Manga

Review by: Jd Banks
Art and Story by: Junji Ito
Published by: Viz Media 

Spirals seem pretty harmless—until Junji Ito’s Uzumaki comes into the picture.

Uzumaki is a manga about Kurozu-cho, a small town off the coast of Japan that is cursed by all things spiral. When Shuichi Saito’s father becomes obsessed with anything spiral, a series of events begin to unfold, revealing the curse of uzumaki, which happens to be the Japanese word for spiral. Told from the perspective of Shuichi’s mild-mannered girlfriend, Kirie Goshima, Uzumaki follows the twisted fates of the inhabitants of Kurozu-cho.

Unlike Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service which we looked at previously with it's chockfuls of graphic violence, Uzumaki is more of a psychological horror with an eerie belieavablity feeling about it—almost as if spirals could indeed grab the reader and drive them crazy along with our unfortunate cast. The circumstances surrounding the townspeople of Kurozu-cho stick in the mind, looping around and around like a bad record (or, you guessed it, a spiral).