Don’t expect to feel much for the characters apart from sharing their despair. Not that I mind, since I feel that is what Junji Ito was going for when he made the manga. In most chapters we’re introduced to a new character only to have them disappear (die) soon after. Apart from the two main characters Shuichi and Kirie, there’s not a lot of room for others. Lack of time does bring certain regressions in character development. The end few chapters do, however, tie the story together. It’s still relatively short (19 chapters plus one which makes 20) but I did not find them at all to be repetitive. Ito has been able to do with spirals surprises even me. Each new chapter was fresh and interesting, bringing new ideas to the table.

The unsettling graphics only serve to increase your sense of disgust but, strangely, interest as well.ĭespite each chapter being largely unrelated to each other (like an episodic anime), I found that Uzumaki manages to keep the pace going rather well where others have fallen. In one chapter pregnant women go on a murderous rampage, and in another chapter one of Kirie’s classmates gets turned into a human snail.

Shuichi and Kirie have to survive in an increasingly desperate and maddening town that is going crazy.

The whole plot literally revolves around a spiral (I’m referencing the ending). On the theme of spirals, they are everywhere in this manga. He is joined by childhood friend Kirie Goshima and together they form the main cast. No one understands this more than Shuichi Saito, who is arguably one of the first to experience the strange phenomenon known as ‘the spiral’. The basic premise is that in Kurozu-cho, a small coastal town in Japan, strange events start happening. What was once an ordinary town is now anything but. The guy seems to have a knack for creating creepy stories (judging from what he’s published) and this is no exception. Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror is a horror manga brought to us by Junji Ito. The spiral, perhaps? Note: Some minor spoilers may be present from the images I have used. I may have wanted to, but something was pulling me in. Abhorrent with some very dark undertones, I just couldn’t stop reading. So maybe it was finally time that I found one such manga that had me cowering in my blanket when it got dark. Not even Gantz, the most goriest manga I’ve read, has ever given me the creeps. Nothing that I’ve read (thus far) has even scratched the surface of my psychological well-being. I’ve long been sceptical of horror manga.

Spiral horror manga