Uzumaki (Part Two)

"Didn't you hear the wind last night?  The voice of the storm was calling your name!" - Shuichi

We now return to the second half of the Uzumaki collection, from the gloriously perverse mind of Junji Ito.  Uzumaki (which means "Spiral") tells a tale of a sleepy seaside town in Japan called Kurouzu-cho which has become haunted by spirals.  Most of the first half of the collection concentrated on the effects of the spirals upon the narrator, a teenage girl called Kirie Goshima, and her boyfriend Shuichi Sato.  Shuichi managed to lose both his mother and father to the deleterious effects of the spiral and is now a depressed shut-in seemingly unconcerned about his fate now.  The effects of the spiral have started to spread though, first classmates began turning into snails and when we took a break for the end of part one, all the pregnant women in the local hospital (where Kirie was being treated for burns and bruises escaping the burning light of the spiral haunted lighthouse) had been drilling into other patients and drinking their blood.  We rejoin the storyline as the women are due to give birth and from this point on the effect of spirals on the town will escalate into a full blown, H.P Lovecraft style nightmare.  So let's twist again like we did last blog post, and conclude this look at Uzumaki. (Note:  This manga is unflipped so reads from right to left)

Chapter eleven begins with the birth of the babies whose mother's fed on human blood.  No one believed Kirie about what happened, putting it down to a bad dream.  Her cousin Keiko is the first to give birth.

Kirie: "So it's been born.  I wonder what it looks like.  A baby gorged with human blood."

The baby is normal and cute looking, and the other babies are born soon after.  Kirie is deemed well enough to be discharged and goes to tell Keiko.  She gets to meet her baby Makio, but notices his stomach is swollen as are the other babies tummies.  Her concern is brushed off, but then all the babys start screaming in unison and the sound freaks Kirie out and she runs and falls down some stairs and has to stay another week in hospital.

So cute, so.. bloated?

Dinner is served with some strange mushrooms.  Kirie says they taste like meat.  They become a regular feature of hospital meals but Kirie won't eat them.  Kirie wanders the hospital one day and passes the maternity ward.  The babies are talking to each other and say they miss being in the womb.  One baby says Doctor Kawamato can "put us back".  Then all of their tummies swell up and out burst spiral patterned mushrooms.

Kirie runs thinking she is just hearing and seeing things, but then she hears Keiko screaming.  She opens the door where she heard the noise from to be confronted with a room full of the weird mushrooms.  Doctor Kawamoto emerges from another room looking grim.  He says the mushrooms grew from where they dropped the placentas on the floor.  And the babies are growing mushroom placentas because they want to return to the womb.

She isn't dead either.

Demanding to know what he did with Keiko, Kirie bursts into the side room she is on and is greeted by the awful sight of Keiko with a swollen stomach where her baby has been stitched back inside her.  She craves blood and grabs Kawamoto and quickly drains him dry before coming after Keiko.  But she gets distracted by two people who wandered into the musroom room and atacks them.

Kirie: "I escaped from the hospital.  I've no idea what happened after that. I wasn't about to go back and find out."

Kirie and Shuichi sit together on the beach.  Kirie thanks Shuichi for saving her life.  Suddenly they hear a noise, like a moaning sound.  Shuichi yells that it's hurricane season and runs into town telling people to board up their windows, only to be dismissed as a "freak".

Later Kirie watched a TV news report which says their is an approaching hurricane and it's unusual as it has a small "eye".  The hurricane whooshes through town,  Kirie goes out in it to deliver Shuichi's lunch and she looks up and sees the eye of the hurricane, surrounded by spiral winds.  Later in bed she hears the wind calling her name.  Next day the TV news says the hurricane is hanging over the town in a most unusual way.

Stalked by a hurricane.

Kirie takes Shuichi his lunch again but bumps into him outside.  He yells at her saying her heard the wind call her name,  The hurricane starts smashing trees into buildings and Kirie gets trapped under some rubble.  A passing woman offers to help but gets sucked up by the hurricane.

Shuichi: "It mistook her for you!  Because you looked alike!"

The storm spits the woman out and she hits the ground quite dead.  Shuichi frees Kirie and they hide in an underpass while the winds call Kirie.  They climb down into a drain to escape but impossibly the storm follows.  It whisks both of them up and out of the sewer into the air.  Later they are both retrieved from Dragonfly pond with no clue how they ended up there.  The hurricane disappated after reaching the pond and the town is calm again for now.

The hurricane wrecked several houses and one of them was Kirie's.  They are assigned a new place to live but it is one of the run down row houses.  This one has a reputation for being haunted.  Kirie's mum protests but they are told this is all the free housing space they have.  Later Kirie asks her dad when he thinks the houses were built, he thinks maybe the nineteenth century.

Kirie's family's new home.

Kirie is soon introduced to one of their neighbours, a young man called Wakabayashi.  He tells them to ignore their neighbours on the other side as they are squatters.  At dinner Kirie's brother complains that next door is haunted, then her father finds spiral like warts on his feet.

