The power of comics as an element to bring feelings, whether love, hate and terror, in addition to horrifying using supernatural elements is something that few writers manage to accomplish. It takes a rhythm of execution to tell a story, in addition to creating repulsion something difficult to extract through static images.
Looking skeptically, it's just a drawing on a page, which doesn't bring that sense of fear or terror that aficionados of the genre tend to savor in books or on screen. And if this isn't done right, certain chase or scream scenes tend to look comical. Certainly, a compelling story about the effects of war on a civilian population can be terrifying, but only because it is humanity that is the monster and not a creature of our imagination. There seems to be little room for the supernatural to frighten us on a two-dimensional, immobile page.
But this is different when it comes to Uzumaki in Junji Ito, who has an understanding of terror like no other. His work is mind-blowing and leads the reader to see that the manga page may suddenly come unstuck and attack him at some point. Ito goes beyond other masters of the genre, making the reader experience the expansion of the limits of what the medium is capable of.
Junji Ito, for those who don't know him, is considered a master of Japanese horror. He created several works that were praised for their depiction of horror. But as inventive as their stories are and as horrible as they seem, if they had been taken into a film, they might not have the same impact. They are like Stephen King's works, which are virtually impossible to translate on movie or streaming screens.
Uzumaki, in Japanese, means “spiral”, hence the useful English subtitle of the book: Spiral into Horror, and throughout these three volumes the reader discovers a city that is becoming possessed by the idea of the spiral. The spiral theme leaves its mark on every chapter and in many inventive and frightening ways. In one case, a girl's hair takes on a spiraling, hypnotic life of its own. In another, a boy creates a spiral shell on his back and gradually becomes a snail. A scar pierces a girl's mind. Another girl sees herself as the love interest of a typhoon and so on.
The manga begins as a collection of interrelated short stories, each exploring yet another aspect of the city's strange connection with spirals, but gradually takes the form of a longer, more interconnected narrative. There's not much in the way of character development because, other than the protagonist and her boyfriend, who desperately want to get out of Dodge, most characters don't last much longer than their intro chapter. There are many deaths in Uzumaki and so the story soon becomes the question of how this couple will survive the increasingly manic terror that is being visited in their city.
Like all horror stories, the criticism is more than explicit in its pages, even for Ito projecting the discreet sufferings of his own childhood.
Uzumaki stands out as something that can be worth your time by continually reminding you of moments or ideas from personal stories that were impressively composed in your life or by someone you know.
EN 
PT_BR 
