Uzumaki, Vol. 2 (2nd Edition)

First of all, if you haven't read Uzumaki Vol. 1, then run out and pick it up first before reading about Vol. 2.In Vol. 2, Spiral Into Horror, we see the further infestation of the little seaside town of Kurozu-cho. Stranger and stranger things begin to happen, proving to Kirie Goshima that her boyfriend Shuichi Saito is right about the town; it is infected with spirals.With the chapters being a little more separated in this second volume, we have some very distinct adventures to wade through. First is a boy named Mitsuru who likes to "pop up" unexpectedly, earning him the nickname of Jack-In-The-Box. He develops a crush on Kirie, and goes out of his way to prove his love for her...and directly into the way of an oncoming car. He must really care for her, for even death cannot stop him from popping up to surprise Kirie.In "The Snail" (my favorite story) a terminally slow boy comes to school only when it rains, and proves that if you are too slow, the spiral will catch up to you."The Black Lighthouse" tells of the sudden re-occurrence of light issuing forth from the previously abandoned lighthouse, but this is no ordinary light. Brighter and burning hot, it blazes out from the lighthouse in a twisted spiral of intense illumination."The Mosquitoes" and "The Umbilical Cord" do pretty much flow together. When Kirie is hospitalized after her incident at the lighthouse, she discovers the hypnotic effects of the lazily swirling mosquitoes that are infesting the town, and the odd behavior of the pregnant women who emulate them, including her cousin Keiko. When the babies are born, odd mushrooms and a strange doctor come into play, along with some of Junji Ito's more graphic illustrations.The last piece, "The Storm", tells of a hurricane that sweeps over Kurozu-cho...and then sticks around for awhile. This chapter was particularly creepy in illustrating the extent to which this storm stretches itself in its search for none other than Kirie herself. Very weird.Also mentionable is a funny "Afterward" depicting Ito's search for the secret of the spiral.A great, and definitely more graphic, sequel to Vol. 1, Spiral Into Horror is a fast and absorbing read for even those who do not normally delve into Japanese Animation or graphic novels. Enjoy!

I saw Uzumaki Vol. 1 and 2 in a comic shop here in Perth, Australia, and grabbed them right away. I had read Junji Ito's Tomie Vol. 1 and 2 just weeks before, and I knew I could expect to feel the same spine-tingling thrill from reading this new collection of disturbingly weird and eerie images from Ito's twisted imagination.Uzumaki is a collection of tales about a small coastal town haunted not by a ghost or a demon but by a shape - one of the most common and natural of shapes, the spiral. The mere idea of a shape exerting its deadly influence on the innocent folks of a small town is positively Lovecraftian in scope, and Ito does not disappoint.Vol. 1 opens with the tale of a man who collects anything spiral-shaped and then spends hours staring at them, becoming increasingly unhinged as the tale unfolds. Next, in the most disturbing story in Vol. 1, a woman with an acute phobia of anything spiral-shaped shaves her head and snips off her finger-tips in an effort to get rid of all traces of spirals on her body. The panic on her son's face when he realises that an anatomy chart in her doctor's office displays the spiral-shaped inner ear sucked me right into Ito's tale of fear, dread, paranoia and mounting hysteria. The other stories in Vol. 1 are interesting enough to read, i.e. competent but do not quite reach the heights of the first two stories.Vol. 2 ups the ante by presenting even more disturbing tales. The first story, appropriately entitled "Jack in the Box", has some of the most gruesome images I've ever seen in any medium, involving the disintegrating corpse of a dead boy intent on seeking vengeance from a girl who rejected him while he was still alive. And even if you are tired of vampire stories, "Mosquitoes" and "The Umbilical Cord" will still manage to give you a couple of sleepless nights, make you look at pregnant women and babies differently, and possibly give you a life-long phobia of maternity wards. Ito manages to give the old vampire angle a very frightening twist by linking pregnant women to mosquitoes - biologists would know what I'm talking about.For any horror fans, I cannot recommend Uzumaki Vol. 2 enough. I hope Vol. 3 comes out soon, I cannot wait to find out what happens to Kirie, the pretty young heroine of the series, and her boyfriend, when the mother of all spirals - a hurricane - strikes their small town.

If you even remotely enjoyed the first book in this series, then it is imperative that you continue right along with this second book. More of the same strange story and great artwork and a must own for horror fans.

No pun intended. This book is twisted. Given to me as a belated birthday gift, I went in not knowing what to expect. A week later, I'd ordered vloume 1 and, as of this writing, await its arrival. Horror fans could do worse than read this book.

In my opinion, Uzumaki has to be one of the most disturbing visual remedies I've used to quench the utter state of boredom I sometimes find myself immersed within. Its ocular metaphors, coupling the ingenuity of Junji Ito's mind with believably sculpted pictorials depicting horror after sometimes nameless horror, are something unique in the field of terror. The concept (taken from the back of the book because of its wonderful description): Kurozu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. But the spirit which haunts it does not have a name or a body, only a shape: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic shape of the world. It possessed the father of teenage Kirie's withdrawn boyfriend, causing him to remake himself in its image before he died. It grows in ferns, in seashells, in curls of hair, in the crooked folds of the human brain.... As more people are caught in the pattern, over the town of Kurozu-cho hangs the spiral of cremated corpses; because even in death, there is no escape. In this installment:In Chapter 7 through 12, more issues are fleshed out, leading us away from the strange occurances at Dragonfly Pond and our two mainstay characters, using them somewhat but still dancing in other venues of thought. Briefly, these are:In Chapter 7, Jack-in-the-box, Kirie catches the eye of a seventh-grader named Mitsuru Yamaguchi, a boy they simply call Jack-in-the-box because of his habit of surprising people by springing out at them from anywhere he can conceal himself. He decides that he must have her because it will surprise people to see him with such an intoxicating vision, constantly dogging her every step as he tries to obtain her. This, of course, leads to an ill-fated accident that Kirie blames herself for, one that invites the horror of the spiral into a cryptically grave-unveiling manner. It also shows us the impact the recent events have been having on the town, with the introduction of burial once again taking place, something that people have deemed necessary after the black-spiral clouds that come from cremating a resident of the town anywhere, not just in the town itself. In Chapter 8, The Snail, (one of my favorites in the series thusfar) it begins to rain, a signal that the slowest boy in class, Katayama, will be coming to school. In fact, it is the only time he comes to school, and he even does this in the most tardy of fashions. Because of the speed he operates at, he is constantly taunted by one of his peers, Tsumura, who actually strips him down after gym class one day and drags him out in the hall. That's when they notice it, the spiracle impression looming upon his back, one that grows and grows as the days progress. Soon its apparent that there is a change transpiring in Katayama, one that causes him to slink across the ground and elevates the impression upon his back. In this, he isn't alone, either. In Chapter Nine, The Black Lighthouse, an abandoned old lighthouse begins emitting a strangely spiraled ray fr