Uzumaki, Not the Naruto Kind

Junji Ito and The Spiral

Junji Ito is a prolific horror manga artist, with many of his works populating the aisles at local Barnes & Noble stores. The pages he designs bleeds the horror, the malignance that can only come from an imagination on a page and the whispering voices our mind’s provide to dance his macabre themes.

If you’re looking for scary tales, Junji Ito has it.

“Spirals…this town is contaminated with spirals.”

—Junji Ito

One of the first things I ever read of his was Uzumaki and I absolutely loved it. The artwork was bizarre and not my usual cup of shonen tea but it fit the vibe of the story. Dark, thick-lined, heavy topics drench the pages and the gore unfolding on the paper made me feel like if I took my thumb off it would be smudged with ink.

There is a town doomed to destroy itself, much like an ouroboros and absolutely harmonizing this spiral design yet again. This imagined spiral is…in everything. The people, the experiences, the very land itself is wound around this concept of circular existence and it is destructive. Madness taints all who live here and tempts nearly everyone to violence.

Death is not only the only outcome, but a blessed release from this never-ending spiral.

What a great analogy for living an unfruitful life, but with like. A sadistic twist.

Despite all the deaths and the miscellaneous, spiral troubles plaguing the protagonists, I love this series as a romance manga.

It all depends on how you look at it. From the most basic standpoint, it is a basic, cut and chop horror manga.

But it is also very romantic. The protagonist Kirie Goshima is, controversially, optimistic in spite of the encroaching spirals and the damned situations she finds herself in.

Shuichi Saito, her best friend, boyfriend, favorite male deuteragonist, wants to abandon the spiral town which is killing off everybody (like a the very sensible, intelligent man he is_

Yet something is powerfully begging them to stay, a voice neither one hears but holds onto them with chains round their necks. Kirie refuses to leave even though Shuichi is desperate to escape. Shuichi can’t bring himself to go even though he can see the death and desperation floating around the town in (surprise) spiral clouds of doom. Shuichi can’t leave her, the perpetually optimistic girl, the girl that he lives, or this blasted town.