Rating: 
Summary: Lovecraft's Japanese Heir
Review: I saw Uzumaki Vol. 1 and 2 in a comic shop here in Perth, Australia, and grabbed them right away. I had read Junji Ito's Tomie Vol. 1 and 2 just weeks before, and I knew I could expect to feel the same spine-tingling thrill from reading this new collection of disturbingly weird and eerie images from Ito's twisted imagination.Uzumaki is a collection of tales about a small coastal town haunted not by a ghost or a demon but by a shape - one of the most common and natural of shapes, the spiral. The mere idea of a shape exerting its deadly influence on the innocent folks of a small town is positively Lovecraftian in scope, and Ito does not disappoint. Vol. 1 opens with the tale of a man who collects anything spiral-shaped and then spends hours staring at them, becoming increasingly unhinged as the tale unfolds. Next, in the most disturbing story in Vol. 1, a woman with an acute phobia of anything spiral-shaped shaves her head and snips off her finger-tips in an effort to get rid of all traces of spirals on her body. The panic on her son's face when he realises that an anatomy chart in her doctor's office displays the spiral-shaped inner ear sucked me right into Ito's tale of fear, dread, paranoia and mounting hysteria. The other stories in Vol. 1 are interesting enough to read, i.e. competent but do not quite reach the heights of the first two stories. Vol. 2 ups the ante by presenting even more disturbing tales. The first story, appropriately entitled "Jack in the Box", has some of the most gruesome images I've ever seen in any medium, involving the disintegrating corpse of a dead boy intent on seeking vengeance from a girl who rejected him while he was still alive. And even if you are tired of vampire stories, "Mosquitoes" and "The Umbilical Cord" will still manage to give you a couple of sleepless nights, make you look at pregnant women and babies differently, and possibly give you a life-long phobia of maternity wards. Ito manages to give the old vampire angle a very frightening twist by linking pregnant women to mosquitoes - biologists would know what I'm talking about. For any horror fans, I cannot recommend Uzumaki Vol. 2 enough. I hope Vol. 3 comes out soon, I cannot wait to find out what happens to Kirie, the pretty young heroine of the series, and her boyfriend, when the mother of all spirals - a hurricane - strikes their small town.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good horror entry...
Review: I think this horror comic was really pretty scary. There were a few chapters in this first volume... like the one with the girl with posessed hair and the one with the two lovers who snaked together and went into the ocean, which were more corny than scary, but the scary chapters make up for that. I am looking forward to volume 2...
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good horror entry...
Review: I think this horror comic was really pretty scary. There were a few chapters in this first volume... like the one with the girl with posessed hair and the one with the two lovers who snaked together and went into the ocean, which were more corny than scary, but the scary chapters make up for that. I am looking forward to volume 2...
Rating:
Summary: The movie does not compare
Review: If you saw the movie and are now interested in the book. Be prepared for a much better ending. This book is great, including the other 2. You should own them all. Alot more happens in these books then what happens in the movie. And they are alot weirder.
Rating:
Summary: The movie does not compare
Review: If you saw the movie and are now interested in the book. Be prepared for a much better ending. This book is great, including the other 2. You should own them all. Alot more happens in these books then what happens in the movie. And they are alot weirder.
Rating:
Summary: Lovecraft in Japan
Review: In the coastal Japanese town of Koruzo-Cho, strange events are afoot. As told by schoolgirl Kirie Goshima, the town is being affected somehow by the mysterious power of the spiral, and nobody, not even those closest to her, are safe. While this story contains enough chilling events that it would even be effective in prose, the true magic comes from Junji Ito's illustrations. He takes some of the most outlandish concepts (a man's body twisted into a spiral, two girls fighting each other using their freakishly elongated hair) and makes them incredibly disturbing, rather than looking ridiculous. This is a far cry from most American monster or bump-in-the-night horror comics, and much more effective than simple drawings of visceral gore. This is only the first installment of this series, so explanations and resolution are almost absent. However, I found myself so drawn in to this weird story that I am looking forward to future volumes, no matter how creeped out I know I'll get reading them.