Wakabayashi has drilled a hole in his wall so he can spy on Kirie.  That night Kirie hears a strange howling from next door.  Next day Wakabayashi tells Kirie their neighbours are an old woman and her sick son.  The son has a serious medical problem that makes him moan in pain.  Then a hooded figure, the mother comes shuffling out.  She falls and Kirie goes to help her up, noting horn-like growths on her hands.

Later that day Kirie hears someone crying out and realises it's the old woman.  She runs to see what is wrong and is told her son is dead.  His body is removed and the old woman taken to hospital to treat her skin disease. Wakabayashi asks Kirie what the son looks like, because he went and looked in his room and the floor was full of holes.  Kirie doesn't want to talk about it.

Egads, tentacle horror!

Back in the family home, as another hurricane moves in over the town she and her family discover spiral warts all over their hand and feet and worry they caught it off the old woman.  Trapped in the house by the hurricane, suddenly a mass of horn-like tentacles burst through the wall.  It turns out to be Wakabayashi who has become a mass of writhing growths all over his body.  He starts to go after Kirie but falls down dead.  Later the hurricane disappates over Dragonfly Pond and Kirie's family's warts all disappear.

The next chapter begins with a team of reporters driving to the town.  After the onslaught of hurricanes all contact has been lost with the place.  Suddenly a twister forms behind them and causes the car to crash as they reach the town.  Only the female reporter survives, she crawls from the wreckage and tries to get some mobile phone reception, but there is none.

Introducing Maruyama.

She wanders through the wreckage of the town, noting the eerie silence of the place.  She sees a helicopted overhead, but another twister brings it down.  She arrives at Dragonfly Pond which is now a whirlpool, and discovers three children tied to stakes there.  She frees them, but they ignore her. They approach a house that is still standing and blow out their breath causing a whirlwind that destroys the house which makes them laugh.

They turn on the reporter who screams and a whirlwind whisks the boys away.  Then Kirie and her brother Mitsuo find her, they are out foraging for food.  Kirie tells the reporter, whose name is Maruyama that any loud noise causes hurricanes, and Maruyama realises she must have created the whirlwind that blew the boys away.  Kirie takes her back to the row house, the only houses unaffected by the whirlwinds.

The house is packed with people.  Maruyama begs for someone to come help her where the car crashed.  Kirie's family decide to help.  But some of the other people say it's not worth it, that all reporters, rescue teams and volunteers have been trapped in the town as well.  Shuichi sits huddled in a corner saying the town is going to turn into a huge spiral.

Riding the twister.

Outside Kirie's family a Maruyama are confronted by two of the boys who made the whrilwinds.  They go to attack them so Kirie's family and Maruyama dive back inside the row house.  The inhabitants then all blow out of the window and a twister picks the boys up.  However when they go back outside they are greeted by the sight of the boys "riding" the twister.  With great understatment, Kirie says:

Kirie: "Kurouzo-cho was going mad."

The kids steer their twisters to destroy the last of the not-row house buildings still standing.  Others have joined them in their wanton destruction.  Mitsuo says it looks like fun, but Kirie warns him many have died trying to ride a twister.  The twister riders stay alive by stealing food from the relief agencies still coming to the town.  Kirie, Mitsuo and Maruyama are foraging for food for themselves in the ruins.

Back in the row house, one of the inhabitants finds an old scroll.  It appears to show the town consumed by a huge spiral.  Tempers are frayed due to over crowding and Shuichi and Kirie's family get kicked out.  Maruyama says they have to get out of town somehow, although when she walked down the car tunnel, it never ended.  Kirie's dad says he doesn't want to leave, he just wants to make pots again, he's a broken man now.

Stress rises in the row houses.

Suddenly they smell the delicious smell of cooking.  They go and investigate and find a gang of men roasting the snail people alive.   The creepy man in charge offers them some then makes inappropriate overtures towards Kirie and Maruyama.  When Kirie's dad steps in, the creepy guy summons a twister and blows him away.  Then a whole mess of twisters appear and whoosh everyone up in them.   Shuichi managed to grab hold of Kirie who has hold of Maruyama and keeps them from being sucked into Dragonfly Pond with the others.

Time passes.  More rescuers pour into the town, who then become trapped causing the place to become more dangerous thanks to the twisters.  Kirie, Shuichi and Maruyama meet up with some survivors led by a man called Tanizaki and some other random survivors.  Maruyama recounts again how she tried to escape via the car tunnel only for it to turn into a spiral and that she had to crawl back out.

No escape via the car tunnel.

Others tried to escape via the sea only to be swallowed by whirlpools.  Kirie and Maruyama are living in a collapsed house with Shuichi and Mitsuo and Kirie's injured mum.  Tanizaki's group wonder why the rundown row houses have survived the twisters when everything else has been destroyed. One of the group seems afflicted and they discover he is turning into a snail.  In a panic everyone checks their back and one of Tanizaki's group a man called Ogawa also has the tell tale spiral mark.

