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A review by yourstrulyemi
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
First of all, whenever I'd hear someone talk about Uzumaki, they'd tell me how it's unsettling, giving you a fear of spirals for the rest of your life and so on. But to my disappointment, it ended up being way less scarier than I expected. It could be that I've seen much more grotesque things that the images in Uzumaki didn't faze me at all, but yeah my expectations for the horror element weren't well met.
The story at first seemed kind of dull, with the town slowly falling to its demise under the curse of the spiral. But my mistake when I first read it was focusing too much on the origins of the curse and its mechanism when it was never the author's intention to delve more into it, rather leaving the curse of the spiral as something mysterious and inescapable.
It's only when I reached the essay by Sato Masaru, included at the end of the book that I understood that I've read it wrong. The curse of the spiral was meant as a metaphor for the dangers of a capitalistic society, with some chapter eluding to human greed and selfishness. The overall story meant to describe a societal collapse. This information elevated its value in my eyes. So, of course, I wasn't going to put it down just like that, I had to reread it to truly grasp the meaning behind every chapter and discover which vice of the society the author tried to present under the influence of the curse. While some appeared obvious, others required deeper thinking. And some remained totally abstruse, a well known characteristic of Junji Ito's style.
But overall, the societal issues were marvellously well portrayed, even going as far as to show us that some of our reactions to real life events come off as absurd if we think about it seriously. How remaining firmly as you are can save you from being swayed by the pressure put on us by society. How in the end, human love can still be the solution out of the madness created both by curse and the society.
The story at first seemed kind of dull, with the town slowly falling to its demise under the curse of the spiral. But my mistake when I first read it was focusing too much on the origins of the curse and its mechanism when it was never the author's intention to delve more into it, rather leaving the curse of the spiral as something mysterious and inescapable.
It's only when I reached the essay by Sato Masaru, included at the end of the book that I understood that I've read it wrong. The curse of the spiral was meant as a metaphor for the dangers of a capitalistic society, with some chapter eluding to human greed and selfishness. The overall story meant to describe a societal collapse. This information elevated its value in my eyes. So, of course, I wasn't going to put it down just like that, I had to reread it to truly grasp the meaning behind every chapter and discover which vice of the society the author tried to present under the influence of the curse. While some appeared obvious, others required deeper thinking. And some remained totally abstruse, a well known characteristic of Junji Ito's style.
But overall, the societal issues were marvellously well portrayed, even going as far as to show us that some of our reactions to real life events come off as absurd if we think about it seriously. How remaining firmly as you are can save you from being swayed by the pressure put on us by society. How in the end, human love can still be the solution out of the madness created both by curse and the society.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Violence