 Junji Ito is fascinated by the many horrors of everyday life, whether it's mundane ideas, objects, animals, or even the shapes that we encounter in our everyday life. So in one of his most popular works, Uzumaki, he explores the horror of a shape that is so common, spirals. I had no ill will about spirals that exist in our everyday life, but the way Ito uses this shape to convey a sense of unending danger, claustrophobia, and in viewing the way humanity reacts to these things, you begin to understand and unravel the many horrors in this story. In addition to all of the horrors explicitly shown, I do believe that the horror of Uzumaki is in the unknown. It's not in the why or in the how, but rather in theorizing these answers. To me, the horror is in the infinite possibilities. Throughout Uzumaki, characters tend to lose themselves to the spiral. What stands out immediately from the first chapter is that they lose themselves when they succumb to their greatest desires or fears. Obsession or infatuation in this story are themes that persist throughout. In the very first chapter of the story, Shuichi's father becomes obsessed with the spiral and begins to search for it everywhere, to the point where he needs to become the spiral, and ultimately does, in the most grotesque fashion. Shuichi's mother in the second chapter does the opposite. After her husband's love of spirals, she fears his fate, and again, she searches for spirals everywhere, this time to destroy them. And slowly she loses her hair, her fingers, and even her own ears. Losing them is a passive word. She actively destroys her own fingers, her hair, her ears, her body, out of fear of becoming the spiral, which she was tormented by until her death. In the third chapter, the Scar, Azami, who has become obsessed with being seen as attractive by men, is repeatedly declined by Shuichi. Her desperation over being seen as desirable causes a spiral to form in her forehead. The more desperate she becomes, the more the spiral controls her. It begins by eating at her face, swallowing her brain, and finally, when the boy she's with feels betrayed, he attempts to hit her, and he, along with Azami, are both absorbed into the spiral. Ito's design of Azami's face, caved in by the spiral, is one of the most disturbing and jarring examples of his prominence when it comes to body horror. Ito's masterful art throughout the story is so paramount in creating these horrific atmospheres and the feelings that surround them. Over the course of these stories, as his characters become more and more consumed by this shape, their physical form tends to worsen. Ito's art heightens these reactions to extreme degrees, making his characters more and more unsettling as they fall deeper and deeper. As they decay morally, their shape follows. Shuichi's father's face at the beginning of the story is a regular face, but as he delves into his fixation, his face, and more specifically his eyes, change. The close-ups to his eyes become so disturbing, highlighting said change. The way Ito draws his character's eyes, to me, are some of his most consistent and versatile work. Through his character's eyes, he depicts so many different emotions so well, from seductive to concerned and nervous, to finally portraying the downright loss of sanity that all of these characters eventually face. To make matters worse, some of these emotions are already branded on these characters' faces from the very first chapter, and it only heightens this story's sense of impending doom. His characters often feel and look lifeless, but paradoxically, fear is the one feeling that Ito depicts on all of his characters so viscerally. It's like his characters already know that something bad is lurking, but that doesn't change the horrors that they will eventually face. Another horror that permeates this story is the fear of being othered, of being dehumanized. It can also be tied to a fear of nature, as it directly relates to the humans that become snails, starting in chapter 8, as the slow student Katayama is slowly transformed into a snail in school. Their teacher, his parents, and even the school itself are all able to rather quickly disconnect Katayama from his humanity, as they stick the former student in a pen and repeatedly call his form inhuman, so disgusted by it that they won't even give him water. When Katayama breeds with the other male snail, Tsumura, Katayama's bully, the teacher crushes the snail's eggs, citing that this act is so impure, so wrong that they mustn't breed. The text views this immediate alienation and dehumanization of those who are once human as a moral and ethical fault, because in Uzumaki as a whole and in this chapter in particular, those who are morally corrupt often end up becoming victims of said spiral, much faster than others, and we see this with Yokota and Tsumura. Further, we see this idea of alienation happen once more when food in the village becomes sparse, and the citizens begin eating snail people. They think of the snail people not as people, but as escargot, as the gang mentions. In chapter 17, Takemoto's group travels with Okamoto, a snail person, but they drag him on a leash, like a dog, and they state that he is their emergency food supply. Members of his own group's mouths water as they try new ways to eat snail people, as if they are a rare delicacy, and later on, Takemoto himself begins to have an almost sexual like fantasy over eating a snail person raw, so much so that he becomes a spiral. Once again, these all connect back to this obsession, this moral decay and loss of humanity. As the story unfolds, the people of Kurozucho begin to corrode themselves, fear has made people greedy. They become more and more disconnected from their humanity. The whirlwinds are destroying people's homes, and yet others still won't share their homes to these people. Another group begins stealing food from relief agencies and rescue teams. Those who can find refuge in row houses are rowdy, upset, and angry. They are selfish when new people want to find refuge, and ultimately they become spirals themselves. When those who want to try and find a place to stay, try and force their way into the row houses, it