Tanizaki's group go and try and get into a row house and Kirie and the others tag along.  Tanizaki's group try to break in but the people inside try to blow them away with whirlwinds.  Undaunted the outsiders break down the wall with a battering ram only to reveal a horrific sight.  The houses were so jammed up that everyone's bodies twisted and tied round each other.  One of them says they are now in knots and cannot be seperated and work as one organism now.

The inevitable result of overcrowding?

The multi-bodied creature bursts out of each end of the row house but immediately pick up wod and start building and extension to the house.  The ones left outside bicker about what to do next then see a group of ships come sailing towards the town.  But sadly and inevitably escape is not on the cards as a whirlpool claims the fleet.  Starving and depressed, that night Tanizaki's group and Kirie's end up eating the flesh of a cooked snail person they find.

Next day Kirie, Shuichi and Maruyama leave Tanizaki's group and take the last bits of snail meat back to her mum and brother.  When they arrive the house has fully collapsed, her mum is gone, taken by a twister and when they dig her brother out they discover he is turning into a snail person.

Kirie: "At that moment.  I knew I had to escape."

They decide to try and make for the hills and pick north to go in. As they reach a point above the town where they can look down on it, they notice all the row houses face Dragonfly Pond.  They also spot Mr. Tanizaki building a extension on a row house and see many others doing the same. 

They keep walking but the trail winds endlessly.  Suddenly they bump into a Mr. Takemoto and his group who also say they came from the town but from the other direction.  The two groups decide to walk together for now.  Takemoto's group has a man on a lead, he's turning into a snail and they want him as an emergency food store.  Yuck.

Junji Ito, you sick fuck (I mean that as a compliment).

Finally the man turns into a full snail, and Takemoto says he really wants to try eating one raw.  He gets down on the ground and crawls inside the shell eating the flesh as he goes.  Urp, I think I may spew.  Thankfully Kirie's group leave them to it, and wander off now totally lost.

Shuichi: "I said it was hopeless.  It's all around us..in us.. through us."

They find a tree stump and Shuichi hallucinates his father as the rings in it.  Much later Kirie's group is confronted by Takemoto's.  They are drooling and zombie-like.  Kirie manages to lie convincingly about why her brother has a swollen back, fearing for his life.

Aww, Snail Mitsuo is sorta sweet.

Unfortunately Mitsuo soon turns into a full snail and her group flee Takemoto's, but suddenly find themselves on the edge of a cliff.  Kirie tells Mitsuo to escape by crawling down the cliff and he reluctantly leaves her.  Takemoto catches up and starts ranting about how it felt to feed on the soft flesh of the snails face and feel at one with the spiral.  Then he and his group's bodies all distort into corkscrew like spiral shapes.

Left with no choice, Kirie's group head back to the town, when they arrive back at the hill overlooking it, they are greeted by the impossible sight of the whole town turned into one spiral of joined together row houses, with Dragonfly Pond in the centre.

Kurouzo-cho, now one big spiral.

As they descend back into the town they see that the houses have been added onto, joining the originals together into a spiral of one structure.  They are confused as to how this happened in the short time they were up in the hills.  Kirie wonders how the occupants managed to create a perfect spiral, Shuichi says maybe the original row houses were left over from a previous spiral.

They look for an entrance and find the start of the spiral path leading into the row house structure spiral.  They begin following the path inwards.  One benefit of what has happened is they no longer have to fear whirlwinds whose job in flattening the rest of the town has been done. 

They suddenly see some faces peering out of the house they are passing by. A twisted corpse is thrown out of the house and one of the faces says could they please take him away before he starts to smell.  As they carry on they bump into a wild bearded man slowly dragging some corpses behind him.  Kirie recognises him as Mr. Tanizaki, he in turn says he remembers them from many years ago.  His job now is cleaning up the corpses.

Tanizaki, many years later.

Kirie asks him is he knows where her parents might be, and that her father was a potter.  Tanizaki says he heard that a couple were making pots by Dragonfly Pond, but the path there will be long and dangerous, even he hasn't gone there.  Detirmined Kirie and the other two journey onwards, climbing through rubble filled gaps in the row house to shortcut their route.  At night they take a break and ponder how all this could have happened.

Shuichi: "Well whatever's urging people to build these houses.. must be extremely powerful"

He then goes on to say that this could have happened over and over since ancient times.  That maybe once a century the spiral comes and haunts the town and no records of it remain because everyone involved disappears.

Maruyama is captured.

They carry on walking next day until Maruyama says she can't walk any further.  Then they see smoke twisting up in the air from where the pond is.  So they cut through a row house but Maruyama is too slow and is grabbed by the inhabitants and dragged further inside, they quickly board up the hole so she can't be rescued leaving Kirie and Shuichi as the only ones left.

