 I read Tomie a few weeks ago and it was the first piece of horror media that I've ever willingly consumed. Yes, I've had to consume horror against my will because I'm a good friend. Horror has never been my thing. After a life of misery because of jump scares, I figured hey, maybe reading horror was a better alternative. There's nothing that can jump at me or catch me by surprise, right? Until this thing. This video has been sponsored by Shutter. October is the best month of the year. It also happens to be spooky season, scary movie season, and there's no place that has more scary movies than Shutter. Shutter is the home for horror, and it has kicked off its annual 61 days of Halloween, which is a two month celebration of new movies and series. They've got a new season of Creepshow and VHS94, the found footage anthology series. They've got a new documentary series on the origins and pop culture dominance of modern movie monsters called Behind the Monsters. 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To try Shutter free for 30 days, go to Shutter.com and use the promo code SAGE. Again, that's Shutter.com with the promo code SAGE. Tomie is the 1987 work by renowned horror mangaka Junji Ito. It follows titular character Tomie Kawakami through a series of loosely connected stories about the main character, Tomie. She seduces and manipulates whoever she wants to fall in love with her, and forces them to eventually gruesomely take her life. Each story sees her regenerate and repeat this process. I'm not saying the K word just yet because I'm afraid the big dog will catch me, but I will eventually say it. Now after reading it for me, the horror was in assessing Tomie the human and Tomie the monster, and how these two ideas of her are connected and yet become disconnected as the stories change and progress. The most notable thing that the story reiterates is Tomie's beauty. It's always on notice. It's intoxicating. Fair skin, shiny black hair, angular eyes, the girls around her are jealous of it and the men are drawn to it. Tomie's beauty becomes more and more apparent as the stories unfold. Tomie herself seems to become a worse and worse version of herself in the process. But while we never know exactly who the original or true Tomie is, the first chapter's version of Kawakami seems to be the most normal, and by normal I mean the one that has the most human qualities, and the least monstrous ones. There are no dark circles under the eyes of her classmates, not for Mr. Takagi, Yamamoto, or her one friend, just hatred. Tomie begins as this girl, pregnant, who is in a secret relationship with her teacher, Mr. Takagi. When she gets into an argument with Yamamoto, her boyfriend, over the details of her relationship with Mr. Takagi, and who later hits her, causing her to fall to her death, I think that short moment was the last moment of the real Tomie. As the chapters progress and she's continually hacked to pieces, she begins to lose her human qualities, but becomes more and more beautiful. She becomes more and more cruel. In Photograph, the following chapter, Tomie and Tsukiko get into a conflict over the secret photos that Tsukiko is taking of other men on campus. Tomie interjects as part of the Public Morality Committee. Tomie loves the idea of being seen, and being seen as someone beautiful. She always searches for ways to indulge in her vanity, and to recapture her beauty. But Tomie opposes the idea of photos. Because of this story, photos seem to expose the true Tomie. So when the monster appears, it's here where Tomie's signature gaze takes center stage, one that we see so often. But at the end of the fourth chapter in Mansion, when Tsukiko takes dozens of pictures of Tomie as a way of warding off the monster and exposing it, there's only one picture that successfully prints, and she says that in that photo, as we are shown, there is no monster, but instead a sad looking woman standing alone. Which begs the question, is this the original Tomie, the real one? That word monster, disease, these are words that deeply affect Tomie, looking back at photograph. Which leads me to believe that in that story specifically, in the early days of Tomie, she still had a small piece of her humanity left. But it could also represent how much weight she places on her appearance, how destructive it might be for a young girl in society that obsesses over her beauty to be called a monster. But the cruelty of Tomie to me comes when I reflect on that melancholic ending of Mansion. I said I wanted to assess both the human aspect of this story and the monster, and this is the human part of it. In that photo, she's sad and alone. I will say more than once in this video that Tomie has been abandoned by her community, blamed and disregarded. So when she's standing alone in that photo, sad, well yes, of course she is. She's confined to a life of vengeance, unfulfilled vengeance. The fact that she has to relive being hacked and dismembered over and over and over again, Tomie has a memory of each incident that occurs to her. That's why she shows up back at her old school after being killed, and why she takes revenge on Teni Moro's brother in revenge. Tomie is the embodiment of beauty, but that's all she ever is to those who fall in love with her, and to the women