Uzumaki - Ito Junji

Uzumaki - Ito Junji

Oh boy. This one...
Do you think manga is for children? That they are predictable? That it's all about fighting and superpowers?
Oh boy. This will blow your mind.

I won't preach to you about manga. I was going to, but I decided against it. Let's blow your mind first.

It starts very traditionally. A girl is introduced going to school, Kirie. She meets a strange man starring a snail shell with an spiral. He doesn't even acknowledge her presence. She goes away and meet her friend, Shuichi. Oh, he's the son of the strange man... And he claims that this city is strange and want to run away with her from there.

Overall, it looks like a 'coming of age' story, right? They will go away, thru pains and hardship to realize that 'there's no place like home', right?
No.
Oh hell no!
They would wish very hard that they could...

The story proceeds and Shuichi's father is obsessing more and more over spirals. And then it starts. Mr. Junji is a very important horror writer and I understand why he didn't became 'only' a writer. Understand: the writing business in Japan, like everything else over there, is a Business, capital B. They devour books over there. People are always reading. But he became a mangaka (manga author/artist). Why? Because he loves a specific type of horror: body horror. And boy, it's disgusting. The way he draws body horror is one of the best things in horror. It makes The Thing looks nice in comparison.

Let's continue. Shuichi's father goes insane and start experimenting with his body. He's aiming to become one with the spiral. And he finally succeeds. He dies in a bizarre spiral that he made contorting his own body. It's gross as hell. And it's only the beginning.

Kawaii!!!

The spiral theme goes on. In some way, spirals are haunting this city, and the door that Shuichi's father opened cannot be closed. First his mom goes insane, traumatized by what happened to his father. Then a friend of then became possessed by the spiral, and devouring her own body in the process.

Sugoi!!!!

 

Then it's Kirie's father time to goes insane. And a subtle note is delivered: it seems that the spirals are holding the souls of the departed, and it sediments on the clay that her father makes pottery (a very traditional and profitable profession in Japan). And by burning this clay, the tormented souls creates spirals in the pottery. They destroy the oven but by now, there's a hint it may be out of control.

Cut to the slums, where two lovers are being separated by their families, very Romeo and Juliet. In the end, they start contorting, like a spiral, fusing together and jumping in to the ocean. Focus on those slums, they are homes constructed long time ago and are important.

Kirie's hair start spiralling, and became an entity, bewitching those who looks at it. Another girl, that always seek attention, start to do the same. Kirie is saved in a confrontation with this girl by Shuichi and the girl dies with her hair consuming her energy and body fluids while trying to get more attention. As you can see, the influence of the spirals are getting stronger.

A few more chapters showing the increasingly number of people being affected. Then comes the lighthouse story, in which the lighthouse are emitting light in a spiral-like way. And by consequence, affecting much more people. The spirals are affecting objects AND people now. Oh, and don't skip the pregnant women. It's one of the highlights of body horror in this manga.

The beauty of a pregnant woman

Then things get even more crazy. It's typhoon season. And guess what a typhoon is? A spiral. The typhoon became enthralled with Kirie and start to stalk her. Shuichi understand it and tries to save her, with lots of people being killed by the crazy typhoon. Then, the typhoon wins and get her. Or did he? The city lake absorbs the typhoon before he can get away. If you are observant you get the feeling of "don't mess with my stuff" from this scene. And your guess is as good as mine. Yeah. This city is sentient. Or something in there is...

Typhoon season continues and the people that lost their homes, obviously our main characters included, are redirected to some temporary shelter: the slums... remember it? Yeah. These old houses are all over the city, and by some weird reason, were never destroyed. And into it, the spirals powers are stronger. People start to become possessed by it, and like the pregnant women, becoming monsters.

And here's the moment you all were waiting for: shit hits the fan. The typhoons are circulating the city, blocking any tentative of escape. People are getting powers, like the kids that generates tornadoes with their bodies. The population seeks refuge in the old slums, the only buildings that weren't destroyed. It's cramped and more and more people are coming.

The city decent into madness. Some are using the new powers of controlling tornadoes to fly around causing mayhem, some are becoming a type of human-snail hybrid, a nice look back to one of the early chapters, and most are hiding into the slums. It goes a little Lord of the Flies for a bit, with the discovery that some are eating the snail people. Then it all end with, once again, the lake inhaling people causing to much trouble and letting the rest go.

It goes on, now with the protagonists expelled from the slum houses and walking around meeting other survivors. They meet a group and band together. They try to invade one of the slums, to discover that those people inside became a tangling mess, all stretched and bundled together. As soon as they see that, destroying some walls in the process, the slum people starts to build an expansion of the slums, to cover their disfigured bodies. It will be important soon.

The group decided to try to run away from the city, one of which is becoming a snail person and the others waiting for it to eat him. It ended very weirdly. They decided to eat him raw, going inside the snail shell. The protagonists run away, since a friend of theirs has a small brother that's becoming a snail person. He finally became one and they let him escape. The others reach then, and as they starts to remember the inside of the shell, they... Stretch and start spiralling. The group decide to go back to the city, seeing no way out.

When they arrive, the city is a spiral maze. All the people constructing extensions? It all meets and it is became a giant spiral. The group decide to investigate it. There's people alive, but they are spiralling and stretching. They thrown their dead outside and a man is collecting then. Apparently,  time is different inside this walls. They go deeper and deeper, trying to find the centre of it all.

They are still constructing, and trying to go deeper, one of the group is stuck inside a constructing gap and assimilated. As soon as it occurs, there are screams of "we are all connected" and a strange sounds is heard. Suddenly, all houses are vacant, nothing inside their walls. They follow the inside and find an strange spiral stair going down and decide to follow it. During it, Kirie is attacked and Shuichi defends her, falling into the space below. Kirie proceeds and finally discover something: all the spiral people are there and there's an ancient ruin there. She finds Shuichi there, hurt and paralyzed. They analyze the building, it has a kind of conscience and from time to time, it woke up and attract people. With nowhere to run, Shuichi tell Kirie to run away, but she won't leave him behind. They spiral together and then, with the final piece of the city there, the ruins close. Time stand still. Till the next time.

Wow. That's a lot to swallow.
What can we say about it? It's a plain lovecraftian story. Beautifully crafted and with a beautiful ending. It has all the right points, it has all the horror, in particular body horror, that you can ask for. The art is good, the writing is marvellous. So why is it not more famous?

Because people don't understand manga.

Ok. Lecture time: manga is a genre, like comics. But different from comics, that has became an art form thanks to lots of great artists, manga in the Occident is still saw as a "for kids" stuff.
What they don't understand is that manga is an art form. And has it's own genres and branches. This one is what is called Seinen. This kind is more focused for adults, more deep stories, great character development (there are ones, that I will review later on, that are solely based on character development). Ito is one of the greatest of this genre. He's also considered a genius in the horror genre in general, at least for those that know him.

I definitely urge you to read more stuff from him. I won't review all his work, since most of his work is fragmented in short stories and I prefer to analyze more complete works. But seriously, go read it. If you love horror, you would be satisfied.

And yeah, maybe on some manga & comics, it'll be heavy on images. After all, what can be more effective on showing you art, in a visual art genre? If you don't like it, I'm sorry. Skip it.

Next week: we go East to meet a different brand of literature. Terror Infinity!

See ya.