![]() ![]() People metamorphose into snails, their shells slowly rising through their shirts like mounds upon their backs, or twine their bodies around one another like rope. The imagination driving that art, meanwhile, is among the strangest and darkest I’ve encountered in manga, much less anywhere else. In simple, clean black and white, Ito’s art displays impressive precision and craftsmanship. Ito eschews an exaggerated style for the most part, sticking instead to a straightforward anatomical style for his characters and an equally naturalistic style for their environment. That beauty comes in through the art of Ito, which must be seen to be believed. ![]() ![]() This is the first of nineteen chapters in Uzumaki, each installment seemingly becoming more creepy, unsettling, astonishing, and even darkly beautiful than the last. This scene might be enough to end a story with for other writers or manga-ka, but Ito is only getting started here. Saito begins to distort his own body to assume spiral shapes, which leads to some truly disturbing images of the horrifying pliability of the human body, culminating in an iconically nightmarish scene that will have a profound effect on how you view personal baths. This situation becomes even more menacing when Mr. Saito commits acts like stopping in the middle of streets to watch snails for hours and stocking a room in his house dedicated to anything with a spiral shape drawn, carved, or otherwise embedded in or on it. Saito, the father of Shuichi Saito, one of the main characters. The story quickly becomes unnerving once townspeople begin obsessing over the spirals, such as Mr. A small Japanese town is “infested by spirals.” This means spiral shapes begin to appear everywhere: blades of grass, clouds, pottery baking in a kiln, whirlpools in creeks. The story follows what must seem like a bizarre, absurd premise even by the standards of weird fiction. After reading Uzumaki in its entirety, I can assure readers that this status is rightfully deserved. Those readers familiar with the world of manga – especially those that read manga and frequent this site – are no doubt already familiar with Ito’s reputation as a master of horror manga, with Uzumaki often considered his magnum opus. Such is the case with Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, which has recently been published in an omnibus edition by Viz Media. There is a deep, powerful vein of weirdness that runs through many excellent works within the mediums of manga and anime, so much so that I really wish more American readers otherwise unfamiliar with these mediums could encounter these stories for themselves. ![]()
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