Uzumaki

Uzumaki
うずまき
Genre	Horror
Manga
Author	Junji Ito
Publisher	Shogakukan
Other publishers: Conrad Editora Viz Media
Serialized in	Big Comic Spirits Afternoon Pulp
Volumes	3

Uzumaki (うずまき, Uzumaki^? "Spiral") is a horror manga by Junji Ito, serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirits. The story concerns the people of a small Japanese town who become obsessed by the occurrences of natural and artificial spirals around them. The result of this obsession is a slow transformation into something other than human, leading to a gruesome, realistically-depicted death. The manga is published in English by Viz Communications. It was adapted to a feature film of the same name in 2000.

Plot

Volume 1

• The Spiral Obsession Part 1 - High school student Kirie Goshima finds out that her boyfriend Shuichi is worried about his father, who has begun a strange obsession about spirals. He collects anything featuring a spiral pattern, and eventually he stops going to work to stay at home and stare at his spiral collection. His obsession becomes so disturbing that he starts to use his own body to create spirals.
• The Spiral Obsession Part 2 - After he dies in a strange suicide, Shuichi's father's body is cremated, but during the funeral, the smoke from the cremation forms a spiral shape in the sky, consequently driving Shuichi's mother to insanity. She develops a phobia of spirals and starts to rid herself of everything in her body that looks like a spiral.
• The Scar - Kirie's class friend Azami asks Kirie if she can meet Shuichi. Although hesitant, Kirie agrees, but when they go to Shuichi's house something weird happens: Shuichi feels a sinister presence coming from Azami's forehead, and Azami reveals that she has a crescent-moon shaped scar which she believes has the power to make any boy fall in love with her. However, Shuichi suspects that the scar is causing terrible effects in Azami, and is proven right.
• The Firing Effect - For some reason, the bowls, pots and vases that Kirie's father, a potter, creates in his workshop are turning into hideous failures featuring spiral patterns and the faces of people who have recently died in the city of Kurozu.
• Twisted Souls - Kirie meets a former classmate who has recently been having a problem with his girlfriend's family. It seems that both families of the couple are in a constant and aggressive feud, and do not agree to let their kids date. Kirie decides to help her friend and his girl to escape from their parents, but the story ends in a grotesque way.
• Medusa - Kirie's hair begins to grow unusually, and when Kirie goes to cut it, the hair comes to life and refuses to be cut. It starts to control Kirie, forcing her to seek the attention of everybody in the town. The problem worsens when Kirie's classmate, Sekino, becomes jealous and decides that her hair should have the same gift.

Volume 2

• Jack-in-the-Box - Kirie is being stalked by a boy named Mitsuru, who likes to jump out and surprise people, which gained him the nickname Jack-in-the-Box. When Kirie refuses to be his girlfriend, Mitsuru decides to prove his love by trying to stop a speeding car. However, Mitsuru is killed and he is buried because the town is now afraid to cremate bodies. Kirie still has no peace, as she receives a strange message that Mitsuru will come back from his grave.
• Snail People - A classmate of Kirie's starts to behave strangely: He only goes to school when it is raining and he walks and talks in an oddly slow way. Also, he has a big and strange spiral-shaped scar in his back. It's only the beginning of a bizarre epidemic that makes people turn into giant, mutant snails.
• Dark Lighthouse - The lighthouse of Koruzu begins to switch on by itself mysteriously. Anyone who is caught by its light is blinded and caused to walk in circles. Some people of the town decide to go there to investigate, including Kirie's brother Mitsuo and his friends. Kirie goes to bring her brother and the others back from the building, but as she enters she faces the terrible truth about the lighthouse.
• Mosquitoes - Admitted to the hospital due to the burnings made by the lighthouse's light, Kirie discovers a body drained of blood on hospital grounds. Later, Kirie's pregnant cousin Keiko moves into her room in the hospital after suffering an attack from a swarm of mosquitoes. At first everything seems normal, but one night Kirie discovers that her cousin, as well other pregnant women, have a dark secret which is related to the mosquitoes.
• Umbilical Cord - The pregnant women finally give birth to adorable babies. To Kirie's relief they all look normal, but after a strange accident she discovers that she is mistaken, and that the babies are as dangerous as their mothers.
• Typhoon 1 - When a typhoon passes by Koruzu, Kirie is caught by the typhoon's eye and somehow, the typhoon falls in love with her and begins to stalk her everywhere, causing horrible damage. Shuichi then appears to protect Kirie.

