Tag: Uzumaki

Jack in the Box — Synopsis

Kirie Goshima has an admirer, and an annoying one at that. His name is Mitsuru Yamaguchi and he has a very frustrating habit. He keeps on jumping out and surprising Kirie at moments when she least expects it. One such time is during the walk home from school with her friend Shiho. Shiho warns him off, but he continues to annoy Kirie nonetheless. For him, this is how he shows his love for her.

After a little time, he decides to send Kirie a present in the mail. However, instead of opening it she decides to meet up with him to return the gift. He seems sincere in his affection at this point and decides to prove his love once and for all. Declaring that his love is strong enough to stop traffic, he jumps out into the path of a moving car. A final jump that sees his body wrapped around the front wheel of the unsuspecting driver.

After Mitsuru’s funeral, Kirie is wracked with guilt over his untimely death. But it may not be the last she has heard from him – this is Kurouzu-cho after all. The spiral is ever-present and can make all sorts of things possible.

One evening while talking through the grief with her boyfriend Shuichi, she gets a terrifying vision from the gift that Mitsuru had left her. She discovers that the present is a very apt one for it’s sender — it is a Jack in the Box. The Jack in the Box seems to tell her that his death was indeed her fault. And not only that, but that Mitsuru will come back for her too.

Deciding to find out the truth behind the Jack’s whispers, and to try and rid her head of its voices, Kirie and Shuichi take a shovel to Mitsuru’s grave to ensure he is in fact dead. But they are not prepared for what they find in the ground.

The subtleness of the Spiral

When seen from above, a coiled spring will display the shape of the spiral. Not only that but the spring can also represent the releasing of stored energy. This idea could well be what gave birth to the character of Mitsuru. But it isn’t until the closing pages when this becomes apparent. Once you’ve read it once, the spiral can be seen throughout this chapter. He is the metaphorical coiled spring jumping out at Kirie again and again. But until you’ve read it, the spiral is indeed subtle.

Inanimate objects with human likeliness always have the potential for horror. Just think ceramic dolls and old toys in the attic. But what I loved in this chapter was that not only did Junji Ito manage to depict an otherwise innocent Jack in the Box as demonic and foreboding. He also managed to have it perfectly represent the key character, Mitsuro.

The spiral has had a very visual presence in the town so far. It has appeared in cremation smoke, pottery and even throughout victims’ hair. But this is perhaps the most subtle that the spiral has been up till now. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that this chapter could almost be read outside of Uzumaki altogether.

The way in which Ito ties the character of Mitsuru to that of a Jack in the Box was a stroke of genius. Especially when he later makes use of the spring from the car that killed him to make his complete transformation. Yes, the spiral is present in the springs throughout, but take the spiral obsession out of the equation and you still have a strong horror nightmare with an almost self-fulfilling prophecy.

Coiled up terror

As I began writing up my thoughts on ‘Jack in the Box’, I began to notice how the chapter’s structure itself felt just like a coiled spring. With each unwanted jump scare from Mitsuru winding up the metaphorical coil until he is stopped dead in his tracks by that car. That impact and his winding quickly around the front wheel of that car are the first glimpses of horror we see, and the first release of the coiled spring of the chapter.

Once the funeral is done with, Kirie’s descent into guilt and the foreboding presence of the Jack in the box toy, wind up the chapter’s final spring. It is wound up tightly and held with each step that her and Shuichi take through that graveyard. Until those final pages and the explosion of energy that shoots out towards them. The second spring is released and the two of them are directly in its path.

I may be reading too much into these stories, and perhaps seeing things that I want to see, but that is precisely why I’m writing these thoughts up. I just love seeing what my mind can find beneath the surface of Ito’s work — and as I have quickly come to realise, there is always more to find beneath his expertly-drawn panels than meets the eye.

In Conclusion

Jack in the box is definitely a chapter that can be enjoyed on its own and without any prior context to the preceding Uzumaki chapters. Yes, there are mentions of the spiral cremation smoke trails from The Spiral Obsession opening chapters, but they are only mentioned in passing. And they are not needed to be fully understood for this chapter to be enjoyed.