that envy her. Down to the senses, her voice, her distinct smell. In the Moromi story, they said she even has a rich and luscious taste, as they mix in her battered remains into a sake. It's quite disturbing the ways that she's dehumanized, but it's also in line with the way she is treated throughout these stories. If we look at some of the excuses made for Tomie's deaths, they are as follows. It's not your fault. Tomie's death was her own fault. She ridiculed us. Something just came over me. I loved her way too much. Directly or indirectly, blame always falls onto Tomie. It's a very real parallel to real world attacks on women. It's victim blaming at its finest, in quite a few of these stories, from everyone. With no family to protect her, no friends to support her, the women, the men, they all blame Tomie. Society has abandoned her. In the first chapter of Tomie, she even says, what kind of monster are you? The reason Tomie died, the reason that she is the way she is, is because of everyone else. They are the real monsters. It's because a boy decided that because he loved Tomie and couldn't have her, he needed to hit her, to kill her, as a way of appeasing his emotions. Tomie is an allegory for real life. Yes, it is Tomie's power that drives them to insanity, but part of the horror in Tomie is that, in so many real world instances where victims are blamed over the impulses of men, there is no ability, no power, no special gaze in where the blame can suddenly be put onto the victim. And yet, things play out just as they do in these stories. Again Tomie is a cruel and terrible person, but she doesn't deserve to be hacked over a ridiculed painting. In stories where she doesn't do anything like orphan girl, it's an impulse that she needs to be hacked to pieces. Again we see that idea that she made me do it. Aside from her enchanting beauty, Tomie doesn't have any qualities that reflect any sense of love. She's not kind or inviting or anything like that. She doesn't offer up her body or her love to her male victims. She's cruel and manipulative, and worst of all, she's angry. As women are quote unquote supposed to be the opposite of all of these things, Tomie isn't. It leads people to fear her and to fear what she may become. And when she can't be controlled or tamed or possessed, she's killed. When they're embarrassed by her, when she mocks them, she's killed. They are attracted to her and so deeply infatuated and taken aback by her beauty, they gain a semblance of control and possessiveness over Tomie, or of what she should be. Again when she doesn't act in line with what they desire, they kill her. They fear what she might become or what she might do to them. Rachel Dumas writes about the monstrous feminine in contemporary Japan and she writes that in her view, Tomie in 1980s Japan becomes symbolic of the rise of Japanese girlhood that actively resists established models of female desirability and desire. This can be applied to both the men and the women of the different chapters, in the sense that each of them attempts to try and subdue or control Tomie, as stated. For the other women and girls, they can be represented like the old lady of orphan girl. As she tries to suck up her youth and her beauty, they envy her, because they too wish that they could control and resist these established models just like Tomie does. Tomie has the aggression, the beauty, and the power that is envied. Furthermore in stories where Tomie corrupts the female characters, it's through that beauty. From the chapter's hair and Morita Hospital, she takes over those who are too worried about their looks, and hair, one of the main characters even points out that she'd kill for hair as pretty as Tomie's. Through these stories we see how beauty is obsessed over and idolized, and in these stories when they get the one thing they finally desire, Tomie's appearance, they die terrible deaths, they become her. Beauty in this story is demonized, because at each chapter Tomie becomes more and more beautiful and less and less human. These are stories that are very much reflective of a society that is obsessed with image. She is a constant reminder of the societal pressures on appearance and its failure to protect women as even to this day these instances of victim blaming and femicide exist at alarming rates all across the globe. I think Painter represents this idea quite well, especially in the way that Ito drew Tomie for this particular story. As his art improved, Tomie's appearance did, and this story specifically she appears older, and that's evident in the fact that she's wearing lipstick, making her lips fuller. Her hair is shinier, she's ditched the school outfits, and her eyes are more striking than before in this story. Tomie's gaze is exactly as the painter calls it, it's bewitching. Mitsuo Mori's paintings are put on display, and Tomie searches for the one who can record her beautiful form. As she says, it's her duty to preserve her beauty and to be admired by generations to come. But when Tomie loudly disapproves of Mori's work, it sends him into a frenzy, trying to emulate even a tenth of Tomie's beauty. When the painter sees a photo of Tomie and the monster, he feels a sense of duty to capture her beauty properly. He then kills to get Tomie back and finally