Uzumaki - Junji Ito [Review]

Title: Uzumaki

Author: Junji Ito

Genre: Horror, supernatural.

Publishing year: 1998

Volumes: 3

English edition

Price: $6 USD

Volumes: 3 or 1 omnibus.

Publisher: VIZ Media

Translator: Unknown (If you know, please tell me)

Year published: 2001

Rating:

★★★★✩

Spiral obsession.

Hello, I thought this was a good manga to review now that Halloween is coming. Junji Ito is a really popular horror manga creator, I’ve read some one shots from him, and they are really mysterious and intriguing. If you like this genre of manga, I recommend you his works.

            Uzumaki takes place in a town named Kurôzu-cho, this town has a curse involving spirals, there are spirals everywhere. The main characters are a girl named Kirie Goshima and a boy named Shuichi Saito, and since the beginning of the manga we can see how the curse affects the people around them and all the citizens in general, causing them to become obsessed or paranoid about spirals. This curse causes strange changes in the town and in the people living in it, some die in horrible ways and the main characters will have to try to escape or to find a way to stop this curse.

A boy becoming a snail.

            Uzumaki is the first horror manga I’ve ever read, as I said before, I’ve read some one shots by Junji Ito, but it’s a different experience to read a whole manga with a sequential story. At first I thought Uzumaki was a compilation of unrelated events, because there were random stories that started and ended in one chapter, but as the manga progresses, its more obvious that these events are related to one another and the link between them are the spirals. The story is intriguing and always keeps a mysterious atmosphere, making the reader wonder all the time what is happening, why and if the protagonists will be able to stop it.

Most popular image of
the manga. 

            The main characters are really relatable, they aren’t perfect and they get frustrated, or take wrong decisions, they are totally normal people. The character design and drawings in general are really particular, they don’t have the abnormal big eyes usually seen in mangas, they have a more realistic look, and the style of Junji Ito is easy to recognize.  

            I must say that to me the story was good until the end, I actually got confused in the finale and the explanation of the spiral curse wasn’t clear enough or conclusive enough to me, but I suppose it´s part of the charm of this manga, is mysterious till the end.

            If you want to read an intriguing story full of strange events and inexplicable things, this manga if for you. If you like the horror manga genre, I would highly recommend it.