Jack in the Box is one of my favourite chapters from the Uzumaki collection. Something about the character of Mitsuru and the enjoyable absurdity of his constant jumping out at Kirie have stuck with me. I think that, along with the following chapter The Slug, are images that have stayed with me the strongest since my first time reading Uzumaki some years ago.

One of the great things about this chapter for me, was how it is almost ambiguous in its final half. With both Kirie and Shuichi having already come face to face with the spiral, who’s to know if what they experience in that graveyard is real? (it probably is).

Was it just a nightmare? Who knows? (probably not). But one thing is for certain – Junji Ito sure knows how to tell one hell of a great story.

Buy Uzumaki from Amazon today.

Medusa — synopsis

Up until now, the Spiral has been affecting the people around Kirie Goshima. Her boyfriend Shuichi’s parents; her own father; a friend at school. But in Medusa, the Spiral is finally catching up to her and has it’s sights set directly on a particular part of her body — her hair.

After a school boy’s death and some discussions with a friend over people’s sudden desires to be noticed, Kirie’s hair begins displaying the cursed Spiral in its curls. This seems to have happened out of nowhere, after a sudden growth of her hair. Will she now finally fall victim like so many before her?

When the curls in her hair are threatened, they begin to take on a life of their own — the spiral protecting itself. The hair grows faster than is naturally possibly and even physically fights back against those that would do it harm. But when a school friend of Kirie’s see’s these ever-growing curls as a threat to her own dominance, that friend decides to challenge her in one of the craziest showdowns I’ve ever seen in a manga.

A hairdresser’s nightmare

The subject of hair in Junji Ito’s body horror is something that you may have seen before. In his Tomie chapter “Hair“, characters attach strands of Tomie’s hair to their heads in order for them to obtain her beauty. But in Uzumaki’s Medusa, the Spiral is drawing these people’s own hair out of their heads in order to seduce and mesmerise those around them.

The idea of parts of one’s own body being out of ones control is a scary one. These have been explored in horror before, whether it’s the classic “arm transplant but the arm is that of a murderer’s” or “an eye transplant that lets you see ghosts”. But the idea of using hair against the person who owns it is a fresh one to me.

I loved how the hair became so flamboyant and ridiculous as to lure in those around it. But what I found even more effective was how the hair, whilst growing at such a fast rate, took its toll on the owner. You could see it in Kirie’s eyes as the hair lusted after a bigger audience. But it wasn’t until the closing pages that you see its true effect on a host.

The spiral effect grows

We’ve seen pretty isolated cases of the spiral at work until now. Limited to families and those closely related. Even the episode with Shuichi’s mother in the hospital could be written up as a woman’s madness on the doctor’s report. But the actual encounters with inexplicable spirals has been limited save for those involved.

In Medusa, however, the hair that grows from Kirie, and later her friend Sekino, is so unnatural that it just can’t be explained away. No amount of hair spray could have kept those curls up. It would have been plain to all that this is some unnatural force at work. Could it be that the Spiral curse is ready to show itself more widely now? Is it no longer content with appearing in the corners of Kurouzu-cho and instead now wants a larger audience for itself?

Interestingly, the Spiral only seemed to target Kirie after she had been clear to her friend about not wanting to stick out. She was content with just moving along in life. The idea that her friends’ obsessions with being noticed was intrinsically linked to the spiral’s presence, seemed to be confirmed when she was made the centrepiece of the Spiral’s plans within the Kurouzu-cho school.

In Conclusion

The image of the woman with the large curls floating over her head is a common one from Uzumaki. When seeing images from the manga or even clips from the Uzumaki film, it is a pretty staple image. Indeed it does represent both how incredibly inventive and at times ludicrous the world within Kurouzu-cho becomes.

Medusa is a calmer story than most from Uzumaki with absolutely zero gore. The goriest image is that of a girl whose life is visibly drained from her face; her skin and eyes sunk back. But nothing more than how you would expect a mummy to look in a museum. In fact, the story is home to more humour than gore. Granted it is a particular kind of humour, but it is there nonetheless.

