![]() ![]() If you have ever spent some time looking at spirals, you would understand the deep, unsettling feeling you get from prolonged staring. The ways in which the spiral gradually takes over the city is interesting it evokes a visceral kind of terror. The spiral structures manifest themselves not only in the physical environment but also on human bodies, sometimes consuming their whole being and reducing them to nothing. Uzumaki, which is Japanese for spiral (うずまき), tells the story of Kurouzu-Cho, a small town that becomes contaminated with spiral patterns. I couldn’t stop thinking about it…the spiral… The narrative style of Junji Ito can seemingly be non-linear and confusing, but this is also one of his strengths in creating an intriguing story. By the time I finished, the plane was preparing to land at my first stop on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany. Uzumaki can be hard to get directly into. I felt anxious at the possibility that my mom or the person sitting behind me would glance over and see the pages of grotesque body horror in front of me–that’s just how Ito rolls. While everyone else was asleep, as it was a bit past midnight, I was reading Uzumaki in the dim atmosphere, the only light I had to assist with my sight was the one overhead of my seat. I am also one of those people who has a difficult time falling asleep on a plane (poor us). I was on my way to visit family in Albania, and the ride there from Pennsylvanian is always long and dull. I read one of his most popular works on an airplane a few summers ago. ![]() Even though his characters can be rather bland, transparent and unrelatable, his stores still offer refreshing tales of cosmic horror. In some of his other works, such as Hellstar Remina (2015) and The Enigma of Amigara Falls (2002), one cannot quite get a clear cut reason for why and how his stories play out. Ito seems to focus heavily on abstruse themes such as the dread of facing unexplainable and hopeless events. It was extremely absurd, but still had a certain charm to it, I definitely consider it one of the best chemical warfare/sea monster horror spin-off stories out there, although can’t say I know many anyway. The first story I read of his was Gyo (2002) during my sophomore year in high school. For me, I first got into his work, as most people might have, by reading some of his short stories that get mentioned on social media or used for aesthetic blogging purposes. Everyone has their own story on how they first heard of Ito. Junji Ito is a popular horror manga artist for very good reasons, his art adds something new and unique to the medium. ![]()
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