They follow the smoke and as they get closer to the middle, the row houses are empty.  They arrive where the pond should be, only to be confronted by a huge hole in the ground instead and a spiral staircase leading down into darkness.  Hopeful that her parents might be down there Kirie and Shuichi hold hands and head down the stairs.

The mystery at the centre of town.

They walk down for what seems like an age, and they come across the nearly dead body of one of the row house spiral people.  Kirie thinks he must have been left behind when the others came down here.  The spiral person begs them to take him with them, but Shuichi says they don't have the strength.  The spiral person bites Kirie's ankle and Shuichi pulls him off her, gets tangled in him and they both fall off the stairs into the abyss.

Kirie keeps going down until she sees a light.  The stairs bring her down into a huge cavern full of ruined spiral structures.  The stairs don't go all the way down so she drops down onto and climbs down a giant snail shell but loses her footing.  Fortunately a wind catches her and deposits her safely on the ground.

The cavern of spiral structures and a mystery light.

Gruesomely the floor is made up of a carpet of the knotted up row house inhabitants.  As she walks across them she finds they are turning into stone and she comes across her mum and dad both petrified into rock.  One of the spiral formations is emitting a bright light that the spiral people are all staring at.  Kirie finds Shuichi alive but unable to walk.  He tells her that the light is responsible:

Shuichi: "Every few hundred, or thousand, or tens of thousands of years... it can reach the people above and though it's builders are gone, maybe it's still building itself."

Kirie asks what they should do now.  Shuichi says he can't walk so she should go on without him.  She refuses to leave him though.  They hold hands and their arms knot together into a rope-like formation.  The spiral outside completes and the cavern is filled with a strange roaring noise.  Kirie finishes telling is her tale by saying in the centre of the spiral, time froze.

Kirie: "So the curse was over the same moment it began.  The endless frozen moment I spent in Shuichi's arms.. and it will be the same moment again... when the next Kurouzo-cho is built amidst the ruins of the old one.  When the eternal spiral awakes once more."

This possibly isn't a happy ending.

And that brings the story to an end.  There is a twentieth chapter, but it wasn't officially part of the story and it's labelled as a "Missing Chapter" in the book.  It was set early on in the storyline and involves the appearence and disappearence of many spiral galaxies.  I can see why it was removed, it doesn't quite fit with tone of the storyline.  Anyway, Uzumaki remains a horror masterpiece.  One reason why I delayed my write up of this second half was because I was feeling unwell, and just the thought of the snail eating scenes made me nauseous.  Now I am someone who has been into body horror since her early teens, so for something to make even me feel sick to my stomach has to be an achievement of sorts.  I also like the way the events "spiral" out into a mysterious eldritch horror story of people acting under compulsions they don't understand and unimaginable structures powered by something beyond comprehension lurking underground.  All-in-all Uzumaki is a seminal horror manga and certainly should be read by anyone with an interest in horror comics.  Who knew something as innocuous as a spiral could cause such havoc...?

Uzumaki (Part One)

"Spirals.. this town is contaminated by spirals" - Shuichi

Time for more manga and another Junji Ito series, Uzumaki, written and drawn by Ito and translated by Yuji Oniki .  Junji Ito is not the most prolific of mangaka and very little of what he has done has been released in the west.  I looked at Gyo a couple of months back and now I am looking at Uzumaki (which means "Spiral") his hands-down, no holds barred work of demented, twisted (pun intended) genius.  Twenty chapters set in one cursed Japanese sea-side town narrated by a teenage female character, which starts out with queasy conicidences and strange obssessions and ends in a full blown Lovecraftian nightmare of epic proportions.  Fans of weird Japanese cinema may have seen the surreal film based on the series, which cherry picked various chapters but didn't have the budget to take it to the spectacular place it ended at.  Although it's still an enjoyable weird little film if you're a fan of the genre, the manga is more coherent and builds terror much more effectively.  Although the horror isn't gross out in it's defiling of the body like Gyo was, it's still quite alarming and so those with faint hearts might want to give this one a miss.  I've also split this look into two posts, ten chapters apiece as it is a weighty volume, so part two will be up in a few days time.  So how can Spirals be scary?  You are about to find out...[note:  This manga is unflipped so reads right to left]

The first thing to note is that the whole tale is being told in flashback.  We don't see the "present" until the very last pages of the book. The story begins with a few colour pages and a look at the town of Kurouzu-cho where the events will be taking place.  We meet Kirie Goshima, our narrator.  She is a normal teenage girl who lives with her family and has a boyfriend called Shuichi Sato.

Kirie and Shuichi

He is going to school in another town, and she rushes to meet him at the train station.  On the way, she sees his father Mr. Sato intently watching a snail crawl up the wall.  She meets up with Shuichi and they talk, he asks her to leave town with him, he says:

Shuichi: "I can't stand this place.  We'll go crazy if we stay here."