This story seems to be opening up the Spiral to a wider array of people within the town. Many more are becoming affected by it, and it’s only a matter of time until the Spiral’s full force is released. I think Kirie will still serve as the central character, but the curse looks to be spreading its wings wider and wider from here on out.

Twisted Souls — synopsis

Yoriko and Kazunori are deeply in love, but are from two families at war. To make matters worse, these two families share the same row house within the town of Kurouzu-cho — separated only by a thin dividing wall. The row houses are long, wooden, single-level buildings that can be found throughout the town. Some are hidden away in the towns forgotten places, whilst others sit on its outer edges.

Each attempt that Yoriko and Kazunori make to be with one another, is ended with their families ripping them apart. They have no care for their families’ age-old feud, and simply want to be able to live out their lives together in peace.

Kirie stumbles upon a fight between the families on her way home one day. She soon decides that she will help these two attempted lovers to escape their respective families and start their own lives once and for all. These controlling family members are, as Kazunori puts it, twisted souls; their hearts are bent out of shape.

However, it may be that embracing the spiral is the only way for them to escape once and for all.

A Shakespearean tale

The focus in this story is completely removed from the previous chapters so far. The families in Twisted Souls are separate from both Kirie and Shuichi — it was only through chance that Kirie stumbled upon them. But the spiral is still at work in this story. It is obvious after reading this that the spiral is in fact all over Kurouzu-Cho.

The star-crossed lovers in this chapter reminded me instantly of Romeo and Juliet. It’s a pretty common Shakespeare story that influences a lot of popular fiction, but it was nice nonetheless to see it woven into the world of Uzumaki.

Junji Ito’s work is often compared to the work of acclaimed horror author H.P. Lovecraft. However, I believe there will be many parallels with Shakespearean tragedy in Ito’s work too. Although I can only recall this reference to Romeo and Juliet currently, I will start to look out for other references going forward.

Red herrings

On first reading this story, when I saw what Kazunori was saying about his and Yoriko’s families, I thought I’d immediately guessed how the ending would go. “Their hearts are bent out of shape”, “You can’t untangle them”, “They shield themselves by becoming warped”.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong about my predictions in Twisted Souls. It was an interesting spin and, dare I say it, a relief to see the spiral being used by these people as a way for them to finally realise their own dreams.

In Conclusion

I very much enjoyed Twisted Souls. It was a slightly different story to previous chapters and didn’t lean on much body horror at all, save for the ending. But even that felt to me like the lovers welcomed their destiny. It was their dream to be together; to become one with each other through sickness and in health. They got their wish.

For once in Uzumaki, amongst the death, horror and gore, the Spiral actually helped two people in need. And not only that, but it did so of their own free will too.

The Firing Effect — Synopsis

Kirie’s father, the pottery maker, has been producing some very strange pieces recently. What were once clean, solid pieces of hand-crafted clay, come out of his kiln all twisted and spiralled out of shape. They also bare strange markings — not only the hypnotic pattern of the spiral, but the faces of the recently deceased too.

After some investigation it is discovered that the father has recently been getting his clay from the neighbouring pond of water — Dragonfly Pond. This is the very same pond that seems to have been absorbing the smoke and the ashes of the dead on the day of their cremation. It looks like the spiral has found its next victim.

Throughout The Firing Effect, Kirie’s father seems almost obsessed with his kiln and will not leave the cooking clay alone. He even panics when others try to go near it. Kirie decides to do some digging one evening to try and get to the bottom her father’s strange movements. However, nothing could have prepared her for what she finds inside her father’s kiln.

Like a phoenix from the flames

Just when we thought we’d heard the last of Shuichi’s parents, it seems they were never too far away after all. In any usual place the cremation of the deceased is a sure-fire way of disposing of the body. Whether they are human, vampire, zombie, whatever. Complete incineration normally does the trick. But this is Junji Ito we’re talking about.

With Dragonfly Pond seemingly sucking in the dust and smoke of the town’s cremations into its centre, it seems that the spiral is never really done with its victims. This made me think — perhaps Kurouzu-cho is a form of purgatory for the people who live there.

