The Strange, Cosmic Horror of Junji Ito's Uzumaki

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I never saw Kirie as a negative, I always saw her as the earliest victim of the spiral, just that she never realized it. She does the same thing over and over, just repeating her mistakes, never once realizing that she's caught in her own spiral.

I always felt bad for Shuichi, his downfall was that he wasn’t willing to abandon those he loved. If he were a worse person he would have survived.

I love how in their last moments, Kirie and Shuuichi not only immortalized their love, but also stuck a middle finger to the spiral god. They were the last survivors, Kirie was constantly being the object of obsession by the tornadoes, Shuuichi was the only one who was calling it out. And in the end, even as spirals, both didnt die looking at it, they closed their eyes facing each other. For a spiral god that needs attention from people, that must have stung

"We need to talk about your son. He's a bit... Slow..." "You're telling me my child has special needs?" "No no, I mean your son is a literal snail. Come pick him up."

Wendigoon not seeing the irony of having a cannibal cryptic as mascot while being most easily upset by cannibalism of all horror themes just made my day

can we talk about how kirie was so concerned about shuichi taking care of himself, that she went to bring him lunch in a HURRICANE. TWICE.

A giant tornado screaming "KIRIEE" all night long Kirie: "MMh it must be the weather."

For some reason, I found that the end of Uzumaki was both terrifying and beautiful. In the eyes of something never ending and mysterious, Shuichi and Kirie just embraced each other and found peace within their new eternity. Devastating and tragic, but so beautiful.

shuichi is the standard, if he doesn't stay back for me in a cursed town where we experience horrors beyond our comprehension just to protect me then I don't want him

I love how at the end the two of them aren’t looking at the spiral they’re facing each other with their eyes closed. Like a last small insignificant personal triumph against the spiral. It is an immortalization of their love but in the end it doesn’t save them. Ugh so good

1:59:11 that part actually made me really emotional. the way mitsuo didn't want to leave kirie, and kirie promising to find him :(( it was so sad i nearly cried

I think my favorite part of all of this is the absolutely bizarre series of words it made you say at certain points."Think you can just crawl up into a lighthouse and look at a big light and get your friend burnt to death? No, idiot, BOOM; you're a snail!"

The funniest part of Junji Ito is he's supposedly a pretty fun guy to hang around with IRL. It's always the happy ones that put out the most twisted works. XD

A real estate agent claiming people are moving out instead of dying is the most realistic thing I've heard in this book, id love to see you cover more if his work

I absolutely love the left panel of the comic at 1:58:27 Kiriye: Can you crawl to safety? Her brother: 🐌 Kiriye: Great, now run

Wendigoon: talks about how some of Junji Ito's psychedelic trip of panels are goofy but also Wendigoon: gets scared over random appearance of paw patrol bandaid

My favorite thing about writers like Junji Ito is that his stories go for the very simple “Wouldn’t it be fucked up if weird thing happened” and just build upon a spooky concept until you have something inexplicable and horrifying. Much like some of the best twilight zone episodes, the horror is left unexplained and therefore unknowable, the best form something scary can take.

