Reading it at any point from the first chapter to the last evokes an unsettling feeling. Having said all that, there's a lot more to praise about the manga than to criticise with it. The incident that sticks out to me as being the funniest is the snail chapter- although the snails become relevant again later in the novel and are used more effectively- I wonder if it would've been better to remove the snail chapter entirely and introduce the snails when they appear later in the manga. One last piece of negative criticism - sometimes I was taken out of the story by certain chapters within it in which the absurd bordered on the comical. Like Lovecraft, Ito seems less interested in the individual as an entity, and more on the implications of cosmicism, which negates not just humanity as a whole but especially the idea of the individual. As a fan of Lovecraft, I didn't expect much from the characterisation, and I knew that the focus of the manga would be more on the cosmic horror at the heart of the story. However, my issues with the characters are minor. I suppose it's easy to deflect this criticism with Shuichi's motto of 'they were contaminated by the spiral'. In fact, the only time we get the sense that anyone is disturbed enough by the happenings in the town to get out is just before the climax of the novel. For instance, she has several opportunities to leave the town with her boyfriend but doesn't - even after a string of spiral-related deaths throughout this sleepy coastal town. The main character also has a severe case of 'Horror-protagonist-itus' and does things which normal people wouldn't do. ![]() Also the primary cast of characters that permeate the majority of the novel have little substance to them, and pretty much no character development. After a certain point, it just feels pointless to introduce a new character, since anyone with half a brain knows that that character will be dead by the end of the chapter. My biggest gripe with the characters is that, from my recollection, only two, both minor, are introduced after the first couple chapters that don't die by the end of the chapter. While I'm on this topic, let's talk about the characters. I guess that format is somewhat inevitable when reading a serialised manga. Like, I get it, the town is cursed by the spiral. Admittedly, it does eventually pick up, but when it finally did, I was beginning to lose interest. ![]() I think the reason I finished the manga so quickly was partially due to me wanting to keep reading so I could get to a point where the plot actually advances. And the episodes aren't in themselves badly done, and they fulfil their purpose of increasing the reader's feeling that this town is bad news (a feeling we get in the very first chapter), but at a certain point it feels repetitive. ![]() It's basically just a series of episodes of weird shit relating to spirals. For the first half of the book, the plot more-or-less doesn't progress. And the manga does little to subvert the expectations you would have from knowing that (though I don't really blame it for doing that). When reading this, I didn't really have an idea about what to expect outside of 'Lovecraftian horror involving spirals'. Unlike the visual element, I do have a couple issues with it, however. And that's without talking about the actual body horror that Ito uses, which, drawn in this art-style, is some of the best depictions of visual horror I've ever seen. It has the same 'familiar-but-something-not-quite-right' vibe as Uncanny Valley animation. ![]() The result is this unsettling feeling, even when nothing creepy is happening. Junji Ito's art style is acutely distinct instead of the traditional pristine, big-eyed manga/anime characters you expect, Uzumaki's characters are drawn with a degree of realism you don't usually see in anime/manga. Uzumaki would be nowhere near the quality it is if it were in prose or some other medium- comic book is the perfect form for this story. In my opinion, this is the jewel in the crown for this manga. Being both a weeb and a Lovecraft fan, people irl and online have been constantly telling me to read it.įirstly, the art. I've probably been familiar with Ito's works for years now, and I owned Uzumaki for over a year before I actually read it in the past couple days. Last night I finished the three-volume Manga series Uzumaki by Junji Ito.
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