When we finally get a glimpse inside the kiln we see, and later hear, Shuichi’s parents screaming in pain for help. They seem to be reliving their cremations only being fully aware of the heat and the pain it is causing. However, we had already seen their faces imprinted on pottery earlier in the chapter.

Maybe their souls are forever trapped in Dragonfly Pond. Are they destined to forever be burned again and again? Or are these just phantoms of the spiral simply using the images of the dead to torment those still living in mourning?

More drama for Shuichi

Although he hasn’t been a central character for the last couple of chapters, Shuichi’s presence is always felt. This is no doubt due to his seemingly mystical connection to the spiral. That shape seems to follow him everywhere and just wont leave him in peace. He also seems to be the one most in tune to its effects.

When it is later revealed that the father’s clay is being dredged out of Dragonfly Pond, Shuichi instinctively responds by stating that the pond is infested with spirals. He seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to this evil pattern, as demonstrated in the opening chapter. If this is some kind of purgatory for the folks in Kurouzu-cho, perhaps Shuichi is the one at its centre? Perhaps he is the key to unravelling this mystery?

It felt good to see him being able to fight back against this deadly shape as well. Although destroying the kiln is a small action on the grand scheme of things, a little destruction may be just what he needed. Perhaps that was what Shuichi needed in order to lay his demons to rest — both figuratively and literally. Hopefully his parents can now be free from their eternal flames and escape this cursed town. But something tells me this wont be the case.

In Conclusion

I started to feel Kurouzu-cho was a kind of twisted second home for me after reading this chapter. The characters were now firmly etched in my mind and I even felt like I knew them somewhat. I am really enjoying digging deeper into this town and getting to know these people as the time goes by.

One thing that stood out to me in The Firing Effect was the complete lack of violence. Despite the disturbing images that certain characters see inside the kiln, they are only really shown to us as ghostly apparitions and shadows.

As I have mentioned before, it is good to have these relatively calmer chapters as a kind of breathing space for us readers. If it was crazy body horror all the time, I think I would just get desensitised to the shock and maybe even a little bored.

What I am finding though, is I’m anticipating a crazy chapter very soon. Something to knock me out of my chair as the opening chapters did. I feel something dark and grotesque is coming soon, and I hope I’m not kept waiting too long. 🙂

The Scar — Synopsis

Azami Kurotani is a girl who attends Kurouzu high school with her friend, Kirie. You will remember Kirie from the opening chapters of The Spiral Obsession.

Azami has a very strange power over the boys in the school — they all seem to fall in love with her. She even has the reputation for making these boys fall for her before dropping them like dead weights. Does this sound like another Junji Ito character we all know and love? Yes — she reminded me of Tomie.

However, whereas Tomie’s power came from something dark within her, Azami’s seems to originate from the crescent-moon-shaped scar on her forehead. Of course, kids being kids, there are all sorts of rumours going around about Azami and her strange power, but the truth may just end up being the most terrifying thing imaginable.

After meeting Kirie’s boyfriend Shuichi, (remember that he goes to a school out of town?), Azami becomes obsessed with him. This is down to the fact that Shuichi is instantly repulsed by her and, more specifically, the scar on her forehead. Only by the time she has met him, that scar is no longer moon-shaped, it has begun circling in on itself to reveal a very recognisable and terrifying shape.

Azami can’t believe that Shuichi hasn’t fallen in love with her, and she wont let it go either. It isn’t until the story’s closing pages that her obsession takes her over completely…

The girl that was a spiral

The first two chapters of Uzumaki dealt with the spirals around the people that were haunted by them — even the spirals within their bodies. But this is the first time that a spiral has begun to actually take over a person, as it seems to be with Azami. But what is so special about her? And why did the spiral seem to choose her?

What is left unanswered is perhaps most interesting here. Only after her accident as a young girl did the boys start noticing her — after she obtained that scar. But she had presumably lived with that scar for many years since — it was only when she’d met Shuichi, and he had noticed that scar, that it started to become a full spiral. Maybe the spiral was lying dormant inside her all of this time, waiting for Shuichi to meet her? Or maybe it had always been growing from a slight cut, to a moon shape and continuing on into the spiral? Perhaps the timing with meeting Shuichi was just bad luck for him.

