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Uzumaki U.S. Publisher: Viz Based on: Based on: "Spiralling Shape," by They Might Be Giants. Down... down... down you go... |
Media | Manga | Uzumaki
Posted by nichm? | February 1, 2008
Read Uzumaki carefully your first time through, because you may be too revolted or disturbed to take a second look. There are those who find it so effectively vile and horrific that they've vowed never to crack the spine of another Ito production: when it comes to horror manga, Uzumaki is the real thing. It doesn’t get any better, or worse, than this.
Unlike a lot of his horror mangaka peers, Ito’s basic craft is at a very high level, which is part of what makes Uzumaki so scary. Though the premise of the story -- that spirals are invading and infecting a small Japanese town, twisting everything they touch into a nightmare version of its former self -- is a little hard to take seriously at first, Ito’s realistically rendered and fantastically detailed art goes a long way toward selling the concept. Even from the beginning, his splash page of a field whose blades of grass are twining in upon themselves sets a creepy note; by the time the spiral claims its first victim at the end of Chapter 1, his art will suck you in just as surely as the spirals do.
On a first reading, what you’ll notice about Uzumaki is the body horror, and indeed this is what might prevent you from ever poring through it again. “You’ll see!” exclaims Mr. Saito in Chapter 1, “You can express the spiral through your own body!” and the manga doesn’t disappoint on this score. The human body is twisted, mutilated, and mutated in a dizzying array of forms over the course of the three volumes. The apex of these is a nauseating two-chapter sequence in which pregnant women take on mosquito-like characteristics in a massacre at a hospital.
If you can stand to pick it up again, though, you can see the psychological component to the story. Themes of obsession and fixation run through Uzumaki, treating the spiral like a mesmerist’s tool to captivate the attention of its victims. Particularly in the first volume, there are three stories that emphasize this facet of the spiral: the opening chapter, where Mr. Saito becomes obsessed with the spiral and begins to collect anything that features its pattern; the story of Azami Kurotani, whose spiral-like scar goes from a metaphorical to literal attractor of men; and the incident which comes closest to claiming series protagonist Kirie Goshima, when the spiral expresses itself through her hair, draining her energy to become more ostentatious.
What separates these stories from lesser manga is that these aren’t always simple morality tales. In the “Medusa” chapter, there’s clearly a sense that Kirie’s unwillingness to let the spiral rule her life is what saves her from being killed by her own hair, while classmate Sekino’s vanity contributes to her own demise. But in the case of Mr. Saito and Azami, there’s nothing intrinsic to their nature that marks them as deserving of death. Once the spiral begins to infect the town itself, it’s clear that there’s something else besides E.C.-style “poetic justice” going on.
Uzumaki then falls into the category of “outside evil,” bringing a malevolent force to the town of Kurozu-Cho and then watching as it slowly consumes everything in sight. Where the psychological aspect comes into play is seeing how the various citizens of the town react to the encroaching horror. The spiral’s contamination is clearly at work as even visiting rescue workers and humanitarians fall prey to the chaos and madness in Vol. 3.
On the other hand, the book also teases the reader with the prospect that basic human nature is as much to blame as any outside force. Faced with starvation, Kirie’s band slowly shrinks as its members turn bloodthirsty and cannibalistic -- but there are those who manage to resist the temptation. The fact that reporter Chie Maruyama manages to hold on to her humanity until the end while volunteer Tanizaki succumbs implies that at some level, there is a choice... and nearly everyone in Uzumaki makes the wrong one.
Kirie is one of those who doesn’t give in, but upon close inspection the book’s strongest character is her boyfriend Shuichi Saito. Shown as morose and depressed from his first appearance, one of the first things he does even before any “incidents” happen is to beg Kirie to leave Kurozu-Cho with him. As the book opens, he’s already aware of the spiral and its effects upon people, as his own father is already descending into madness. Since he attends school in a nearby town, he can feel the difference in the atmosphere every time he re-enters Kurozu-Cho, and he warns Kirie that it’s become a dangerous place.
She dismisses his warning, and continues to do so until it’s far too late, but remarkably Shuichi never leaves. He knows he can’t convince Kirie of what’s happening, and he knows that staying in Kurozu-Cho will mean his doom. Yet he never leaves her, and does what he can to help her survive as the spiral worsens.
Doomed love is the last of the book’s motifs, first appearing in the Azami story and recurring in a number of other chapters. Shuichi and Kirie each have their obsessively devoted suitors, whose love curdles through the spiral’s taint, but there’s an early chapter that shows love as one of the only ways out of Kurozu-Cho. A Romeo-and-Juliet story gets the Uzumaki treatment as the two lovers literally become one, their bodies twining together in a spiral cord, which takes to the sea before disappearing forever. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but it’s better than the gruesome fate in store for nearly everyone else in the book.
Uzumaki does have a few weak points. Many of the one-off chapters have rushed endings, as if Ito hadn’t worked out his page count in advance before realizing he needed to wrap this month’s chapter up in a hurry, and some of them barely have endings at all. (The aforementioned mosquito story finishes with a horrific panel of the women feeding, followed by a text box of Kirie lamely explaining “I escaped from the hospital. I have no idea what happened there. I wasn’t about to go back to find out.” The end!)
Still, even if individual episodes are lacking in resolution, their cumulative power is real. Once the “spiral of the month” episodes end and the larger tale takes prominence in Vol. 3, the story builds to a climax that’s almost cosmic in scope. Yet even at the end, Ito grounds things in the story of Kirie and Shuichi, closing on the happiest note he could come up with with a premise like this: that despite its power, there are things even the spiral can’t corrupt.