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.

Uzumaki manga book