Rating:
Summary: A breath of fresh air for horror comics
Review: Junji Ito's Uzumaki is definitely a winner. It treads abstract territory with its bizarre tale of a small town plagued by the curse of the spiral and the horrific events that occur to the various residents. If this series doesn't wet your horror whistle, then you must be dead...or just plain boring! My fiancee even picked this series up and she is definitely not a fan of comics.
Rating:
Summary: Cool, but very creepy.
Review: My 12 yr-old devoured the 1st 2 Volumes the day I bought them--I didn't get around to it for a week, but had a hard time putting it down when I did. There's the hopelessly oppressed feel of characters in Edger Allen Poe's works--they can feel something's wrong, but they don't leave. Shuichi knows because he leaves town everyday to go to school(until he drops out) & begs Kirie to leave with him, but neither leave. After both of his parents are taken by the spirals, Shuichi becomes reclusive, but also something of the piece's prophet, popping up to save Kirie with info about the spirals. The first book is creepy enough, dealing first with Suichi's father, then his mother falling victim to the Spirals. Then Kirie's friend Azami becomes obsessed with Shuichi because he's the first boy who hasn't fallen prey to her magic like every other boy since she received the crescent scar on her forehead--in fact he's terrified which only attracts her to him. It's followed by a spiral-infected pair of lovers whose families want to keep apart & the final segment where Kirie's hair becomes infected, leaving her with the pixie short cut she has in later volumes.
Junji Ito manages to portray some pretty horrible sights without falling into cheap scares like some of the old horror comics here in the US did in their heyday--this easily rivals the good stuff from Eerie & Creepy. If you prefer the short tales with a twist like Creepshow, this isn't it. The pay-off of each story is usually pretty obvious(like the scar story where he shows the shocking progress of the spiral's growth a couple times so we know how she's going to end), but fascinating enough to keep one interested. I prefer Shuichi to Kirie because he's lost so much--far more pathos. She does fall a bit into the horror heroine mold of everything happens around her, but she comes out ok(so far only losing her long hair).
Rating:
Summary: Really Good
Review: Someone I know purchased this and let me read it. I really liked it and thought that it was good. I would recommend buying it to anyone out there period.
Rating:
Summary: "U"-"ZU"-"MA"-"KI".
Review: Spirals. Fascinating? Perhaps. Evil? Never -- until now, that is. Uzumaki is an extremely bizarre collection of inter-connected stories much in the same way as the "Tomie" stories were. Our protagonist is Kirie Goshima, who is undoubtedly one of Ito's cuter female creations -- and this works to the story's advantage in an ingenious way, as it subtly encourages the readers (the male population, at least >_>) to automatically lend a sympathetic ear to the character.
"The Spiral Obsession Part 1" introduces us to the madness that is slowly consuming the town of Kurozo-cho, and we are given a somewhat "small" dosage of the things to come.
"The Spiral Obsession Part 2" continues the insanity put putting things into overdrive -- no exaggeration. Many of the scenes depicted in this chapter are Ito's most revolting yet.
"The Scar" starts us off with the individual yet connected stories that Ito is famous for with his creations (ie, with "Tomie", "Souichi", etc), and it starts us off with a huge bang -- I still can't get over the few disturbing scenes with Azami (those who've read it will instantly know which ones I'm talking about).
"The Firing Effect" is probably the "breather" of the book, as Ito calms things down a notch probably so to give the reader small room to breathe.
"Twisted Souls" is, at heart, a modern day Romeo & Juliet tale with Kirie, Shuichi, and spirals thrown in for good measure.
"Medusa" is my personal favorite of the book and it's here that we come to understand that absolutely NOTHING is off-limits to the spirals; even something seemingly as harmless as hair can be lethal when cursed.
On a different but related note, I seriously think Ito should try his hands on comedy -- I found the "Afterward" that concludes this volume to be pretty funny.
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