He says he feels dizzy everytime he returns to the town.  Kirie doesn't know what to make of it.  We then cut to Mr. Sato talking to Mr. Goshima - Kirie's dad - who happens to be a potter by trade.  Mr. Sato enthusiastically says "It's really the art of the spiral".  He orders a piece from Mr. Goshima, specifically with a black spiral. He says he has a love of the spiral and collects things with them on.  We then get a look at his room full of spiral objects.

Shuichi and Kirie carry on walking home.  Shuichi says his father can make his eyeballs spin independantly of each other in spirals.  At dinner he got angry because there were no spiral patterened fishcakes, so he stirred his miso soup into a spiral.  He evens makes a spiral before getting into the bathwater.  Shuichi invites Kirie to come and see if he doesn't believe her.  On the way he points out all the spirals in a stream they are walking by.

Shuichi's spiral crazy dad.

They arrive a Shuichi's house and his father is in a rage because Mrs. Sato threw out all of his spiral objects.  He then stares at Shuichi and Kirie and laughing madly, makes his eyes spin in different directions.  Later Mr. Goshima gives Kirie the piece he made for Mr. Sato and she takes it over to Shuichi's house.  Mr. Sato says he doesn't need it anymore, "you can call the spiral from in yourself."  And he sticks out a grotesquely long tongue and curls it into a spiral.  Kirie freaks out and runs off.

We then jump forward to Mr. Sato's funeral.  Shuichi says to Kirie he'll tell her how his father really died.  They found a wooden tub he had ordered especially and when he and his mum looked inside they found Suichi's dad "spun" somehow into a human spiral which killed him.  As they talk outside the crematorium, the smoke from Mr. Sato's cremation starts to form a huge spiral in the sky.

The smoke moves away from the chimney in a whirlwind formation and settles over "dragonfly pond".  Mrs. Sato begins to freak out, Shuichi tried to calm her but they see the smoke for, for an instant, the face of Shuichi's father. And Mrs. Sato just starts screaming with hysterical laughter.  In the hospital she is being restrained by several doctors and nurses, when she sees one of the nurses has her hair in a spiral like bun she screams "Spiral! Spiral! Take it away!"

Shuichi's mum gets rid of unwanted spirals.

She develops an extreme phobia of spirals.  Her head is shaved to stop her hair forming spirals and in one gruesome scene we see her cut off her fingerprints because of the spirals they form.  Shuichi explains to Kirie that it's because to her, every spiral looks like when they found his dad.  His dad keeps speaking to his mum, "come join me in the spiral."

Thanks to all the precautions the hospital staff are taking she seem to be calming down.  He, his mum and a doctor talk in the doctor's office and Shuichi becomes distracted by a diagram on the wall showing the inner ear, especially the spiral-like cochlea.  The doctor recommends Mrs. Sato goes to Midoriyama-shi psychiatric hospital.  She doesn't really want to go, and tells Shuichi she won't hurt herself anymore as she has removed all her spirals.

Later Shuichi walks with Kirie and tells her about the cochlea, and implies heavily that if his mum found out about it she'd take drastic measures to get rid of it.  Later that night, Mrs. Sato awakens to find a centipede trying to crawl into her ear.  She kills it and it curls up into a spiral with her husbands face and it says he wants to curl up inside her ear.  She wakes up for real, screaming.

Haunted by her dead husband.

Next day she asks Shuichi about the human ear, "don't tell me it has a spiral."  Shuichi denies it does, but she rushes to the doctor's office to check the wall chart, but it's been taken down.  She frantically starts looking through text books, but Shuichi manages to calm her and she goes back to he room.  The doctor tells Shuichi she really needs to see a specialist.

Mrs. Sato hallucinates her husband telling her there are spirals in her ears.  She takes a pair of scissors and plunges them into her earhole.  With her inner ears destroyed she loses her sense of balance and feels like she is experiencing spirals all the time.  She dies not long after.

Kirie: "On the day of her funeral as her body was burned...another black spiral emerged in the sky above our town."

The next chapter begins with Kirie musing about a friend she had called Azami Kurotan.  She says she regrets knowing her because then Azami wouldn't have met Shuichi, "and we might have prevented what happened."  She is a beautiful but reserved girl, "she was good at giving the cold shoulder."  She lives in a different town but attends school in Kurouzu-cho.

Azami.

Other girls tell Kirie not to be friends with her and that she has magic power. She has a scar on her forehead obscured by her fringe that is the source of said power.  Later Azami shows Kirie the crescent shaped scar which she got as a kid showing off in a playground to impress a boy.  Apparently it makes all boys become attracted to her.

One day Azami and Kirie go to see Shuichi who hasn't been coming out of his house since the death of his parents.  They are greeted by a depressed and hollow eyed Shuichi who freaks out when he sees Azami and tells her to go away and never come back again.  Kirie apologises to Azami who goes quiet on the way to the station.  Later on the phone, Shuichi says to Kirie "you have to watch out.  She's a spiral".

