you want to think it matters, but it doesn't matter. That's why right now I'm just gonna spoil it. The ending of Uzumaki is not exactly... satisfying. We don't really get answers. Like why were people turning into snail people? Why was almost everything in this town (and this town alone) essentially turning into a spiral by the end? I'm just bringing this up because if you're a person who fucking hates when things leave a bunch of stuff open to intepretation or just straight up doesn't give a fuck about explaining anything, Uzumaki as well as Junji Ito in general, is not for you.

  The spiral is some sort of weird omniscient force and is everywhere, and is causing really weird and sometimes genuinely spooky shit to happen. GOT IT.

  To be honest, despite being okay with Uzumaki's ending, I also wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more about the spiral creatures/beings (?) that live underneath of the town apparently. But Junji Ito loves getting in and out, one and done. He doesn't care a huge amount about doing a sensible plot that makes sense. That's why right after you get hit by Uzumaki's sort of downer ending, the main characters essentially accept death in this spiral underground and the ruined town finally becomes just one huge spiral, Junji Ito drops an extra chapter on you that happens at some point before the ending about SPIRAL GALAXIES.

  I mean this is just my take on it, but you could say the entire manga is a spiral. A descending spiral of weirdness, insanity, and creepiness. With each chapter you proceed into it, the quicker you fall. Which would explain why odds are when someone mentions Junji Ito, chances are, if you know of Junji Ito, your mind will likely go to Uzumaki. Or... or the story about holes I guess. To be fair, I actually saw images of that one before I was even aware of Junji Ito.

  Still, like I said, by near the end of the manga, the surviving characters are basically just trying to get the fuck out of the town but they literally can't escape the spiral and end up getting brought back towards the town and then they just end up going straight to the center of it. Everything goes to shit and it shifts from the short stories about spirals to "we need to get the fuck out."

  And that brings me to my next point.

  ---

  Should Have Listened to Shuichi

  This may have as well as been the alternate fucking title for Uzumaki

  

  Junji Ito is aware of typical horror tropes. You know:

  "Hey, let's go explore the old haunted house!"
  "Let's not leave when quite obviously we should leave, because if we just leave then horror things can't happen."
  "Woah, here's a random trail of blood! Let's follow it."

  But he takes it to a new level with Uzumaki. It is on page 14 of this over 600 page book that Shuichi our main male character turns to his girlfriend Kirie and basically straight up says "Let's get the fuck out of this town right now."

  

  And I had completely forgot he had told Kirie this at the very beginning until I began to reread it. But Kirie doesn't really respond, because she doesn't know how to. Yet, anyone with half a brain would immediately leave after any of the events of any chosen Uzumaki chapter.

  Shuichi is actually probably one of my favorite Junji Ito characters. He starts out as a bit weird but with every next chapter of Uzumaki he just becomes worn down bit by bit. He continually repeats his desire to leave the town, but nope, Kirie doesn't immediately leave with him when they could. The third chapter literally ends with a girl having a spiral vortex open up in her head, literally consume a guy, and then eats herself whole.

  

  WHY WOULD YOU NOT IMMEDIATELY LEAVE. WHEN PEOPLE ARE CREMATED, THEIR ASHES FLY UP INTO THE SKY, FORM A SPIRAL, AND THEN ARE SUCKED DOWN INTO THE LAKE. THERE IS CLEARLY SOMETHING WEIRD GOING ON WITH THIS TOWN.

  But you know, Shuichi's still a good guy. In the chapter when Kirie's hair becomes spirals and takes on a life on its own and is literally sucking her life away, despite Shuichi's already spreading fear and hatred of spirals, he still shows up in the end and saves her by forcefully cutting her hair even as it's trying to fucking kill him.

  

  As a matter of fact, he could have just said fuck it at any point and just left the town on his own but nope. Kirie stayed, so he stayed. What a good guy. I'm so glad it ended well for--oh right... it didn't.

  

  ---

  Fun Horror

  Of the three long series, Uzumaki is definitely the one that remains... it doesn't get stale because it throws something new at you with every chapter until the inevitable and quite literal final descent into insanity and spirals. Tomie retains its weirdness but apart from I think the first handful of stories, there's really no continuity among them. Gyo... sort of goes a bit too far and departs from "attack of rotten fish" and enters weird "blob people spewing gas" territory. With Uzumaki, it's still always about the spirals.

  

  There's just so many fun sequences and neat art for horror fans. Like the newborns talking to each other and saying they want to be put back in the womb because it's more comfortable? And then the fucked up doctor who is actually doing it and then feasting on spirals mushrooms that grow from the discarded placentas? And never mind the fact that even before this, these women were basically becoming human mosquitoes and feasting off of people's blood and have now developed needle spiral tongues? Kirie escapes that hospital and literally never goes back and we never find out what the fuck happens now that the entire hospital staff is addicted to placenta spiral fungus or having their blood harvested by pregnant women who have had their babies sowed back into their stomachs.

