Uzumaki was my first manga. Well, not my first manga per se, but my first long-form one - I had previously read Junji Ito's short story Enigma of Amigara Fault because of all the memes I'd seen online about it and quite enjoyed it, so upon seeing Uzumaki at a bookstore and recognising it as the other heavily memed Ito work, I decided to take it home on a complete whim. My only expectation, and frankly knowledge of the work, was that it was a scary story about spirals. For me, spending actual money on this thing from a medium that I had otherwise never touched was a huge gamble... and I can confidently say that was one of the best gambles I've ever taken.

Uzumaki is an at-first loosely related set of short stories set in a town suffering from various spiral-based afflictions, that transitions into a more serialised tale about the mystery behind the curse of the spirals. While its subtitle quite literally states the book is a "Spiral Into Horror" (and it certainly isn't lying there - Ito's ability to draw unthinkable horrors is unmatched) I'd say Uzumaki is more absurdist fiction more than anything, with the book not afraid to play into the ridiculousness of the scenarios conjured up. A hair battle, jack-in-the-box people, talking babies - at times, it reads like a bizarre dark comedy, which I say as a glowing endorsement that helps set it apart from other horror.

I'm very happy I chose this as my introduction to the medium of manga. While horror and absurdism aren't everyone's cup of tea, if you enjoy either of them this is an absolute must-read and an incredible starting point (although it comes with the danger of putting your standards too high!). Nothing I've read since has had me quite as caught up in its world as Uzumaki, with the art alone able to consistently capture a sense of unease in the town as Ito's painstakingly detailed visuals work to incorporate the spiral motif into even the most subtle of spots. Even if you're unfamiliar with the work, you've probably seen the frame of the girl with a huge spiral cavern on her face, one eyeball sitting inside it; that's just scratching the surface of the uniquely iconic imagery you can find plenty of in the pages of this book.

The best part of this series is that even though the earlier chapters are sort of disjointed (my best guess is Ito intended the series to be an anthology ala his Tomie works at first), not one ends up feeling unnecessary or out of place, and not a single chapter is boring. There's a general sense of escalation as the spiral incidents become more and more grand until we reach the later stretch of chapters that tell one ongoing story instead - a literal narrative spiral. Included in the compiled version is a bonus chapter jettisoned from the canon of the rest, which is also just as entertaining but presumably was ousted as its specific tier of scale would have locked the series into being an anthology rather than the story Ito wanted to tell. The only part of this series I didn't like was the ending - while it's usually a lot more interesting to leave horrors unexplained, it specifically reaches a point where it jangles the keys to an explanation before quite literally saying "I can't go on" and ending somewhat abruptly. It's not to a degree where it ruins the story, and there's still a satisfaction to be found in the ending, although it does feel like there's an extra chapter or so's worth of context missing.

I've read a decent bit of manga in the time following, including some of Junji Ito's other works, but I haven't read anything like Uzumaki since. Its unique brand of sometimes funny, consistently absurd horror has left an imprint on me. To this day, I'm yearning for something that gives me the same experience as my first read of it, although I should just be thankful this masterpiece is the thing that got me to stop being so stubborn about manga.

Alternatively, I'm just yearning for the spiral.