His doorbell goes and he answers the door to be confronted by Azami.  She demands to know what is wrong.

Azami: "Every boy I have ever met has fallen for me. How could you reject me?"

He says she's hiding something on her forehead.  She pulls back her fringe and her scar has turned into a spiral.  Shuichi says the town has changed it and she should leave while she still can.  But she refuses and becomes obssessed with him, even getting her parents to rent her a flat in the town.  She goes to see Shuichi every day but he refuses to see her.

Kirie confronts her and tells her to leave Shuichi alone.  She won't, she wants Shuichi to care about her.  Then a large spiral appears on her forehead.  A boy called Okada appears and tells Azami how he is drawn to her.  Azami runs away and stops coming to school.

Possessed by the spiral.

A few days later Shuichi calls Kirie and says Okada asked to meet them at the playground.  So Kirie goes and bumps into Azami on the way, Azami has a huge spiral on her face now and freaks Kirie out.  Shuichi is at the park, lured there by Okada at the request of Azami.  Azami arrives saying all she wanted was to see Shuichi.

Then, as Kirie arrives to witness what happens, the spiral takes over Azami's head and sucks Okada in.  Then the spiral gets bigger and bigger, consuming Azami's body until finally there is nothing left of her.

The next chapter begins with Kirie observing another spiral of smoke from a cremation moving over to Dragonfly Pond.  She goes to look for her father and finds him sat by the kiln, he gets angry and tells her not to look inside.  She notes that even the smoke from the kiln is making a spiral.

We then cut to a ceramics exhibtion.  Mr. Goshima's pieces are all distorted and covered in spirals.  He says of them, "The do have a life of their own" and the distortion happened during the firing process.  He doesn't sell any though.  Kirie says she isn't surprised, they look weird and aren't practical.  Kirie's little brother spots a distorted face on one of them and says it looks like Shuichi's mum.  Kirie's dad brushes it off as coincidence, but they find other faces all from people recently cremated.

Freaky pottery.

Next day Kirie makes Shuichi a lunch as he hasn't been going out.  Her mum says to invite him for dinner so she practically drags him to her house even though he doesn't want to go there as they live by Dragonfly Pond.  But once there he scoffs a lot of food until a plate of noodles is place in front of him on one of the distorted plates made by Kirie's dad.  He recoils from it.  When he finds out it was made from mud from Dragonfly Pond he flees looking like he's about to throw up.

Kirie says she wouldn't eat from that plate either, that a plate made from clay from Dragonfly Pond might be "clay made from dead people".  However her father keeps getting the clay from the pond.  One night Kirie goes down to the kilm and while her father sleeps, peers inside and sees ghostly faces calling for help.

Her dad wakes up and sends her away, in bed she can still hear the voices. Shuichi calls her saying he was lonely, but he also hears the voices.  He rushes over and they go down to the kiln.  Shuichi hears his parents inside and picks up a huge brick and smashes the kiln with it, setting the ghosts free.  The kiln workshop catches fire and burns down, but even so, Kirie's obssessed father goes and digs his final pieces out of the ashes.

Ghosts in the kiln.

The next chapter introduces the "row houses" which we in the UK would call terraces.  There are a lot of old dilapidated row houses in Korouzu-cho and they'll become a very important part of the plot later on.  For now though, Kirie witnesses a fight between two families who live in the same row house, they are trying to prevent their son and daughter - Kazunori and Yoriko respectively from seeing each other.  Yoriko's brother punches Kazunori and drags her away. 

Kirie talks to Kazunori who says he and Yoriko are in love.  He says that due to their poverty their families souls have become twisted.  He goes home and has to endure the two families screaming insults at each other through the walls.  It gets too much for him and Yoriko and they rush outside to each other, but both get pulled back inside before they can reach each other.

Kirie tells Shuichi about the situation.  Shuichi says they have been "cursed by the spiral".

Shuichi: "If what I saw hasn't driven me completely insane then those houses are part of this.  And everyone in them is doomed."

Kazunori and Yoriko.

He asks Kirie to run away with him, right away.  But she angrily refuses and storms out.  A few days later she goes to check on the row house families and discovers Kazunori and Yoriko have gone missing.  They are hiding in a nearby abandoned house and see two snakes twisted and entwined with each other.

The adults find them and Kazunori gets a punch and Yoriko taken away.  Somehow Kazunori twists his body round unnaturally, then pops it back. Kirie arranges for Kazunori and Yoriko to escape together and she and Shuichi wait to meet them at the railway station.  But Kazunori and Yoriko come running up saying they've been discovered, so they all run to the beach.

Their families catch up with them, but before they can be seperated, but Kazunori and Yoriko twist their bodies round and round each other like the snakes or a length of twine.  Thus entangled they cannot be seperated.

Yoriko: "We're never going to be apart.  That's right..."

Kazunori: "...forever."

And they take off like a twister across the sea and are never seen again.

Human twisters!