captures Tomie's appearance, monster included, and of course she laughs at it, fearing the monster. And she also provokes Mori's anger, where the tale of Tomie repeats itself, hacking the monster to pieces. A male friend of Margaret Atwood replied to her question of why men might feel threatened by women, and he replied that they are afraid that women will laugh at them. Atwood asked students of hers why women feel threatened by men, and they replied that they are afraid men will kill them. Minus Tomie's fear, this is the story of Painter. In Maria Mie's paper about the legacy of the female vengeance ghost, they made a very interesting point in that almost all of the prototypes for Tomie's future victims are present in the original murder. It's that idea that helps to reinforce this thought that the first chapter is the original Tomie. When all of the students stood idly by as Mr. Takagi attempted to save himself from the embarrassment of having relations with a student, I think that's when Tomie decided to get her revenge. She began embodying and taking great pleasure into being a force for evil. What makes Tomie such a good villain and such a good monster to me is because of her intelligence. Yes, Tomie does lose her humanity over time, but she never loses her ability to manipulate people. She never loses her sense of what it means to be human. While it may be one part of her ability, she showcases so many instances where she's able to reach into the vulnerabilities of those that oppose her. To the men, she prays on their loneliness, on their ego and their masculinity, and to women, she prays on their insecurities. In gathering, Tomie even has a cult in honor of her image, adding that to her beauty, the one aspect of her that will always remain, the one aspect that seems to even change and adapt while retaining that facade of humanity. It becomes incredibly easy for her to manipulate people. Tomie becomes the embodiment of vengeance and it's evident once more in the fifth chapter, revenge. In revenge, I think it's the time where Tomie finally gives up trying to be human and truly takes advantage of her beauty and ability. Revenge has a frozen Tomie get found by a crew of hikers, Hamaguchi and Tanimura in the dead of winter. Both on the hunt for Tanimura's brother, Tetsuya, who has been missing. When Tomie is found, she is quickly able to use her ability to attract one of the hikers, Hamaguchi, to give her his clothes. When she becomes attracted to Tanimura, who has been unfazed by Tomie, Hamaguchi ends up getting jealous and attacks Tomie. As she is nursed back to health, we find out that Tanimura's brother is the one who left Tomie out to freeze after he killed her. And slowly her ability begins to seep into Tanimura, who stabs her and runs off, only to find his brother's body being devoured by another Tomie. As the title states it, this is revenge, but it's rather cruel as Tanimura isn't responsible for what his brother did, but Tomie still made the careful decision to find Tetsuya's brother and corrupt him. That spirit of vengeance that comes up time and time again was rather strong here, as it gruesomely illustrates the lengths to which Tomie is willing to go and get revenge. As she shows the other brother's devoured corpse, because devouring Tetsuya wasn't enough for her. It's moments like this that stand out when thinking about the disconnect between Tomie the human and the monster. Tetsuya was just a regular team, looking for his lost brother, and he had fair intentions all the way through, and he even nursed Tomie back to health, but Tomie doesn't care. In gathering, it follows Umehara, a man whose girlfriend has recently died and who gets invited to a gathering, essentially a cult, where men go to worship Tomie. Umehara in the very first page shows that he is still very much in love with Naoko, his girlfriend, and he misses her dearly. When Tomie gets the hint about a man who isn't infatuated by her, she's intrigued by it. The panel of her gaze, her power, one that we've seen so many times in the series, being nullified by Umehara's unresponsiveness, who is shown staring at his true love, showed a weakness in Tomie that we don't see often. Aside from Tanimura in revenge and the ugly man in Little Finger, we rarely see Tomie fail to capture her prey. The fact that that intrigues her really emphasizes the idea that this has become a game for Tomie. It asks, what are the lengths that she can go to to tempt these people? Umehara was uninterested until Tomie becomes his dead girlfriend. And it's only then that Umehara protects Tomie and becomes one of the innocent victims of her power. Gathering and revenge were great showings of Tomie the monster. It proved that her evil doesn't discriminate. When she'd heard that his girlfriend had died, she quickly brushes it off, instead reveling in the fact that she is alive and that she has problems. It was so cruel. Over the course of this story, he is repeatedly shown dreaming about his girlfriend. But in the end, Tomie has even corrupted and perverted his memory. He doesn't dream about Naoko anymore. He's with her now. Umehara found the love of his life again in the cruelest way imaginable. This is Tomie's true power. Tomie's ego and self-adoration that was exhibited in the painter and