2:19:26 I actually think there is some sort of twisted hope with the ending. You asked "What can humanity even do against an incomprehensible and perhaps even unbeatable thing?" Shuichi and Kirie gave us the answer: we can spite it. As has been stated, just as obsessed as the people the 'Spiral God' makes over spirals, it itself is obsessed with attention, the shape of a spiral itself demands your attention. But what do we see Kirie and Shuichi do in their last moments? They ignore it, they hold each other tight and look into each other's eyes instead of the God, which is what it wants, no, what it demands of them. My belief is that the 'huge booming sound' that then echoes across the cavern as the place starts sealing up was the God actually roaring out at them to pay attention to it, to look at it, to worship it, to bow down to something 'superior' to them in every way. And they simply close their eyes and clasp each other tighter, holding on to what they actually love, refusing to give this parasite what it wants, even as it continues to roar at them. And when I realized this, I realized how, despite how powerful and 'almighty' the Spiral God is, at it's quite literal core, it is no less mad than the very 'congregation' it hypnotized into obsessing over it. It is an attention seeking brat in the shape of a god that only cares about people obsessing over it and worshiping it, ultimately having no greater purpose or goal of its own. It's not just nothing, it's less than nothing. It's pathetic. And Shuichi and Kirie spite it in their final moments by expressing to each other something humans have that it will never have, regardless of how many it enthralls, no matter how large a 'congregation' it gathers, and no matter how much it warps the world to its design or how powerful it is: Love. True, unrequited, unconditional love for one another; unlike the ultimately empty form of 'love' it forces people to give it. That is what humanity can do in the face of something like it. We can spite it; we can spit in its face, flip it the bird one final time and mock how pathetic it is as a god picking on us 'ants', even when it's about to tear us to shreds. Because even if we can never hope to truly defeat it, we can wound it in a way that matters: a wound to its pride; a kind of wound that will never truly heal even after every second of eternity has passed, a wound which will leave it loathing its own immortality. Even in Lovecraft's own stories, humanity's never been 'helpless'. In "The call of Cthulhu", when Cthulhu starts clambering from its lair, one of the sailors decides to spite it by running it through with a steam boat, which wounded it in a way which will take ages for it to heal. In "The Dunwich Horror", using only magic nose dust, a copy of the necronomicon, and a duped up shotgun, three men manage to stop a building sized child of Yog-sothoth by banishing it. In "Shadow over Innsmouth", the fish people are all arrested, their efforts to take over the land dwellers halted by a police raid.

One of my favourite aspects of Uzumaki is how the form of the spiral itself is portrayed within different parts of the story, specifically how the spiral curse itself reacts to those who do and don’t conform to the spirals desires. Shuichi’s father was hopelessly devoted to the spiral, he did everything to appease it and thus he died with ease and happiness in comparison to his wife who constantly fought against the spiral and thus died in constant suffering and despair. The moon scar girl constantly used her hidden spiral as a shrine to be praised and infatuated with, constantly appealing to the spiral’s alluring effect and thus she was rewarded with all of the popularity and power she desired ever since she was a kid, but when Shuichi became the only man who wasn’t obsessed with her spiral scar, it was like the scar itself started to attack her as if she was no longer useful because she’s finally found her match that can oppose the spiral’s effects. The snail guy seemed to have just been slow and sluggish from the start, the spiral just emphasised it and turned it into its most physical form. It even rewards the snail guy by turning his bully into a snail too, as if it sensed his suffering and saw it as an opportunity to appeal the spiral’s followers and reward it with the suffering of those who wrong them. The aspect of the row houses is a very subtle effect of the spiral that only becomes more prominent as they grow and expand. Even when you first see the row houses, they perfectly align up to where they look like rows within a spiral, linking back to how the row houses are the ancient buildings that remains from the former spiral town. Those who work on the houses and build the spirals from it are protected, showing their devotion to building and feeding into the spiral itself. That’s why I also think Kirie and her family are safe from the spirals for the most part, the spiral sees what role Kirie has to play in the spiral and thus doesn’t interfere until everyone’s already trapped and Kirie’s family are now susceptible to the spiral’s wrath. It’s as if it knew that killing Kirie’s family would only drive her away from the town, taking Shuichi along with her, and so they leave them alone so that it inclines Kirie to stay and force Shuichi into staying along with her. And in the end, they feed into the nature of the spiral itself, they see all of these events going on around them, but they never take action to fight against it or leave it at all and so eventually it all circles right back around to the beginning again where they’re clueless and naive to the spiral’s true effects. To me that’s why Kirie is a little bit repetitive in her character arc and how she reacts to the earlier stories, she sees what’s happening but by the end of it she’s right back where she was and doesn’t learn a thing for when it happens next time, like a spiral going from one end right back around on itself over and over and over again. It’s such a deep intricate story that has so many different levels to it, you really feel yourself getting lost in all of its detail, like you yourself are staring deep into a spiral, following the line around and around and around until you too become one with the spiral’s influence.