Tomie by Junji Ito

 

(hb; 1987-2001 manga series, collected into the above-shown 2016 omnibus edition)

 

From the back cover

“Tomie is the girl you wish you could forget. She’s the one you shouldn’t have touched, shouldn’t have smiled at, shouldn’t have made mad. She’s oh so lovely—but you just might love her to death.”

 

Review

Ito’s first mega-successful manga series about a seemingly immortal and invincible girl you can’t kill is an unsettling, bold and often horrific work, about a bedazzling girl who seems nice for two seconds before her selfish demon side begins ruining her victims—usually anybody within her gaze and memory. While the structure of these episodic, expanding tales are essentially the same, it’s fun and interesting to see Ito’s early, emerging style and structuring (which lent itself to later, greater works) as well as the playful creativity of the myriad of ways that Tomie gets at her victims, often through initially innocuous ways. And of course the artwork is great.

Tomie has inspired nine live-action films (starting with Tomie, 1998), at least one Japanese series and scores of other directly linked multimedia/crossover works. Worth checking out, this.

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

 

(hb; 1998-1999, 2013: manga omnibus)

 

From the back cover

“Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Suichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: Uzumaki, the spiral—a hypnotic secret shape of the world. This bizarre masterpiece of horror manga is now available in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!”

 

Review

Narrated by Kirie Goshima, a schoolgirl who witnesses the escalating, increasingly grotesque spiral-centric horrors encapsulating her village (Kurouzu-cho), Uzumaki begins with her boyfriend Suichi Saito’s father becoming obsessed with circular patterns. After Saito’s father dies under seemingly near-impossible circumstances, the strangeness begins warping the emotional, psychic and physical fabric of reality for the people in the village bordering the mysterious Dragonfly Pond—and threatening to spread its cataclysmic ends to the world beyond it.

Each book-chapter of this omnibus is truly original in its tone, artistic and visual aspects, with a finish that, despite its holy-frak-that’s-wild elements and terrors, is masterfully personal.

Uzumaki is one of my favorite all-time manga, with its Lovecraftian though distinctive blend of crazy imagery, weirdness, ickiness, horror, romance, rural life and humor, a work that’s not for the faint of heart. Worth owning, this.

Remina by Junji Ito

 

(hb; 2005: manga)

From the back cover

“An unknown planet emerges from inside a wormhole, and its discoverer, Dr. Oguro, christens the body ‘Remina’ after his own daughter. His finding is met with great fanfare, and Remina herself rises to fame. However, the object picks up speed as it moves along its curious course, eliminating planets and stars one after another, until finally Earth itself faces extinction.  . . Is the girl Remina the true cause of the catastrophe?”

 

Review

This one-book for-mature-readers horrific science fiction manga series is excellent, gripping, its intense characters (and their actions) and storyline made more so by its stellar and disturbing artwork that highlights the escalating madness of humanity as they howl with madness, even as the devouring planet’s relentless, coming-ever-closer stare promises undeniable doom. Great read, worth owning.