Ito’s closing panels in The Scar are images I will never forget too. Although not particularly gruesome in how they are depicted, they do demonstrate the great imagination of my favourite horror Mangaka. I can imagine ways that he could have added a lot more gore into those scenes. But I feel it was nice to focus on the strangeness of the devouring spiral, rather than showing loads of blood and flesh along with it.

Obsession

I think I enjoy Junji Ito’s stories of obsession the most over his other types. Uzumaki is itself a story of obsession, but I really enjoyed this particular obsession between the boys and Azami; and then between Azami and Shuichi.

There were many times I was reminded of Tomie and the memories of her attitudes towards those that desired her. Tomie has a power over men and was never afraid to use that power to get exactly what she wanted — she was pretty much evil through and through. And it was a nice touch of Ito’s to include a character like her within Uzumaki — whether that was the intention or not.

However, with Azami, I got the impression that she wasn’t an evil person. I felt that she was just another victim of the spirals that are haunting Kurouzu-cho. And interestingly, the catalyst for her extreme ending seems to me to be her meeting with Shuichi.

This is now three central people to become cursed by the spiral that have a connection to Shuichi. His Father; his Mother; and now Azami. Maybe he has a connection to the spiral that we are yet to discover?

In Summary

The Scar is probably one of my favourite chapters from the Uzumaki series. Although I don’t remember reading a bad chapter (I have read it once before a couple of years ago) this is one that always sticks in my mind. Along with the Jack In The Box chapter. (More on that one in the coming posts).

This one is pretty light on the gore too. There are no scissors in ears or the cutting off of one’s own fingerprints in this chapter. Junji Ito always has a good sense of what is needed within a given story. What I mean by that is, there is never gore for gore’s sake. He isn’t trying to include more and more shocking or violent events with each new chapter. He seems happy to only include those images that will serve his story. And I’m very happy with that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe we have seen the most violent after-effects of the spirals just yet. But I also believe that along the way we will have these relatively softer chapters that will let us catch our breath a little. If you can consider being devoured by a spiral soft. 🙂

Synopsis — The Spiral Obsession part 2

High over the sky of Kurouzu-cho sits a blanket of spiral-shaped smoke, with what seems to be the face of Shuichi’s father coming out of it. This strange vision seems to be the last straw for Mrs Saito’s sanity though. She quickly suffers a breakdown and is immediately sent to a nearby hospital to monitor her fast-declining mental condition.

Mrs Saito soon becomes afflicted with the same cursed obsession as her husband before her – the Spiral; Uzumaki. She starts noticing the spirals all around her, as well as the natural spirals of the human body. This only serves to drive her further over the edge and further out of help’s reach.

But where the father would be embracing these spirals, she is instead physically repulsed by them.

After some disturbing nightmares, and some ungodly acts she performs on herself, she becomes convinced that there are spirals hidden away within her body — places she can’t get to with ease. But just how far will she go to rid her world, and herself, of the spiral shape that seems to be haunting her?

Searching for spirals

I found it interesting to be able to follow this first story line of the spiral through to see how it actually affected those left behind. Normally we are served an eye-watering final reveal by Junji Ito, only to be left to imagine the following events in our own minds. Think about the majority of stories in the Tomie Collection. Although I love a good cliffhanger to think over, I also love staying with these characters. I love exploring what comes to those affected after those big reveals.

This is what Uzumaki allows us to do here.

Although the actions of his father were weird and somewhat shocking at times, there were no real gross-out images in that first chapter ‐ save perhaps for the final state of the father and, of course, that tongue. However, nothing could have prepared Shuichi, or me for that matter, for what would become of his mother.

Effects of the Spiral

What was especially interesting to me was how the spiral seems to trigger different emotions in different people. Where the father would embrace the spiral, even being somewhat excited by it, the mother is disgusted and horrified by it.

