I Really Should Read This 18: Uzumaki, by Junji Ito

Uzumaki, by Junji Ito

late 1990s, Deluxe English Edition 2010

Junji Ito is probably my last major manga blind spot. There are roughly infinity manga books out there, but I've made an effort to try out most creators who resonated strongly with English audiences. When I first saw his name popping up, he was labeled a 'master of horror,' a genre I'm not into. But like all genre works, the best of it rises up above the genre, so I've taken the plunge into the world of Junji Ito. Is Uzumaki his best? I have no clue, I just know that my friend shrugged off the book I was originally about to get as "not his best," so here's hoping this is good representation of his work. 

(I want to say that the fact that it's released in a deluxe edition would hopefully mean it's a better book, but that doesn't actually mean anything these days, other than the publisher wants to charge you more for it.) 

When the light hits the cover just right...

The book gets a gorgeous hardcover treatment. The paper is manga newsprint, so up front, I loved the production values. And it's quite a tome at over 600 pages. 

Uzumaki is the story of Kirie Goshima, a high school girl living in the seaside community of Kurouzu-cho. The town, as the back cover states, is contaminated with spirals. The first half of the book are the stories surrounding the death or disappearances of townsfolk, all related to spirals. Characters are obsessed with spirals, haunted by spirals, turned into spirals. Spirals.

Foreshadowing: the book is comically unsubtle

It took a while for me to clue in: this is not a horror book, this is a horror/comedy. Much like the old EC Tales From the Crypt might scare a kid, for an adult reader, it's just so over the top that it never really sinks in that this might be really happening. Kirie watches as the most crazy stuff happens, and then just goes to school the next day like it was nothing at all. Comedic horror is a genre of horror, and one I used to enjoy, it just wasn't what I expected before reading. 

These things happen

When her two Romeo-and-Juliet-style-forbidden-romance classmates run away from their parents and finally coil themselves up like giant snakes and crawl away entwined into the sea, you'd think there'd be some investigation. When a slow classmate just turns into a giant snail and slugs his way up the school walls, you'd think class might get canceled. But life goes on in the small seaside town of Kurouzu-cho. Perhaps the town founders made a mistake in naming the town "Black Spiral" (黒渦).

This sort of thing happens too

Once you understand that crazy stuff is going to keep happening, and everybody in the town is only going to shrug it off (except Kirie's boyfriend Shuichi, who knows the spiral is going to destroy everything), it's a fun book. Not scary, but fun. Ito tries to surpass himself chapter by chapter on just how weird the town can get. Blood-sucking pregnant women, with placenta that grows mushrooms. A flaming lighthouse. Tornado riding youth gangs. Houses so stuffed with people that they become clumps. When it finally gets to the end, he takes it as far as he could have and the town becomes a spiral. Does any of it make any sense? No, none of it. No more than a mummy's curse or a werewolf does. He just creates his own nonsense mythology, which holds up under its own logic.

Spiral hair battle

I'm a little surprised this resonated so well in the West. Japanese stories don't always resolve like Western ones. Sometimes they don't resolve at all, they simply end. But probably the sheer weirdness of Ito's ideas make up for whatever foreignness one could feel from the story construction.

Too many people is a safety hazard

The art is great. Sometimes, he draws people standing in a static way, with Kirie and Shuichi making the same facial expression from the same angle throughout the book, but overall, his art is imaginative, the backgrounds give a sense of place, and he draws dozens of things which nobody has ever drawn before. Repeatedly, I found myself muttering, "What...?" as I read at the audacity of the images he creates. The line work is gentle though. He draws each strand of Kirie's hair. This is not brash, loud art. Ito keeps most of the book quite restrained, letting his 'loud' images have much more impact.

Ito can be really delicate with his art

I read this quickly over a few days and really enjoyed it, but I probably won't buy another of his books soon or become a completist collector. As cool as it was, the characters were just ciphers for the story. I don't need a library of this sort of book. But I get why people love Ito's work and I'm glad I read it.