富江

TOMIE

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
Invalid Date
CHAPTERS
13

DESCRIPTION

Tomie Kawakami is a femme fatale with long black hair and a beauty mark just under her left eye. She can seduce nearly any man, and drive them to murder as well, even though the victim is often Tomie herself. While one lover seeks to keep her for himself, another grows terrified of the immortal succubus. But soon they realize that no matter how many times they kill her, the world will never be free of Tomie.

(Source: Viz Media)

Notes:

While a collection of mainly independent short stories, Tomie was originally published as Volumes 1 and 2 of the Ito Junji Kyofu Manga Collection. This entry is for the standalone release of Tomie first published in February 2000 with previously unreleased chapter "小指/Little Finger".
Later collections such as the 'Complete Deluxe edition' by Viz combines this and the sequel entry Tomie: Again for a total of 20 chapters.
The short story “Painter” has been adapted in the first part of episode 9 of Ito Junji: Collection.

CAST

Tomie

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO TOMIE

ANIME DramaItou Junji: Collection

Cover Art for Itou Junji: Collection - Tomie

OVA DramaItou Junji: Collection - Tomie

Cover Art for Itou Junji Jisen Kessakushuu

MANGA HorrorItou Junji Jisen Kessakushuu

ONE SHOT HorrorMiirareta Souichi

MANGA DramaTomie: Nottori

Cover Art for Itou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection

MANGA DramaItou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection

Cover Art for Itou Junji Kyoufu Hakubutsukan

MANGA ComedyItou Junji Kyoufu Hakubutsukan

MANGA DramaItou Junji Kessakushuu

MANGA HorrorTomie: Again

ONA DramaItou Junji: Maniac

Cover Art for Series Tomie no Kyoufu: Gaka

MANGA DramaSeries Tomie no Kyoufu: Gaka

ONE SHOT DramaTomie: Control

REVIEWS

TheGruesomeGoblin
75/100
The character that gave a dental technician an over thirty year long career in horror manga.
*This review is for all of the original Tomie stories. Not just those in the original volume, but the [second volume](https://anilist.co/manga/145612/Tomie-Again/) as well! Tomie!*
Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie.

Tomie's Introduction

At this point, I've reviewed more than a few works by Junji Ito. Whether it be the questionable adaptations of his works (though while I still really love the Collection, the animation of course leaves a lot to be desired) or his manga themselves, I've taken plenty of trips down the Junji Ito well.

It was only a matter of time for me to eventually reach Tomie. Before Fragments of Horror, before the Dissolving Classroom, before Gyo, and before Uzumaki, there was Tomie. Also probably before Human Chair as well. I incorrectly implied that to be Junji Ito's first story in that review because of the date that was set on its Anilist page which since seems to have been removed. Human Chair's still a good starting point to get into Junji Ito though, in my opinion.

Tomie was the very first Junji Ito story to be published, and it led to his thirty plus year career in horror manga. While the bulk of Junji Ito's manga are short stories which have been gathered in various collections over the years, Tomie is essentially just one big collection of Junji Ito stories that just happen to be all centered around one character.

Tomie

To be honest, in terms of horror characters who have ended up getting entire horror franchises from their original movies/source material, Tomie's unique in that... she very rarely if ever directly kills anyone herself.

A beautiful yet vain and prideful girl who seems to obtain the attention of every single guy all around her... seemingly perfect, yet there seems to be something disturbing lurking beneath the surface. And yet no matter what the situation is, it seems like the events circling around Tomie always end in bloodied tragedy.

The first original handful of Tomie stories (before Junji Ito actually decided to focus on Tomie with the first of that batch being the Painter story that's also been included in the somewhat recent Shiver collection and also the Collection anime) were somewhat connected, but mostly Tomie is episodic.

After all, there is a countless number of Tomie's running amok in the world. The very original Tomie story is a simple tale of a class essentially causing the death of a girl named Tomie. Or at least they think she's dead when they begin to take a hacksaw to her "corpse"... they cut her corpse into a total of forty two pieces and then each class members goes off with a different piece to discard somewhere.

But then Tomie returns. Alive as ever. For as it turns out, and this is basically the basis for this entire series, even if you kill her and cut her corpse into pieces or even take one of her organs and transplant them into someone else... Tomie will either horrifically regenerate into a monstrous form from whatever piece of flesh was left unburned, or Tomie will possess and take over the body of whatever hosts her organs have been transplanted into.