  

  Jesus Christ, after that chapter, THERE IS IMMEDIATELY A CHAPTER WHERE A HURRICANE FALLS IN LOVE WITH KIRIE SO IT STARTS CHASING HER IN AN ATTEMPT TO ABDUCT HER. Shuichi, who has basically been driven insane at this point, straight up says to her completely seriously: "Sounds like it's taken quite a fancy to you. I think I may have a rival."

  

  THE HURRICANE IS IN LOVE WITH HER. A HURRICANE. IT SUCKS UP SOME RANDOM GIRL WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE WEARING THE SAME COAT AS KIRIE, THEN IMMEDIATELY SPITS HER OUT CAUSING HER TO FALL TO HER DEATH.

  I'm not even going to talk about Jack in the Box because that would ruin it, but if it isn't my favorite chapter of all of Uzumaki, it's absolutely in the top three. As a matter of fact, I honestly recommend that if you don't intend on reading Uzumaki no matter what, just give that chapter a read. Chapter 7. It's great.

  

  ---

  Conclusion

  A 9 out of 10. I can't say it enough, but I love Uzumaki. There's more I could have said, there's more parts I could have went into, but I feel it'd be best to just experience the bulk of this manga on your own. I will say this though, if you don't like Uzumaki (from my observations, it seems like a love or hate it sort of thing), you probably will not enjoy any of Junji Ito's other stuff considering this contains (in my opinion) some of his best stuff. Because while each of his short story collections contains something a little bit different, none of them hit the Uzumaki mark for me. Some came close, and some of the ideas I loved, but Uzumaki overall is probably my favorite Junji Ito work.

  

  God damn it Kirie, those are the eyes of a dead man.

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• 

  MasterCrash

  80/100
  Uzumaki is not a masterpiece that transcends genres, but what it is, is a solid horror manga

  (Hello, before we get into the review, just wanted to bring to your attention that I also have this review in video format on my channel for those that preffer that format. If you don't, feel free to skip this paragraph and jump into the review, for those that do, you can find it by clicking here, thank you)

  Whenever someone thinks of "Horror Manga" it's very likely that the first name that pops on their head is Junji Ito. Ito is well known among anime, manga and even horror fans in general. Since 1987 that he has been giving us horrific nightmares, something that he still does even till this day. But among all of his works one stands out the most. 1998's "Uzumaki", a story about a city consumed by The Spiral. Uzumaki has since been adapted into a live-action movie, and more recently it's being adapted into a 4 episode anime mini-series. It seems that now, more than ever, is a good time to see what Junji Ito is all about.

  

  In Uzumaki we follow Kirie and Shuichi, two citizens of Kurozu-cho, as they slowly see their town be more and more haunted by anything and everything spiral related. That's the gist of it, so lets address point one: Spirals are not scary, right? Well, Junji Ito rarely uses things that are scary by themselves, he generally grabs things that we take as granted and distorts them until they are frightening and it is just that that he does here. Part of the reason to read Uzumaki is to see and discover just how much he can do with just a pattern.

  With 19 chapters, spread along 3 volumes, eventually released in that giant omnibus we all know, and having an extra chapter, Uzumaki isn't necessarily a huge manga, but it's still one of the longer works of Junji Ito, as he mostly focuses on writing one-shots and one-shot compilations, and sure, Uzumaki isn't the ONLY long work of Ito, but his non-one-shots are still the vast minority when compared to sheer size of his bibliography. Now, I'm bringing this up because it shows that he's a one-shot writer.

  Ito's one-shots focus on having short, mysterious and unexplainable events happening to random people. It doesn't have big, deep stories, it doesn't have complex and interesting characters, it's all about the primal, raw feeling that it invokes on people who read it. Uzumaki is very much the same, with almost every chapter feeling like a self-contained one-shot, with the exception of the final couple chapters. And yes, there is a story being slowly told across all of them but it doesn't really go much further than "this town is being haunted by spirals". Sometimes there are two chapters in a row who might be connected, but for the most part, I could show you chapters in a random order and you probably would not notice it with the exception of maybe a line of dialogue.

  And while we do follow the same character through all of the 20 chapters, it's not like I can say that she is a complex or interesting character, it still feels very much like any other Junji Ito character, a blank state that we can use to self-insert and explore the actual main character of the story, the horror. Kirie's boyfriend, Shuichi is the only character that has a bit more going for him, and that's mostly the fact he's the only one who seems to understand what the fuck is going on.

  With that said, one does not read Ito's manga for complex stories, or characters, we read it for the fantastic and horrific pay-offs he delivers, and Uzumaki does deliver, having some of the most iconic of Ito's imagery. Each chapter is a wild and fun ride full of weird events. We start with pretty basic ideas, first chapter is about a man in love with anything that has a spiral pattern and the second chapter follows his wife, who has a deep fear of anything spiral related. These chapters are ideal to start with, since not only eases you in into the idea, it also shows you just how much this hypnotizing pattern exists in our lives. You'll come back out of these two chapters noticing it everywhere. The first chapter also has one of the best page turns in the entire series.

