Junji Ito is a Japanese horror manga artist known for his nightmarish and unsettling work. He has written and drawn over a hundred horror stories. He creates bizarre stories from seemingly ordinary things, making his work unique and, combined with his art style, instantly recognizable in the world of horror and manga. Ito often features themes of obsession, paranoia, and phobias. Let's dive into a few of the master of horror’s most popular and terrifying works! Discretion is advised, as it gets gory and includes unsettling topics.
Uzumaki
Junji Ito's most famous work is likely his spiraling horror story Uzumaki, which consists of three volumes. The story takes place in the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho, believed to be haunted. However, Ito adds a unique twist by making the haunting force not ghosts, but a spiral known as Uzumaki. The story follows high school student Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, as they discover that their hometown is cursed by the spiral shape. This curse begins to consume the people of the town, causing an obsession with spirals that takes over their bodies, minds, and souls. The spiral manifests in subtle ways, such as in seashells or whirlpools in the water, and in more terrifying ways, like spiral patterns on people’s bodies that lead to madness. As the story progresses, Kirie and Shuichi witness how the cursed spiral affects everyone in town, becoming the center of their lives. Kirie begins to feel the curse herself when her hair starts forming into a spiral, draining her energy and hypnotizing the townspeople. She tries to cut her hair, but it fights back, choking her every time she attempts it. After a storm destroys much of the town, only abandoned row houses remain, which the citizens are forced to expand. Kirie and Shuichi try to leave the town but fail. When they return to Kurouzu-cho, they find that time moves differently. Years have passed, and the curse has grown stronger. The row houses have expanded into one massive spiral pattern. Kirie and Shuichi search for her parents and eventually reach the center of
the giant spiral, which leads them down a pit. There, they find Kirie’s deceased parents and an ancient city consumed by spiral patterns.
Shuichi urges Kirie to stop the curse, but she admits she lacks the strength and chooses to stay with Shuichi. As they embrace, they, too, begin to warp into the shape of a spiral. Kirie realizes the curse is eternal and that these events will continue to recur no matter how many times Kurouzu-cho is rebuilt.
Tomie
Tomie is one of Junji Ito’s most recurring characters, appearing in three different series as the antagonist known for her immense beauty. Her story begins with her as a high school girl, liked by the boys and disliked by the girls. After a school trip, she is murdered, and her body is found in pieces. Despite being identified, Tomie mysteriously returns to school as if nothing happened.
Her teacher, Mr. Takagi, thinks she’s Tomie’s twin, but after she whispers something to him, he has a breakdown. Disturbed, her classmates, including her boyfriend Yamamoto, want nothing to do with her. Tomie later jumps off a bridge and disappears, leaving Reiko, her only friend, confused. A flashback reveals Yamamoto caught Tomie cheating with Mr. Takagi during the school trip, leading to a fight where she fell to her death. The class, except for Reiko, decided to dismember her body and dispose of it. Reiko threw Tomie’s heart into a river, but later, consumed by guilt, she and Yamamoto planned to go to the police. Their classmates, fearing exposure, tried to stop them, but Tomie suddenly reappeared, causing the others to flee. Reiko escapes, discovering Yamamoto has gone insane. Many classmates drop out or die by suicide, while Reiko moves to the seaside, haunted by the events. One day on the beach, she finds a heart that regenerates into a new Tomie.
Tomie is later revealed to be a creature who can regenerate, clone herself, and infect others, turning them into another version of her. Her beauty attracts people, but this obsession quickly turns into hatred.
The Hanging Balloons
This creepy story begins with the main character, Kazuko, trapped inside her house, unable to leave even for essentials. If she does, she will be killed by the creature whose voice tries to lure her outside. But how did it get to this point? A month earlier, Kazuko’s friend, Terumi Fujino, a popular celebrity, was found dead, hanging from a telephone pole. This sparked a wave of copycat suicides among her fans and rumors of Terumi’s ghost, appearing as a giant floating head in the sky. Soon after, a "ghost mania" spreads across the city as more giant head-shaped balloons, resembling people, begin to appear.
As Kazuko shares her theory with a friend—that the balloons lured Terumi to her death—balloons of Kazuko and her friend appear, with metal nooses attached. The two girls run and attempt to hide in an alleyway. As the balloons close in, a man shoots at Kazuko’s friend’s balloon, trying to destroy it. However, this causes the friend's own head to deflate like a balloon. The city is soon overrun by the deadly balloons, which are snatching people and hanging them in the sky. Kazuko’s family seeks refuge in their house, but as food runs out, her father ventures outside to gather supplies. After her father doesn’t return, her brother Yousuke goes out for food, but he also fails to return. Their mother then goes out to search for him. Kazuko becomes the last of her family left, trapped in the house, as she tries to resist the calls of her own balloon, waiting for her by her bedroom window. She is eventually tricked by her brother’s balloon, which claims he has brought food. When Kazuko opens the window, both her and her brother’s balloons are there, creepily waiting for their moment
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