Review: Uzumaki (1998-1999)

“Spirals…this town is contaminated with spirals…”

Uzumaki, which means ‘spiral’ in Japanese, and the manga depicts the eerie story of a small seaside town Kurouzu-cho possessed by the idea of the spiral. In every chapter, we see how inventively the theme of spirals affects everything around them. Hair gets spiral shape automatically, spiral shell on the back of people, a simple scare in head take shape as a deep spiral hole, people turning into spiral themselves, are just a few examples of it.

In the begging, few chapters are like interrelated short stories to show various horrifying effects of spirals, which eventually lead to a single interconnected story. The manga has a strong beginning, at least the first 10 to 11 chapters are fully jaw-dropping illustrations, and those individual stories can creep you completely out. But then it feels like it is slowly starting to lose its touch, like getting lost in some spiral created by the writer himself. It loses its uniqueness and turns to be another zombie story at the end. The more the spiral goes deeper, the more the story becomes shallow.

We don’t get much as except the protagonist Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi in character development. Very rarely any character gets repeated. Except for Shuichi, all the characters are almost the same without any personality. None character leaves any lasting memory on our mind (except the girl with the scar, to some extend). From the beginning, Shuichi is the only person who wants to leave the town but does not. It may be the hypnotic effects of spirals that nobody left the town even seeing the horrendous incidents. The lead character’s survival, too, becomes questionable as they both are surrounded by gruesome deaths.

Although some points I mentioned above, Uzumaki is undoubtedly worthy of your time. The overall story is exciting and unique. Personally, I don’t find it nightmare-ish, or terrifying, rather terrific. The art and imaginations of Junji Ito create a last long impression in your mind, the striking illustrations hypnotize you, and at the end, you become obsessed by the manga and keep thinking about it in a spiral!!