You would think for a horror character that would probably be enough. Instead, she's a full on walking femme fatale. She's capable of using her appearance to initially seduce and then completely psychologically dominate most of the males throughout her stories. However, this only works to a certain degree, for usually the men that she places underneath of her thumb usually end up snapping and giving in to their violent urges to usually murder Tomie and cut her into pieces... exactly how the Tomie in the original story was first killed.

This idea probably should not work as well as it does for a series of twenty short stories. Yet it genuinely just feels as if Junji Ito was just having a blast while thinking of what crazy Tomie story to do next.

Because despite the fact that the entire series is about the same character either driving men to madness or suicide or being killed and cut up by the men she was using, there actually is a strange variety to it that seems to work.

I of course do not view Tomie to be on the same level as Uzumaki. Tomie is basically just straight up Junji Ito's version of you know... Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, the Chucky doll, etc. Hence, the nine live-action movies of Tomie.

That's not even to say that there isn't disturbing stuff in Tomie. There certainly is.

The various monstrous forms Tomie ends up taking on, the numerous and quite literal descents into insanity various characters suffer, and even Tomie herself is kind of honestly fucked up. As a matter of fact, of the three Viz Media hardback editions (the other two being Gyo and Uzumaki of course), Tomie is easily the largest.

It's over 700 pages of just sick, violent, and bizarre shit. As I've already implied, overall, I'm not the biggest fan of Tomie. But there are several individual Tomie stories that I either just found wonderfully fucked up or sick, or amazingly weird.

Probably without a doubt my favorite flavor of Tomie stories are the ones where there are multiple Tomie's in the picture as usually, they immediately just fucking hate each other and start plotting the elimination of the other Tomie's.

Junji Ito takes this specific flavor of Tomie story so far that eventually there's an entire story where it's just Tomie wars. A Tomie bewitches a male and sends them off with a knife to murder the other Tomie, but he just ends up fucking snapping and starts cutting whoever he sees.

Then there's the "Boy" story which is just... it's arguably one of the most fucked up Tomie stories almost by default.

...Actually, you know what, we're not even talking about "Boy."

My Favorite Tomie

My absolute favorite Tomie story by far has to be "Little Finger." Not only is Tomie's monstrous side and her regeneration abilities clearly and effectively shown, but it's probably without a doubt one of the cruelest Tomie's.

Her male prey in this story are four brothers. Notably, one out of the four are rather ugly and seemingly all but resistant to Tomie's beauty.

Since Tomie is horrifically vain, she's unable to accept this and focuses all of her attention on the ugly brother, causing his brothers to eventually lock him away in the basement.

When Tomie's usual fate in these stories has played out and the three brothers have finished brutally killing and dismembering her, they force the ugly brother to dispose of the body.

When a dead Tomie comes back to life during the car drive and spooks the ugly brother, he crashes the car and to get away he has to hack off the fingers of one of Tomie's hands with a shovel to get away. He begins to live in a cave as his brothers have framed him with Tomie's "murder" but without realizing, Tomie's severed fingers ended up in his pocket during the struggle with her.

...Upon discovering them, he tries to burn them away, but apparently... he didn't let them burn quite long enough.

Without a doubt whenever I think back on Tomie, it's of the "finger Tomie's" and like how they start bullying the Pinky Tomie because she's the most disfigured. It suddenly takes a strange direction when the ugly brother actually has enough of this scene and actually stands up for and protects the ugliest of the four Tomie's. Perhaps even seeing himself in her.

This ultimate twist of this story just perfectly demonstrates how just horribly cruel and evil Tomie really is. Tomie's regeneration ability as shown in the various other Tomie stories is basically almost absolute. Thus, as is revealed, the sole reason why the Pinky Tomie remained ugly and disfigured as all the other finger Tomie's fully regenerated and left the cave is so she can finally get vengeance on the ugly brother who refused all of Tomie's advances.

He realizes that beyond just the pity he felt for the Pinky Tomie as she was bullied, he felt genuine love for probably one of the ugliest versions of Tomie throughout all of the stories. But the moment he admits this to her, she mocks him, and then regenerates easily and leaves him to die without even hesitating.

That's fucked up.

Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie

I give the entire collection of the Tomie stories an overall 7.5 out of 10 or 75 out of 100. Again, there's plenty of good stuff packed in there, but Tomie's not even my favorite recurring Junji Ito character.

Though, it goes without saying that if you're considering getting heavily into Junji Ito manga, Tomie is almost by default a required read. Because again, she is essentially what sprung Junji Ito into horror manga and still to this day probably one of his most recognized characters.

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