On Uzumaki
Uzumaki is a story about a town affected by the natural phenomena of the spiral. While utilizing the manipulation of natural phenomena as a horror technique, the core of it's narrative is gradually revealed to be more cosmic, and overwhelming as the story concludes.
Beginning with the dispersal of Shuichi’s father's ashes; the town becomes afflicted by the constant torture of spiral symbolism. Shuichi's father's initial obsession with spirals began it all, and it is a theme I noticed in Ito's work. A character will often become unusually obsessed with something until it kills them. This often leads to a series of self-mutilation that can only end in the painful, and ominous character’s death. This then spreads to their loved ones, as it did to Shuichi's mother, and produces a great paranoia. This paranoia also leads to death for those afflicted as it's the only way to escape horrors of the body. In a grander analysis, Ito uses this to create scenarios of mass hysteria. Along with these themes, I found that scapegoating was a minor theme often used in Uzumaki. Because of the internal torment that the character's experience, such as the lead character Kirie, other characters are quick to turn on one another. Azami is another case where there was a centralized villainization of one character, she was seen as a source of people's problems, an outlet for their anger. Again, this all contributes to the eventual breakdown of the society that Ito is often depicting.
As previously mentioned, the story shifts in the last ~5 chapters from an obsessive compulsive tale about the breakdown of a town to a rather melancholic, Lovecraftian horror of overwhelming proportions. The source of the town's obsession about spirals is revealed to be an eternal loop that has happened before, and it will continue to happen. Found underground; a mass of twisted bodies and canyon-like structures form a sort of hellscape that Kirie and Shuichi stumble upon under the center of the town. Unable to comprehend the magnitude of what they are seeing, Kirie and Shuichi decide to submit to the spiral, only to continue the pattern. The ending of Uzumaki brought upon an atmosphere of grief and an acceptance of eternity.
On Tomie
Tomie was Ito's debut manga about a girl who comes back to haunt her killers that covered up her death. Told through a series of short stories, we are first introduced to Tomie as a young high school girl that is attracted to her teacher. After being rejected by him during a field trip, she is pushed off a cliff's edge. Her body tumbles to the bottom. Thinking she is dead, her classmates panic, and with the guidance of her teacher; decide to cut up Tomie's body and dispose of her in 30-some different ways. When they begin cutting, she is still alive, however.
Throughout the manga, Tomie is eternally reborn every time she is killed. She is so beautiful that eventually her admirers are compelled by a deep obsession to kill her by desecrating her body and disposing of the remains. She regenerates and clones herself from her remains; producing many Tomies. Tomie is basically cursed to live how she died. I find that I think about Tomie on a dark road while driving at night. It evokes a feeling like that, true dread and mystery.
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