The source of our worst fears, the most dreadful horrors, is often said to be connected with something archaic and primal, something that has roots in the unknown, unfathomable depths of the creation. Legendary horror mangaka Junji Ito, whose influence on the genre deserves to be recognized as a new subgenre of ‘Junjian Horror’ by now, had tried to give shape to the intangible, inexplicable horrors through the banality of regular life, through the core of human existence—in his masterpiece, Uzumaki translated as ‘Spiral’. Championing Japan’s heritage of the macabre art of Ukiyo-E, Ito draws references to creature horror and body horror from ancient texts and adds his own twist to posit them in his narrative in a way that the unnerving imagery sends shivers down the readers’ spines—and Uzumaki is a beautiful example of that. The manga, consisting of twenty odd chapters, is one of the novel works of art in horror that can rival the best of Lovecraftian horrors, and otakus around the world were justifiably excited to learn that an anime adaptation of the manga has been produced with utmost adherence to the source.Â
So, here’s my attempt to make you guys familiar with the world of Uzumaki, Ito’s dark and vivid imagination, so that before diving into the first episode of the anime you have an idea of what to expect from the series itself.
Spoilers Ahead
A Morbid Obsession With the Spiral
Uzumaki is set in the fictional town of Kurouzu-Cho, nestled between the sea and a mountain. The town is a quiet, quaint settlement where life isn’t as busy as it is in the urban areas of the country. Two teenage high schoolers, Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, are the lead duo whose experiences and perspective guide viewers through the inexplicable, supernatural events that take place across the town.
Shuichi, who goes to school in a neighboring town, is convinced that Kurouzo-cho is cursed by the spiral pattern, and as he points the pattern out to Kirie, they observe the pattern to be everywhere, from small whirlwinds inside the drain water to rustling winds forming up dust-devils. Shuichi’s concerns about the spiral connection are heightened further as his father has become totally obsessed with spirals; to such an extent that he has built up a collection of spirals, neglecting everything else in his life in the process. Shuichi reveals to Kirie that he wishes to escape from the drudgeries of his hometown and asks her to join as well, but Kirie refuses to do so. Mr. Saito’s obsession turns morbid as he ends up killing himself by trying to shape his body into a spiral, and as he is cremated, the smoke turns into a spiral as well, before settling into the local dragonfly lake. Shuichi’s mother starts suffering from the trauma of her husband’s obsession with spirals, and as she starts going deranged, her efforts to root out spirals from her body result in her death as well. Once again, during cremation, her ashes fly as smoke spirals before settling into the Dragonfly Lake, and this pattern continues for anyone who passes away in the town. A devastated Shuichi, who has become an orphan, turns into a recluse in his misery, keeping in touch with the outside world only through his girlfriend, Kirie.
Spiral Horror Has Many Faces
The key hook in Uzumaki is the enigma of the spiral, which is present all around us in a number of natural ways, and the story tries to float the idea that it is a hypnotic pattern that ends up sucking everything into it, even human minds in this case. It goes beyond the turn of a spiral, creating a mesmerizing effect, and goes straight into the realm of eldritch horror, signifying a corruption of the psyche in a core stage. The many faces of the spiral horror are also connected with the varied virtues and vices of human psyche – as if a primeval instrument to test one’s mental fortitude. The deaths of Shuichi’s parents were just the tip of the horrors lying in the history of the town; as soon, diverse, strange, new horrific incidents caused by or related to the spiral start emerging across Kurouzu-Cho.Â
Azami Kurotani, one of Kirie’s friends, becomes obsessed with the idea of impressing Shuichi, and a crescent scar on her head turns into a spiral, which consumes her body within itself. Kirie’s father, a potter, finds his ceramic utensils showcasing spiral patterns as the mud he uses from Dragonfly Lake unleashes portions of the haunting spirits of Shuichi’s parents inside the kiln. Two teenage lovers, separated by their family feud, entangle themselves in a spiral—like snakes do during their mating process—and escape through the ocean. These bizarre occurrences take place everywhere, and Kirie soon finds herself in the grasp of a spiral as well, when her hair becomes sentient and braids itself into spiral forms to hypnotize the onlookers. One of Kirie’s batchmates, Sekino, turns into a rival with the same hair afflictions, and as her mind gives in to the manipulations of the spiral, she loses her life in a ghastly way.
