Bingo Row 4 – Favorite
Someone recently asked me who my top 5 manga creators (mangaka) are. I struggled to find a 5th and eventually said Junji Ito to end the conversation. I hadn’t read enough Ito to say he’s honestly a favorite. I’ve liked what I’ve seen, but that’s not much. Just some short stories and I have a sweatshirt with his cats on it. And that King of the Hill crossover, if that counts.
So that I wouldn’t be living a lie, I decided to read Uzumaki, which is probably Ito’s most famous work. It’s about a town being terrorized and destroyed by spirals.
Specifically, it’s about Kirie – a normal teenage girl – dealing with her friends, family, town, and reality all spiralling out of control. The best part was the wildly inconsistent reactions. Kirie’s boyfriend’s father’s tongue extends about a foot into a spiral. She runs away screaming in a normal reaction. A couple elope by turning into snake people, twirling around each other, then jumping into the water to never be seen again. Not yet inured to the spirals, Kirie somehow does not flip out over this. When two classmates turn into snails, the school treats them like class pets. But they freak out over those two snails having sex because they were both males when they were human. Later characters are appropriately disgusted and terrified by cannibalism. I found these inconsistencies the most unsettling because it didn’t allow me to get a grasp of how people were dealing with the spirals. It doesn’t let you stabilize your perspective on the spirals. And it was a blast.
I’ve seen plenty of Ito’s work and imagery over the years of being a geek. I didn’t realize how much of it was from Uzumaki. It was great seeing the context for the lady* with the swirl in her head, the man with a spiral tongue, and the 70s looking girl with curly hair. Not to mention the King of the Hill thing from a few years ago.
* Turns out the lady with the spiral in her head was just a schoolgirl.
To wrap up: is Junji Ito in my top five mangaka? Sure.