photograph and in similar stories mixed in with her inherent selfishness spawned a sort of Tomie war. Because her demise is the same in each story and with each part of her body being able to spawn a new Tomie, when the series reaches its later stages and all the clones begin to fight each other, it's here that we see what Kawakami has truly become. What Tomie has evolved into, a cancer. When the story reaches its third volume, she truly becomes unhinged. She lives for the endless chaos that she causes. It becomes like a challenge to see the different types of people that she can manipulate into killing her into creating new versions of her. In The Babysitter, a story that sees Tomie as a baby driving her babysitter crazy with her incessant demands to the point where the babysitter tries to kill her and Tomie calls her blood pretty and lovely and not to her ego as she revels in destruction. The different Tomie's begin to battle against one another to see which one can come out on top, which one can be the singular Tomie, until she will inevitably realize that there can't be one. It's a manifestation of her selfishness and her self-image that has only swelled over time. There's only one that can be the prettiest. I think Tomie and Boy is the perfect and probably most disturbing story to show precisely how Tomie is a victim turned true villain, turned monster. One that connects the abuse that she suffered and that she now inflicts on certain individuals, highlighting the innocent ones. In Boy, a kid, Satoru, his age is never mentioned, but he looks like he could be 10 years old at the most to me. Satoru comes across one of Tomie's bodies floating by the beach, who then grabs at his ankle. Tomie attracts the boy by playing with him and later seduces him with kisses. Tomie begins to assume the role of the boy's mother and begins to fill his mind with ideas about the man that he will one day become. Tomie in this story also looks older than before and since the boy was giving Tomie his mother's clothes, she began to truly look like a mother. As Satoru's parents stopped him from visiting Tomie because he began acting out as a result of her power, she took on another man during this time. Satoru then escapes and finds the two and later kills the man involved. Tomie returns to get the kid, but then seduces Satoru's father and the two run off together. Satoru would later become a multiple-time felon and die by lethal injection. From Diane Lynn Miller's paper on the abused-abuser hypothesis, this theory, also known as the intergenerational transmission of violence, seeks to explain the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and sexual offending in adolescence. It is the idea that one's victimization experiences are casually related to being an abuser. Studies have noted rates of prior sexual abuse in the lives of adolescent female sexual perpetrators, ranging from 38% to 100%, as shown in the data here. While there has been both criticism and support about this theory, and there are much more nuances than just that, it does tell us that abuse can be and sometimes is cyclical. Connecting that to Tomie, to me, boy was the end of her arc. It was a perfect circle. Satoru was her most innocent victim yet, a little boy, and it's tragically fitting in the sense that she began in Satoru's place back when Mr. Takagi was praying on a high school-aged Tomie. Thinking back to Mie's quote that all of her future victims were present in the initial murder, she was too, and she essentially became her own. Tomie evolved into a self-absorbed, corrupted monster. Boy, to me, was her final stamp in becoming evil incarnate. It's this story where I saw another true horror of Tomie, and how connected it is to her inception. This is the duality of Tomie. It's important to note that Tomie is not a sympathetic character by any means, but she is still a product of a society that did not protect her. The girls, her friend that envied her and later blamed her, and the boys and the men that cut her up, the adult teacher that groomed his high school-aged student, they are the reasons for Tomie's rage. These are two facts that coexist in this story. To close, I wanted to mention how stunning the artwork was by Ito. Some of these environments, backgrounds, and characters were truly horrifying and gruesome. The one that I won't forget anytime soon is the one that I showed in the beginning, the monster, the result of the doctor's experiments, which captures the essence of Tomie as a monster quite well. As stated time and time again, it represents Tomie as a cancer, as the many different forms of her emerge becoming this sort of worm. The biggest and most consistent idea in that monster is how they all retain Tomie's intoxicating beauty. Her powerful, striking eyes, her mole and her long black hair, they dominate the monster's appearance, kind of how it overwhelms our world. As stated, this was my first real glimpse into the world of horror, and reading Tomie and seeing such well-crafted stories really made me appreciate the genre a lot more. The idea of this perspective of such an intelligent and monstrous individual attacks some of the most vulnerable parts of humanity was so well done by Junji Ito. And I really do look forward to eventually reading some more of his work.