A review by zakcebulski
Uzumaki by Junji Ito

adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5


What the fucking hell did I just read? This book was fucking nuts my word. 
This manga collection follows a teenaged girl named Kirie and her boyfriend- Shuichi who live in a small town called Kurouzu-cho. This town is infected- cursed by the spiral. Now, when I first heard about this, I was thinking to myself, "how scary can a spiral be?". And then Junji Ito answered me with some of the most overtly revolting and sickening images of body horror which I have ever seen. 

The story is broken up in to about 20 vignettes which each have a different incarnation of the spiral taking form within the city, with each of them being related in the overarching story. I thought that this was fucking amazing, to be quite frank. The horror within the book stems, for me, from body horror and from normal people being forced by this curse to act in absolutely vile and horrific ways. 
I loved the feeling of Lovecraftian horror that comes from not understanding what is going on. And, what is worse, is knowing that there is no escape. I thought that this was absolutely terrifying. 

The illustrations in this set are absolutely stomach churningly well done. There is nothing left to imagination and there are some particularly disgusting events, specifically in the vignette of "The Umbilical Cord"- good god. 
I am glad that I picked up this set, and I am even more glad that I was able to go into it with little/ no knowledge before hand. It was an absolute treat, and I implore anyone who is interested in reading this set to go into it with as little knowledge as possible. 
This was truly a scary read and one that I think would make itself right at home within any scary reading TBR. 
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