  For those that may not be familiar with the term page-turn, it's a technique that is very used in horror and comedy manga, the idea is to build upon something that is revealed in the next page turn, this means that it can have some seconds (or even minutes, if you really don't want to change the page) to build up on your expectations and then subvert them. In horror, specially Junji Ito horror, it can be used to let you know that in the next page something horrible is gonna happen, but not tell you exactly what, so it's up to you decide if you're feeling brave enough to see what's on the other side. This is something that is present in pretty much every chapter of Uzumaki, and each page turn is fantastic. This is where the artstyle of Ito comes into play, his artstyle is hardly the most beautiful to look at, but it's perfect for a horror series, it's weirdly realistic and he is known to spend hours upon hours on some of these pages, making all of them mesmerizing and haunting, with so much detail that it won't look like something out of painting, but something disgustingly real. It calls upon a very visceral and raw feeling, and this is the strong point of Uzumaki, pages that will most definitely stay burned in your mind forever. Everything else is pretty much a slow build-up for those reveals.
  Some of the chapters deal with some ridiculous ideas, some too ridiculous that just make it all too silly and feel more comedic than scary, but even those are enjoyable, and even those have visceral pages.

  It's in it's final chapters that Uzumaki starts flowing more fluidly, as it develops it's conclusion. It's some of the best chapters in the whole manga and it's good to see it call back some events that had not been mentioned again. The ending, without spoiling, is not the most in-depth conclusion, but you should not expect that from Uzumaki. Junji Ito follows the mantra of Lovecraft, and his stories are not to be explained, the horror lies in the mysterious and the unknown, so it makes sense that story concludes by keeping most things a mystery, just giving us small details of "why" it could have happened.

  Junji Ito does not use Uzumaki as a way to explore his weak points or to expand much on his strong ones. Ultimately, this is still a Ito manga 101, so if you're coming into Uzumaki expecting more, you probably will leave disappointed. If you're not a Junji Ito fan or don't like horror either, this is also not going to be the manga that's going to convert you. But if you know his works and you're a fan or if you know what to expect and that still sounds interesting to you, then you'll probably enjoy what this manga has in store. Uzumaki isn't a masterpiece, but what it does, it does it very well.

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• 

  ghostchat

  70/100
  While Uzumaki lacks in consistency, it makes up in artistry.

  One of horror mangaka Junji Ito’s most famed works, Uzumaki follows teenage couple, Kirie and Shuichi, as they bear witness to their town’s gradual demise due to a curse of unusual nature. Uzumaki is, at its core, an exploration of the horror potential of the spiral, both in its natural occurrences (a woman becomes obsessed with spiral shapes in the human body including fingerprints and inner ear) and in more fantastical ways (people turn into snails).

  The series is perhaps best viewed as a series of loosely connected vignettes as opposed to a complete story, due to the widely varied ways in which the spiral manifests in the town of Kurouzu-cho, and the relatively open ending. Certain chapters, while definitely horrific in their own ways, do not seem to fit the spiral motif as clearly as others (I would point specifically to the arc regarding pregnant women and mosquitoes). This was somewhat distracting during my read, but I’ll admit I tend to prefer stories with a major, cohesive plot rather than monster-of-the-week type stories, so it may be at least in part due to personal preference. There isn’t much emphasis on developing the characters beyond a few key traits either, but they definitely serve their purpose as vessels from which to view the world around them. That being said, Uzumaki is definitely unique conceptually and largely succeeds at crafting a world cursed by spirals. The curse starts off almost innocuous, manifesting first as a simple obsession that Shuichi’s father develops. However, by the end of the first chapter it becomes very clear that said curse is much more insidious and all-consuming.

  It would be impossible to talk about Junji Ito without talking about his penchant for body horror. Ito shows no fear when it comes to creating scenarios which leave his character’s bodies transformed, mangled, or mutilated. The bulk of the horror comes not only from the feeling of unease and lack of control associated with a town-wide curse, but also images and scenarios that just leave you sick to your stomach in a peculiar combination of disgust and awe. Ito’s horror is never without artistry, which is a consistent drawing point for his work. There’s also something to be said for his timing. By all means Ito does not rely on the horror manga staple of creating a scenario in which you turn the page only to be greeted with a particularly jarring scene, but I would argue that these moments in Uzumaki are especially satisfying. Ito’s mastery of these moments, as well as a more gradual reveal and build set-up, make Uzumaki a particularly engaging read.

  Uzumaki is by no means a perfect work, but it is no surprise that it is so well-regarded. If you have any interest in body horror or Junji Ito’s more long-form works, I would absolutely make the recommendation.

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