Volume 3

Volume 3 contains the final 6 chapters, plus an extra chapter that forms an epilogue with a story connecting to Volume 1.

• Haunted Apartment - After the typhoon destroyed much of the city including Kirie's house, Kirie moves into a previously abandoned apartment provided by the town officer with her family. It happens that the apartment is an old shack in bad conditions. Her neighbors are a young man with the secret habit as a peeping tom named Wakabayashi, and a mysterious couple of mother and son. Everyone living in the apartment starts to catch a strange skin disease. The disease will only get worse and lead to a horrible outcome.
• Butterfly - Maruyama Chie, an anchor girl comes at the town with her co-workers in a van, only to be chased after by a typhoon. Only Chie survives the car crash and she travels into the town seeing ruins and dead bodies everywhere. Now the townpeople realize they can create twisters with nothing more than a sudden movement or a strong exhalation of air. It appears that the previously abandoned apartments around the town is the only sort of shelters not destroyed by twisters, so every apartment becomes crowded and tension amongst dwellers tightens. Some naughty kids group up to destroy the town for fun, creating twisters only by blowing wind.
• Chaos - The gangsters and some young men form a gang called 'Butterfly'. They destroy buildings for fun and rob food from rescue teams. Snail people begin to appear again after long unseen. The apartments become more and more crowded and people begin to quarrel with one another without proper causes. By helping Shuichi from a conflict with another man, Kirie's family is casted out from the apartment. As they wander to find a new place to shelter, they witness the Butterfly gang having snail people as a meal. They say snail people's meat is delicious and persuade Kirie to join their meal.
• Chaos Part 2 - Several groups of town-people try to escape from the town, but all end in failure. The apartments become overly occupied until they crash into pieces of wood. As food runs out, some begin to eat snail people's meat left over by the Butterfly gang. Shuichi eats it and tell Kirie to take some. Kirie finally finds Mitsuo, her brother who has lost along with her mother and father since the last twister, only to discover the horrible truth.
• Escape - Kirie's group make another attempt to escape for now Mitsuo's transforming to be a snail and other town-people are desperate for food. They seem to find no way out of the town and Mitsuo finally transforms. Kirie forces her now snail brother to flee away from the hungry townpeople.
• Labyrinth - Kirie's group finally comes out of the woods only to discover that they have returned to the town. They also discover that several years have passed while they were away, and the remaining townspeople have repaired and expanded all the old apartments, revealing that they connect together form a giant spiral-shaped labyrinth with the lake at its center. Shuichi theorises that the strange events have happened again and again through the ages, always ending with the rebuilding of the spiral apartments. After all is over, the apartments are slowly ruined and all traces vanish, and a new town is built. The reason why no-one knows of this is because all the people have vanished after the events.
• Ruin - Kirie, Shuichi and Chie follow the labyrinth to its center, but Chie is trapped by some of the now spiral-shaped people who live in the apartments, and Kirie and Shuichi must continue without her. When they reach the center, they discover that the lake has dried up has been replaced by a long spiral-shaped stairwell that goes deep into the earth. Without any other choice, they follow the stairs and discover a huge cave with a lot of gigantic, spiral-shaped towers and buildings, with a huge, glowing spiral-shaped stone in the center. They find all the corpses spiral-shaped inhabitants of the towns, who have begun to turn to stone, Kirie's parents included. Shuichi is wounded after an earlier attack, and is unable to leave the cave, and asks Kirie to leave him. Kirie refuses and decides to stay with him. As they hug each other, their arms become spirals that bind them together. The stairwell begins to close, thus imprisoning Kirie and Shuichi and ending the spiral curse for now, only to return later, when a new town is built around the lake.
• Lost chapter: Galaxies - Strange-looking radio galaxies are discovered in the night sky, which begin to have strange effects on the residents of the town. Judging by the length of Kirie's hair, this story takes place sometime before Medusa.