(Hello, before we get into the review, just wanted to bring to your attention that I also have this review in video format on my channel for those that preffer that format. If you don't, feel free to skip this paragraph and jump into the review, for those that do, you can find it by clicking here, thank you)

Whenever someone thinks of "Horror Manga" it's very likely that the first name that pops on their head is Junji Ito. Ito is well known among anime, manga and even horror fans in general. Since 1987 that he has been giving us horrific nightmares, something that he still does even till this day. But among all of his works one stands out the most. 1998's "Uzumaki", a story about a city consumed by The Spiral. Uzumaki has since been adapted into a live-action movie, and more recently it's being adapted into a 4 episode anime mini-series. It seems that now, more than ever, is a good time to see what Junji Ito is all about.

In Uzumaki we follow Kirie and Shuichi, two citizens of Kurozu-cho, as they slowly see their town be more and more haunted by anything and everything spiral related. That's the gist of it, so lets address point one: Spirals are not scary, right? Well, Junji Ito rarely uses things that are scary by themselves, he generally grabs things that we take as granted and distorts them until they are frightening and it is just that that he does here. Part of the reason to read Uzumaki is to see and discover just how much he can do with just a pattern.

With 19 chapters, spread along 3 volumes, eventually released in that giant omnibus we all know, and having an extra chapter, Uzumaki isn't necessarily a huge manga, but it's still one of the longer works of Junji Ito, as he mostly focuses on writing one-shots and one-shot compilations, and sure, Uzumaki isn't the ONLY long work of Ito, but his non-one-shots are still the vast minority when compared to sheer size of his bibliography. Now, I'm bringing this up because it shows that he's a one-shot writer.

Ito's one-shots focus on having short, mysterious and unexplainable events happening to random people. It doesn't have big, deep stories, it doesn't have complex and interesting characters, it's all about the primal, raw feeling that it invokes on people who read it. Uzumaki is very much the same, with almost every chapter feeling like a self-contained one-shot, with the exception of the final couple chapters. And yes, there is a story being slowly told across all of them but it doesn't really go much further than "this town is being haunted by spirals". Sometimes there are two chapters in a row who might be connected, but for the most part, I could show you chapters in a random order and you probably would not notice it with the exception of maybe a line of dialogue.

And while we do follow the same character through all of the 20 chapters, it's not like I can say that she is a complex or interesting character, it still feels very much like any other Junji Ito character, a blank state that we can use to self-insert and explore the actual main character of the story, the horror. Kirie's boyfriend, Shuichi is the only character that has a bit more going for him, and that's mostly the fact he's the only one who seems to understand what the fuck is going on.

With that said, one does not read Ito's manga for complex stories, or characters, we read it for the fantastic and horrific pay-offs he delivers, and Uzumaki does deliver, having some of the most iconic of Ito's imagery. Each chapter is a wild and fun ride full of weird events. We start with pretty basic ideas, first chapter is about a man in love with anything that has a spiral pattern and the second chapter follows his wife, who has a deep fear of anything spiral related. These chapters are ideal to start with, since not only eases you in into the idea, it also shows you just how much this hypnotizing pattern exists in our lives. You'll come back out of these two chapters noticing it everywhere. The first chapter also has one of the best page turns in the entire series.

For those that may not be familiar with the term page-turn, it's a technique that is very used in horror and comedy manga, the idea is to build upon something that is revealed in the next page turn, this means that it can have some seconds (or even minutes, if you really don't want to change the page) to build up on your expectations and then subvert them. In horror, specially Junji Ito horror, it can be used to let you know that in the next page something horrible is gonna happen, but not tell you exactly what, so it's up to you decide if you're feeling brave enough to see what's on the other side. This is something that is present in pretty much every chapter of Uzumaki, and each page turn is fantastic. This is where the artstyle of Ito comes into play, his artstyle is hardly the most beautiful to look at, but it's perfect for a horror series, it's weirdly realistic and he is known to spend hours upon hours on some of these pages, making all of them mesmerizing and haunting, with so much detail that it won't look like something out of painting, but something disgustingly real. It calls upon a very visceral and raw feeling, and this is the strong point of Uzumaki, pages that will most definitely stay burned in your mind forever. Everything else is pretty much a slow build-up for those reveals.
Some of the chapters deal with some ridiculous ideas, some too ridiculous that just make it all too silly and feel more comedic than scary, but even those are enjoyable, and even those have visceral pages.

It's in it's final chapters that Uzumaki starts flowing more fluidly, as it develops it's conclusion. It's some of the best chapters in the whole manga and it's good to see it call back some events that had not been mentioned again. The ending, without spoiling, is not the most in-depth conclusion, but you should not expect that from Uzumaki. Junji Ito follows the mantra of Lovecraft, and his stories are not to be explained, the horror lies in the mysterious and the unknown, so it makes sense that story concludes by keeping most things a mystery, just giving us small details of "why" it could have happened.

Junji Ito does not use Uzumaki as a way to explore his weak points or to expand much on his strong ones. Ultimately, this is still a Ito manga 101, so if you're coming into Uzumaki expecting more, you probably will leave disappointed. If you're not a Junji Ito fan or don't like horror either, this is also not going to be the manga that's going to convert you. But if you know his works and you're a fan or if you know what to expect and that still sounds interesting to you, then you'll probably enjoy what this manga has in store. Uzumaki isn't a masterpiece, but what it does, it does it very well.