Perhaps for the father the spiral was a path of wonder to journey to its secret centre. Whereas maybe the mother saw nothing but the inevitable dizzying descent into death and madness. Different interpretations of the same pattern could be a metaphor for how we as people can interpret the same events in life in vastly different ways.

Shuichi’s family has been torn apart by the spiral obsession. This has been exhibited by both of his parents now and I hope things start getting better for him. It seems somewhat ironic that the only person who seemed to feel something was wrong in Kurouzu-cho, Shuichi, is also the one most directly affected by it so far.

In Summary

If the first part of the spiral obsession was the somewhat calm introduction to Uzumaki, then this second part is the foot-to-the-floor, visceral continuation.

No longer is Junji Ito sugar-coating the effects of the spiral. No amusing curling tongues or cute pieces of pottery. He’s now showing us violent, nightmare-inducing images of what this obsession can actually do to people. God help the rest of the citizens in Kurouzu-cho.

I can’t wait to see where he takes us next…

Buy Uzumaki from Amazon today.

Synopsis — The Spiral Obsession part 1

In this opening chapter of Uzumaki, we are introduced to the two central characters who we will follow throughout our spiral adventures. These two are Kirie Goshima, who is telling us the story, and her best friend Shuichi Saito.

Kurouzu-cho is a small coastal town that is home to both Kirie and Shuichi, as well as their respective families. Shuichi, however, does not go to school in the town — he goes to the nearby city of Midoriyama-shi instead. The reason for this is unknown, but his time spent outside of Kurouzu-cho has helped him realise something that all the other residents seem blind to…

…that something is very wrong with this place. Shuichi shows Kirie the strange spiral patterns in the water gutters around the town. They also cross paths with a few small whirlwinds that seem to pass by pretty often. But our real introduction to the horrors that the spiral is slowly bringing down upon them, is through the actions of Shuichi’s father.

A Father’s obsession

Shuichi’s father is the vessel for our first steps into this world of terror that Junji Ito is building up. Kirie first notices him in a small dark alleyway, his face up against a wall, transfixed by the pattern on a snail’s shell. This spiral obsession of his, however, is greater than just those found in nature.

Shuichi explains about the strangeness of his father’s new hobby, and his unhealthy interest in the spiral shape. He explains about the obsession that has stopped him from going to work or even coming close to leading a normal life. He even explains to Kirie of his father’s body slowly changing ‐ his eyes specifically being cursed by this evil pattern.

The spiral is slowly consuming him…

Tail end of the spiral

This is a perfect introduction to Uzumaki. We get up and running with an understanding of the central characters pretty quickly, considering this first chapter is only 45 pages long. I loved how Junji Ito hasn’t gone all out with the body horror here either. He eases us in gently for the most part, lullying us into that false sense of security no doubt. Yes, there are some moments of disgust, especially the big 2-page-spread reveal at the end. But he is surprisingly tame as he leads us on to his spiral path.

The characters in Uzumaki are your quintessential Ito characters. Kirie is the cute young woman who seems to have it all together; who is ultimately heading towards a scare that could either make or break her. And Shuichi is that troubled person with slightly darkened eyes who knows something is wrong. He’s a young man with a darkness weighing over him.

But what’s interesting here is, is that this darkness is weighing over all of the town’s people. It’s just that Shuichi seems to be the only one who notices it. I can’t wait to journey deeper into the cursed shape and find what lies at its heart.

In conclusion

Uzumaki is one of the most well known, and highly regarded horror manga titles. Junji Ito really created something special with this 20-part story. His artwork within it is some of the best he’s even produced in my opinion, and the first part of The Spiral Obsession shows this off perfectly.

The opening colour panels are beautiful – especially the title page with Kirie looking out over the town from the hill above. The details later on really impressed me too. I loved the delicate details that Junji Ito put into producing what we discover inside the wooden tub at the end of this chapter. Despite the huge obsession that Shuichi’s father shows towards spirals, it is evident that Ito has at least that amount of obsession over his own perfection ‐ and it really pays off.

I would recommend every person and their dog to read this series. If you aren’t into horror then you probably aren’t going to find joy here. But if you are, or are just a little bit curious about what horror manga is all about, then this should be one of the very first places you go to.