Uzumaki (3-in-1 Deluxe Edition) (Junji Ito) (edició 2013)

4 stars

Slightly overstayed its welcome in the final chapters, but overall it was great body horror, especially since you never knew what to expect, besides the spirals. The art is great and now I know where a lot of manga shock images on the Internet are from, hah. Even though I said that it dragged a bit at the end, it's still worth finishing, because the ending is very satisfying.
I would recommend it to you if you love seeing body horror or are looking for some fairly light-hearted horror. ( )

Translated from Japanese
This was my favorite book I read out of all of the graphic novels I read for this class, and it wasn't even close. This is truly an astounding achievement of a novel. It's like a bunch of different short stories (with distinct plot arcs that mostly get resolved at the end of each issue) woven into the big tapestry that is the city in which they live.
Junji Ito is a master of his craft, and I believe he is unparalleled at what he does. After I read this, I also read Shiver in its entirety, which is also exceptional.
This is just a magnificent work about the horrors of a town being taken over by "the spiral", and I'm looking forward to the new adaptation. ( )

This was crazy good. The artwork, the disturbing imagery, the originality of the stories, just...all of it.
That's it. That's the review.

*I bought this with my hard earned cash. If I hadn't I would buy it right now because I'll be re-reading this, perhaps many times.* ( )

Spirals, spirals everywhere.... not for everyone, not for the faint hearted but if you love bizarre horror mangas this is the one you’re looking for. ( )

Junji Ito is a really popular horror manga creator, I’ve read some one shots from him, and they are really mysterious and intriguing. If you like this genre of manga, I recommend you his works.

Uzumaki takes place in a town named Kurôzu-cho, this town has a curse involving spirals, there are spirals everywhere. The main characters are a girl named Kirie Goshima and a boy named Shuichi Saito, and since the beginning of the manga we can see how the curse affects the people around them and all the citizens in general, causing them to become obsessed or paranoid about spirals. This curse causes strange changes in the town and in the people living in it, some die in horrible ways and the main characters will have to try to escape or to find a way to stop this curse.

Uzumaki is the first horror manga I’ve ever read, as I said before, I’ve read some one shots by Junji Ito, but it’s a different experience to read a whole manga with a sequential story. At first I thought Uzumaki was a compilation of unrelated events, because there were random stories that started and ended in one chapter, but as the manga progresses, its more obvious that these events are related to one another and the link between them are the spirals. The story is intriguing and always keeps a mysterious atmosphere, making the reader wonder all the time what is happening, why and if the protagonists will be able to stop it.

The main characters are really relatable, they aren’t perfect and they get frustrated, or take wrong decisions, they are totally normal people. The character design and drawings in general are really particular, they don’t have the abnormal big eyes usually seen in mangas, they have a more realistic look, and the style of Junji Ito is easy to recognize.

I must say that to me the story was good until the end, I actually got confused in the finale and the explanation of the spiral curse wasn’t clear enough or conclusive enough to me, but I suppose it´s part of the charm of this manga, is mysterious till the end.

If you want to read an intriguing story full of strange events and inexplicable things, this manga if for you. If you like the horror manga genre, I would highly recommend it. ( )