Review of UZUMAKI - By Junji Ito.
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Konnichiwa Minna, I hope you are all having a great day.
If you follow me on Instagram you will know that we recently started a manga club, this essentially means every week we read manga for a period of a week or two, then we share our thoughts about the manga after.
The manga we started reading was called Uzumaki by Junji Ito.
Manga Plot :
Kurozuchou, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: Uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in small ways: seashells, ferns, whirlpools in water, whirlwinds in air. And in large ways: the spiral marks on people's bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi's father, the voice from the cochlea in your inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurouzu-cho are pulled ever deeper, as if into a whirlpool from which there is no return.
What I liked about this manga was the storyline, it's so out of this world, it's so original and I wonder how Ito -sensei came up with this idea. How do you come up with the idea of spirals cursing people and attaching themselves to make people do crazy things or turn into snails?
The story kept me guessing, each chapter I would be wondering what would happen next. I love how it progresses with each chapter, for example on the first chapter it's just a man obsessing over spiral patterns by looking at shells and then as the manga continues we see how this now starts affecting other people in the town. Towards the middle of the manga I wanted to understand why this was happening and how could this be fixed, but I feel that the manga didn't deliver that, it just kept giving us the more things that are going wrong in the town rather than any solutions to the problem.
My favorite part of the manga, I don't think I had one as I found everything to be very creepy, but I can say that the parts that stood out to me most throughout the manga which really spooked me out were, when Shuichi's mum was trying to get rid of the spiral in her ear, that's when I knew this ish is crazy . I would also say the part where I literally felt my skin itch was the chapter of warts appearing on peoples bodies, that really made my skin crawl and the snails :/ that was just gross. Personally, I really dislike snails and slugs so that whole chapter for me was so intense :)
I would say that the whole manga art was drawn so well and the story for me was great, it was really mysterious all the way through and very tense for me personally because I just wanted to know how can they fix this. This left me feeling confusion & frustration. I wanted to know why this particular town, why didn't people move away and how could they find a way to fix this so it doesn't happen again.
The characters were ok, I found it difficult to connect with them because well I wouldn't be able to stay in that town if I saw all this crazy stuff happening and would have tried to find a solution like maybe everyone leaves the town and there was no character development.
Speaking of the ending, it was very unsatisfactory. I couldn't believe that that's how it ends.
On the other hand, the true horror of this whole story is that the town is dealing with something beyond human control, it has happened before, it will continue to happen and IT WILL NEVER END.
I highly recommend this manga, if you like a good original storyline if you like mystery, horror then this is the manga for you.
Rating: 7/10. On creative storyline, and awesome manga art.
I hope you enjoyed this manga review of Uzumaki, and I will see you in the next review. You can come to join the manga club, come follow me on Instagram.
See you next time. xo
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