results in everyone becoming part of the spiral. The horror of possibly becoming part of the spiral ensures that they will become part of it. Attempting to keep people out as well as forcing their way in results in packed houses, causing their bodies to become tied together in knots and able to be separated. And while this is happening, those on the outside continue to eat snail people. Even Kirie is pressured to eat the meat of a snail person. Perhaps her little brother Mitsuho becoming a snail person the day after is a consequence of her choice. As the town's people are transforming into snails, there are endless whirlpools, smoke in the sky that spirals, a spiraling pond, and people who can now create whirlwinds by the sound of their voice. The common element here is, once again, nature, eco-horror, as Christy Tidewell calls it. Author Jeff Ward noted in his book, The spiral is a powerful example of how nature tends to repeat the use of a successful design over and over again on every level of its creative handiwork. He suggests that this design is the most universal of all. The spiral in this story is nature. When people get turned into snails, this could be seen as nature reverting the people back to their true selves. Absorbing people into the spiral is a return home. And as the spiral infects every inch of their village, this is nature reclaiming its home. As Kideye and Shuichi finally try to escape their town, the trees and the greenery in the foreground and background of these panels demonstrate that even the flora have been reverted, and they continue to spiral in sync with the very steps that these humans take. Ultimately, our main characters can't escape, as the town's geography has become a spiral. And in their return, they mention the row houses were built a long, long time ago. And now that they're rebuilt, they fit perfectly into the spiral. Time itself within the spiral does not operate regularly. It moves so much faster. There is no escape. The spiral is claustrophobic, and Ito uses its shape to create a cluttered feeling. Whether it's umbilical cords, hair, mosquitoes, or houses, there are spirals everywhere. There is no escaping the shape in the story. And as the story progresses, that feeling is only heightened. Whether it's being stuck in a snail's shell, or being confined to these row houses that are filled to the brim with people, it's the way Ito designed the spiraling row houses with narrow, tight paths that shrink after each step. And the paths themselves become sealed shut with rotting spiral people, illustrated by Chie's inability to escape in Chapter 18. The story started off in hospitals and in schools, and as the story progressed, the citizens are slowly confined to this one area of the town. Look at the way they become part of the spiral, by being knotted up together. Imagining that feeling of being tied together with another individual without ever being separated is terrifying. The way this story unfolds, it's as if there is never any time to breathe, and in the characters' cases, physically, as they rot and die out being thrown to the alleyways of the row houses. Even the story of the row houses themselves, the houses of the past, and the village of the past, the reason there is no record of the row houses, of the spirals, is because these stories have nowhere to go, and so they die off, because no one is there to tell the next generation of people about the spiral. Any way you break it down, there is no freedom in the story, and that's terrifying. The narrative itself of Uzumaki begins to reflect the trials these characters are facing. After, after chapter, story, after story, there are inexplicable spirals that torment this town, and there is nothing these characters can do about it. The story itself becomes a spiral, and you begin to wonder how far does this horror extend? Why can't these characters simply pack up and leave, much like Shuichi demands in nearly every chapter? And for starters, these are individuals who still want to save their town, and their home, their community. Shuichi loves Kirie, and so he will stay with her. But I think this scarier possibility is that this spiral has already affected their mind, from the very first chapter, that maybe from the beginning they could never escape this town because it was already on a loop. Or that the spirals in the air, in the clouds, in the smoke, have already affected their minds, hindering their ability to truly leave. Spirals are often linked to hypnotization, and maybe those spirals in the cloud are a giant hypnotic effect, forcing them to stay. The final chapter only further emphasizes the utter insanity of the spiral, with the scale of the spiral city. Common conventions of cosmic horror are found in Uzumaki's ending. An important aspect of cosmic horror is less about what is causing the cosmic phenomenon, but rather the scale on which it takes place. Spirals that are so large, that are so vast, that demonstrate the futility of human existence, as stated by Masterclass. When Kirie and Shuichi reach the city, they begin to understand that their town, their story, this story, is simply a cog in a spiraling machine. A cog in the story of the spiral city. When Kirie sees her parents and all of these people turning into ruins, Shuichi too begins to understand that this story has no beginning nor does it have an end, just like the shape that has haunted them. Their story isn't the first nor is it the last. This is the final horror. This feeling, this idea that they never had any control in the first place. That all of their struggles, their losses, their desires, were just a part of something that they cannot even comprehend, a part of something that is possibly still building itself, as Shuichi notes. To me, this was a fitting conclusion to the absurdity of this story, as their town wrapped up its spiral, where time lingers on right in the center of it. The only solace that is found at the end of this story is that, instead of fighting their destiny, Kirie and Shuichi chose to end it, intertwined forever. At least being together until they become ruins was something that they were able to choose. Uzumaki is so weird and yet so so good.