Uzumaki remains my favorite Junji Ito story. I wind up reading it at least once a year, which is honestly pretty messed up given it’s such an intense and brutal story with some really awful imagery. But I like horror, so that’s a feature not a bug, I guess?
Uzumaki tells the story of a town cursed by spirals. That sounds stupid, I know, but the story does a really incredible job of making it threatening. When you think about it, spirals are whirlpools, tornadoes, and even the proboscises of mosquitos are spirals. Even the motion of a lighthouse tends to track out the pattern of a spiral. All of these and many more manage to work into a common and really creepy story about how these spirals impact the town. Ultimately, this is a story about something benign and ubiquitous becoming something awful that threatens everyone it touches. It is a true Lovecraftian story, with awful powers maneuvering to achieve their unknowable goals, not caring in the least whether or not they negatively impact human beings in the process.
It’s probably that Lovecraftian element that brings me back to this and makes it my favorite Junji Ito. Lovecraft is freaky stuff and I like the themes that make it unique. It’s impossible to talk about these themes in Uzumaki without spoilers, so I’ll skip that, but suffice it to say there is a satisfying payoff that Howard Philips himself would be proud of, if he could manage to stop being racist for long enough to enjoy a story written by a Japanese man.
This one is a definite recommend as my favorite Ito story.