An irritating, prankster boy, Mitsuru Yamaguchi, dies in a horrible car accident, and after his burial, his corpse temporarily turns into one of the jack-in-the-box toys, which he used to prank others with. Due to the eerie turn the cremation procedure has taken recently, the town resorts to burying the departed instead of cremating them. One of the creepiest, chilling horrors of spiral comes to surface when Katayama, one of Kirie’s classmates, slowly turns into a humanoid snail, and one of his bullies, Tsumura, turns into one as well—and the duo mate to lay snail eggs. Class teacher Mr. Yokota destroys the eggs to stop the abominations from taking birth, only to himself turn into one of the snail people.
The mysterious Black Lighthouse located in the coastal area of the town starts tormenting the residents with physical and psychological tortures, and as it draws many of its victims inside, they burn to death in flames. Kirie, who had gone inside the lighthouse to rescue his brother, Mitsuo, notices the fresnel lens to have been turned into a molten spiral structure, which emits a strong spiral wave of lights as a result. Kirie somehow manages to save her brother by rushing out in time, but the kid following them doesn’t turn out to be as lucky as he dies horribly in the flame after the spiral lens’ reflection burns him.
Spiral Childbirth and Vicious Progeny
An injured Kirie recuperates in the town’s hospital, where her pregnant cousin, Keiko, is admitted as well in the maternity ward. Kirie gets troubled by mosquitoes, who display spiral flight patterns as well, and as Shuichi meets her, he panics after seeing the pattern and leaves a mosquito repellent for her. Keiko and the rest of the pregnant mothers turn out to be showing a different facet of spiral affliction as they resort to bloodsucking to feed their unborn children and drill into other patients’ bodies at night to feed on them. Keiko nearly gets captured by them when Shuichi’s mosquito repellent comes in handy and wards off the maniacal women.
The children born of these manic, spiral-afflicted mothers grow a spore-like placenta that infests the hospital, and the medics start treating them as delicacies, much to Kirie’s horror. One of the chief medical personnel, Dr. Kawamoto, deduces that the ever-growing placenta implies that the new-borns want to return to their mother’s wombs, and he plants Keiko’s child back into her womb before sealing it. With absolute horror and derangement on display, Kirie escapes from the hospital before Keiko kills the doctor and starts draining blood from him.
Spiral catastrophe leads to collapse
The spiral continues to consume Kurouzu-Cho, and the afflictions that were decaying the town from inside now escalated to a catastrophe as a sentient cyclone hits the town. As Kirie’s family loses their house in the calamity, they are forced to shift to one of the ancient row houses, and they find out a strange spiral disease is affecting them all. A peeping toms of a neighbor becomes a conical monster after getting infected by the virus, and Kirie barely escapes from his clutches as he meets a gruesome end by getting impaled by a tree trunk. Kirie’s family leaves the row house and manages to get cured of the disease, but the trouble of the spiral continues to ravage the entire town.
Following the first cyclone, five more make landfall; all of them end up getting sucked within the Dragonfly Lake, and their cumulative impact totally collapses the town. The situation grows so severe that a mere shout by the townsfolk generates a twister, and using this, a bunch of brats who have been orphaned by the calamities wreak havoc upon the surviving populace of the town. As Chie Maruyama, one of the reporters from a neighboring town, arrives in Kurouzu-Cho, she gets rescued by Kirie and brought inside one of the row houses, which are the only safe places unaffected by the spiral turbulence. Shuichi, who has turned jaded and hopeless at this point, reveals that the spiral has turned the townsfolk mad and soon will devour the entire town as well. Outside aid keeps coming, to no avail as none of the trapped denizens, including the newcomers, are able to leave the town, and trying to escape results in getting trapped in the afflictions of spiral. Kirie’s father finds an ancient map of Kurouzu-Cho, which shows the town itself to have been a spiral eons ago.
