Uzumaki is one of Junji Ito's most notorious works, and it truly is an impressive illustration of the horrors of the obsessive imagination.
The story follows the calm and sweet Kirie and her depressed but loving boyfriend Shuichi, who live in the town of Kurouzu-cho, which is infected with a phenomenon known as spirals. People turn into giant snails, whirlwinds appear out of nowhere, and stalkers turn into jack-in-the-boxes. The story could be easily seen as comical in such a simplistic description. However, Juni Ito's horrifyingly detailed manga panels cause the terror to shine through the narrative.
Throughout the story, Kirie and Shuichi look after each other as they face the occasional eldricht horror that plagues their hometown. At the end of everything, they are still together, and they will be until the curse resurfaces, at which point they will finally be able to leave. For now, though, they are frozen in time within the infinite center of the spiral, but at least they are together.
I think that the story is a bit too graphic for my personal taste. However, I did enjoy the slice-of-life manner in which the story is told. Most horror stories like to have every single page have to do from escaping a killer wielding an axe, or a clown that is luring kids into its mouth with candy and Minecraft 2 (I dunno). But Uzumaki is different in the sense that it tells a little story with each chapter, but there is still an over-arching plot that comes to its conclusion right at the very end, and like a spiral, it wraps around itself perfectly, leaving room for infinite possibilities.
Something else that I liked was Kirie and Shuichi's relationship. Even though they were only in high school, they were very close and casual with one another. When Kirie knew that Shuichi wasn't eating, she brought food to his house every single day. She invited him over to her place to have dinner with her family. She would visit him to make sure that he was doing okay. He was thoroughly depressed due to the events of the story, and the spirals had an intense effect on him (I like to think that it was because he was bearing the load for both him and Kirie, since the spirals seemed to target the two of them quite frequently, which might have had something to do with their ultimate fate as the only survivors of the curse, but anyways.)
I just loved their dynamic. They were like if you took an introvert and a slightly-less-introverted introvert, made them a couple, and threw them into an apocalyptic nightmare zone. It was wonderful.
Even though I couldn't really enjoy the horrifying gore of the story, I definitely appreciated Uzumaki for its beautiful art, characters, relationships, and the evident spiral of love that was put into this enchanting masterpiece.