The next chapter opens at Kirie's school.  A classmate has fallen off the roof of the school after showing off and died.  Kirie thinks he looks strangely content in death.  She talks with a girl called Sekino about it.

Sekino: "I understand how he must have felt.  It's nice when other people notice you."

Kirie says that she doesn't like sticking out, but Sekino says lately she "craves it" but doesn't know how to go about it.

Later Kirie and Shuichi talk about the rash of strange, exhibitionist behaviour.  He says it's the spirals "mesmerising" people into wanting attention. He also notes that Kirie's hair is getting longand maybe needs a cut.

Next day at school her hair suddenly forms spiral-like curls, when Sekino braids it for her, it unwinds back into the curls.  She goes to get it cut, but her hair suddenly grows and attacks the styalist.  Then acts like it's alive.  She has to leave it alone to stop it trying to strangle her, and she has to walk around with it floating around her head in spiral curls.

Haunted hair.

Kirie: "I soon realised that my hair had the power to mesmerise people who looked at it, and it was atrracted to crowds."

Her hair forces her to go to where crowds can see it and keeps on growing.  She starts to feel weak like it is draining her strength.  Then one day Sekino arrives on the scene also with floating spiral curled "living" hair. School becomes a battleground for attention between them despite Kirie's reluctance. 

Finally it turns into a literal battleground as their hair fights and Sekino's starts choking Kirie.  Shuichi cuts Kirie free and tries to cut her hair but gets bound up in it.  Sekino declares victory as Shuichi cuts his way free and finally manages to cut off Kirie's hair.  Sekino cackles madly "ha ha ha!  Look at me!" but her hair starts draining her lifeforce faster and faster until she ends up a dry, dead husk, although her hair lives on for a few more hours.

Vampire hair.

Chapter seven begins with Kirie remembering a boy called Mitsuru Yamaguchi, "he loved to jump out and surprise people".  He's nicknamed "Jack-In-The-Box" because of this.  He likes Kirie and starts following her around.  One day Kirie and her friend Shiho walk home through the cemetary which they find creepy because people have started to be buried there again after the strange spiral smoke formations caused by the cremations put people off them.

Suddenly Mitsuru jumps out from behind a gravestone and startles them.  Shiho tells him off and that Kirie already has a boyfriend.  Mitsuru says he won't give up and she'll "go out with me eventually".  He keeps stalking her, popping up all over the place.  He sends her a package one day, but she doesn't open it and tries to return it to him.  He decides to run out in front of a car and says his love for her will stop it.  It doesn't and he ends up dead, crushed under it's front wheels.

So ends Mitsuru. He lived. He sucked. He died.

He's buried in the graveyard, and later Kirie decides to open the gift from him.  It turns out to be a Jack-In-The-Box.  She calls Shuichi who reassures her that it wasn't her fault Misturu died.  But suddenly the Jack-In-The-Box tells her it is her fault, "he died for you didn't he?  And now he'll come back for good."

So she and Shuichi sneak out to the graveyard that night.  They plan to dig him up so Shuichi can hammer a stake through him.  Kirie isn't sure Mitsuru is actually a vampire.  Shuichi says:

Shuichi: "Look we're here because we believe a toy clown talked in the first place.  Nothing is unbelievable in this town."

They uncover the casket, but before they can open it, Mitsuru's corpse pops up out of it.  He begins jumping after them as Kirie and Shuichi run.  His guts fall out then his legs fall off.  Then a large spring pops out of his body and he bounces after them on it for a little while further before collapsing fully dead again.  Shuichi says the spring is from the suspension of the car that killed him.

Kirie: "And so Jack-In-The-Box never surprised anyone again".

Wise fwom your gwave!

The next chapter starts with Kirie and a friend contemplating the rain which is expected to last for a few days.  They mention a boy called Katamaya and how he only comes to school when it rains.  He does indeed show up, and the class bully mocks him and the teacher upbraids him for only coming to school when he feels like it.

Later Katayama is useless in a volleyball game, so the class bully, Tsumuru strips him naked.  This exposes a large spiral-like mark on his back.  Next day he arrives at school and the spiral has swollen on his back. Kirie thinks: "A spiral.. A spiral rising".  her friend says he looks like a snail.  And in fact by the next day he as transformed into a full on snail, albeit with vaguely human features still.  He crawls up the side of the school building.

Ick.

 The teacher tells his parents but they refuse to take responsibility for him.  Using brooms to push him off the school wall, they put him in a fenced area in the school yard, where "eventually the school took care of him."  Tsumuru laughs at him and pokes him with a stick.  But later he starts drinking lots and stops coming to school.

The rain stops and Katamaya retreats into his shell.  Kirie and her friend worry about him and spray him with water, but when he comes out revealing fully snail features, they flee.  The teacher asks where Tsumuru is and then they see another slug climbing the building, it's Tsumuru.  They put him in with Katamaya and they start mating!