As space inside the surviving row houses lessens with every new member joining, Kirie’s family, Chie, and Shuichi get thrown outside. They come across a bunch of gang members who are using their ability to hover within the twisters as a way to spread violence, and witness snail-people being used as food sources. As a struggle ensues between them, Kirie’s father gets lost after being flown away. The row house residents turn into entangled worm-like creatures, and Kirie, along with her surviving family, Shuichi and Chie, takes refuge under a broken shed. They are soon joined by a group of rescuers who have become trapped inside the town as well, and leaving her injured mother to allow her to rest, Kirie and co. venture out to find a way out of the town. To sustain themselves, they have no other option other than consuming one of the scorched snails, and the team decides to venture through the hills as the last resort. In the spiral of the hill, time becomes irrelevant, and within hours, Kirie and co. experience several years.
Kirie’s brother, Mitsuo, starts turning into one of the snail people, and the starved, spiral-afflicted manic rescuers decide to chase the others with the intention of killing and consuming Mitsuo. Kirie manages to lead her brother to safety as he is turned completely into a snail; he moves along the cliffs, while the team witnesses their pursuers turning into spiral constructs themselves.
What Was the Reality of the Spiral?
Kirie, Shuichi, and Chie make their way back to the town as Kirie becomes concerned about her parents and finds out the row houses have been extended by the survivors and have turned into spiral constructs themselves. Chie gets trapped and seemingly consumed by the town, and learning that her parents were last seen making ceramics near the Dragonfly Lake, Kirie rushes to the center of the spiral along with Shuichi—only to realize that the dried-up lake leads to an underground labyrinth. As the duo make their way inside, Shuichi takes a fall into the unfathomable depths of the labyrinth, and Kirie eventually reaches the bottom to witness a subterranean sentient city, filled with spiral constructs. The spiralled corpses of people fill the underground city, and Kirie finds her parents’ lifeless remains there as well—although, at the end, they didn’t turn into spirals but instead became ceramic structures.
According to Shuichi’s assessment, the underground city made its presence felt by turning its spiral to affect Kurouzu-Cho at regular intervals across history, and it remained unknown to the outside world as no one survived to share the truth in the first place. The unknown makers of the underground spiral city left the place eons ago, but their constructs continue to affect its surroundings, as they continue to do so at regular intervals until the end of time. An injured Shuichi is unable to leave and decides to finally make peace with his fate. Kirie embraces her lover, and as they remain trapped in the underground in a spiral – they can not stand against the inscrutable destiny, but at least they have each other when all things come to an end. A screw-like construct emerges to seal the labyrinth of Kurouzu-Cho, as the unknown face of horror awaits for the town to rebuild itself again, the cycle of spiral will continue ever after.
In the twentieth chapter, “Lost Chapter,” a connection with unknown cosmic influence is shown as galaxies with spiral appearance emit radio waves, which result in people of Kurouzu-Cho turning telepathic, murderous, and insane for a brief period of time. It connects with the Lovecraftian horror roots, as the dreads of the unknown cosmos are seemingly connected with the origin of the spiral curse of the town.
What Can Be Expected From The Anime?
As the first two trailers of the Uzumaki anime have revealed, the series appears to be an absolute perfect replication of the black and white manga panels, going to great lengths to highlight every brushstroke and hatching, which emphasizes the horrors of the spiral really well. The adaptation captures the spirit of Ito’s horror with impeccable accuracy by making his artwork come alive in an unexpected way—bordering an uncanny valley, but in a positive way. The four episodes of the series will probably chronicle the first ten chapters of the manga series, as putting all twenty within four episodes will be as entangled as the spiral-affected worm-like humans of Kurouzu-Cho.Â
