I've been putting off this review for a while; it was originally supposed to run, appropriately enough, during Halloween. Then it got pushed back to Thanskgiving time, which is appropriate as Uzumaki is manga to be thankful for. And now it's being reviewed around Christmas time, which works if you're looking for a gift for a casual manga fan or comics fan. Especially if you want to scare the crap out of someone for Christmas, because Uzumaki is by far the scariest and creepiest comic I have ever read. Impressively, Uzumaki reads well both singularly and as one narrative spread across three volumes, and Ito's bizarre visuals and strange ideas make for some rich and deeply disturbing reading.
Each volume of Uzumaki works on its own, and in a slightly different vein from the others. The initial volume sets up the characters and the situation that lays at the heart of the horror, a seemingly sentient spiral pattern that begins to infect various parts of town life. The second is an expansion of the spiral, as Ito explores just how prevalent that pattern is in modern life, through both obvious and less obvious places, people and things. And the third shifts to an almost post-apocalyptic tone, as the spirals have shifted from being a creeping, Cthulhu-esque background monster and into the one defining force in the town of Kurozo-cho.
What impresses me most about Uzumaki is that it's scary. Not just a little scary, not just "oh, I can see where that could scare people" but looking over your shoulder, chills up your spine creepy and scary. Ito has numerous tools in his arsenal to create that feeling as well. Foremost amongst the scares in the book is the feeling of creeping horror, that the entire town is a potential danger zone. Despite the reader being distant from the town, Ito manages to bring the claustrophobia of being stuck in a town that is haunted to life. He also doesn't shy away from the gore and grossout horror, whether it's a boy caught in a wheel well after an accident or unnatural modifications of bodies as a result of the spiral. And the mental deterioration of those living in the town is also conveyed strongly through Ito's dialogue and artwork.
The artwork is a big part of the creepiness and horror, actually. While Ito has a strong grasp of anatomy and expressiveness for normal people, where he excels is in the more bizarre exaggerations. The eerie, insane cackle that defines those who have been wholly captured by the spiral is clearer in the visuals than it is in the dialogue or sound effects, and the stretching and blending that goes on as people are consumed and mutated by the spiral never fails to impress. Credit should also go to the translator and letterer for the sound effects in matching the horrific nature of the story; if you ever wanted to know what sound intestines make when they escape an airborne animated corpse and hit the ground, Uzumaki is your book.
Uzumaki has a strong story about a "monster" that slowly and methodically devours a town, and some protagonists who oppose it in the form of a young girl and her friend, but the strongest element that I can recommend about it is how some of the images stick with you. The sequence set in the hospital contains more than a few nightmare-inducing moments, and the frantic and doomed attempts to escape the town in the third volume are quite powerful as well. When it comes to horror, Uzumaki beats the pants off any other comic out there. It also happens to be my favorite of any of the manga that I've read.