Later the two of them escape.  Kirie, her friend and her teacher Mr. Yokota follow the slime trail.  They find a nest of snail eggs and Mr. Yokota stomps them all.  Katamaya and Tsumuru are never seen again and a few days later Mr. Yokota comes to school and has turned into a snail as well.

Double ick.

We move onto the story of the town lighthouse.  One night it emitted a "bright mesmerising glow".  Which swirled over the rooftops like a whirlwind.  The lighthouse is supposed to be abandoned so the townfolk are curious as to what is causing it.  It keeps doing it, and Kirie's brother Mitsuo thinks it's cool.  Kirie and her mum disagree and tell Mitsuo to stay away from it.

Finally some men from the town go inside to investigate but they never come out.  Then the light starts making people do "crazy things" like walking round and round in circles.  After a boat crashes into the shore because of it, Mitsuo and friends run off and go inside to investigate.  Kirie goes chasing after him.

The mysterious light.

As she ascends she sees spiral patters on the wall.  Finally she comes across the burned corpses of the men who first went in to investigate.  She finds two of Misuo's friends sitting close by, they say Mitsuo and the other boy with him carried on up.  She tells them to go back down and goes on up to find Mitsuo.

She finds Mitsuo and friend huddled together at the top of the lighthouse.  Instead of a lamp, there is a melted thing marked with the shape of the spiral.  Kirie realises the lamp has melted in the heat and they are now in great danger.  It is nearing dusk and time for the lamp to light up.

She and the two boys go pelting down the stairs as the light switches on and begins to follow them.  The other boy falls as they run and the light catches him and burns him to a crisp.  Kirie and Mistuo make it outside, although only just and get buffeted by the edge of the heated light beam, and next day the bodies are removed from the lighthouse, but it still keeps shining it's weird light over the town.

The melted sinister lamp.

Kirie's injuries escaping the lighthouse turned out to be "unexpectedly severe" and she has to spend half the summer in hospital.  The mosquitos act strangely that year, they fly in spirals that make you sleepy then bite.  Outside the hospital with a friend one day Kirie sees a whirlwind like swarm of mosquitos.  Her friend says they breed in Dragonfly Pond.  On the way back inside the hopsital, they find a mosquito bite ridden corpse.

More people start being hospitalised for mass mosquito bites, including many pregnant women.  Kirie visits her pregnant cousin Keiko who has been bitten a lot.  She helps unpack her things amongst which is a mysterious wrapped item, which Keiko tells Kirie to ignore.  Next morning some patients are found dead, with many holes drilled in them and their blood drained out.

This hospital has problems.

Keiko says she is feeling better when Kirie goes to visit and her baby is kicking a lot.  Shuichi turns up and tells Kirie she should get out of the hospital, that "something is wrong in this place."  A nurse tells Kirie they are running out of beds so Kirie will have to share with Keiko.  Shuichi says Keiko gives him a weird feeling, then freaks out when he sees a mosquito and kills it with some bug spray.

He tells Kirie that only female mosquitos suck blood, and only when they are carrying eggs which need feeding.  The nurse yells at Shuichi to leave and physically shoves him out of the room.  That night Kirie is wakened by a weird noise, and when she gets up to investigate she is greeted by the horrible sight of all the pregnant women armed with drills walking the corridors.

She looks in one room and sees a pregnant woman sitting on a male patient and drilling into him.  She has blood all round her mouth and on her gown.  They all go to attack Kirie when another patient appears.  They make spiral motions in the air with their fingers which knock him out, then gather round him with their drills and start drinking his blood.

Unusual pregnancy cravings.

The rest keep going after Kirie.  She flees to her room, but Keiko is there armed with a drill and she says "give me your blood."  Desperate, Kirie uses the bug spray Shuichi left behind and this fends off the blood crazy women.  Next day all evidence of their crimes are covered up and Kirie contemplates the fact their blood fed babies will all be born in the next few days....

And here we take a break to prevent this post getting even more unwieldy.  Part two will cover the final ten chapters in a few days time.  So far the weird horror has been mostly confined to the personal level, with Kirie and Shuichi being the unlucky recipients of the worst of it.  Part two will see events spiral (heh) out of control and take in the whole town.  One thing Junji Ito is excellent at is juxtaposing the silly with the horrific.  The possessed hair chapter perhaps being the best example.  Long hair with a life of its own? Pretty funny.  Two girls getting into a hair battle?  Goofy.  Said long hair sucking out all the person's life force leaving them a skeletal husk?  Holy fuck that's grim!  As a personal note, I have lovely long waist length hair and now I am wondering if it's sucking my energy all the time?  Could happen.  The snails, while a somewhat surreal example of body horror will have utterly stomach churning plot importance later in the story.  Ito's artwork remains detailed and as adept at capturing the everyday and normal as he is the parade of twisted bodies and screaming corpse ghosts.  Kirie is a very likeable main character and a calm centre for the crazy events going on around her. I'm a horror fan since my early teens and to find horror that can turn even my stomach is rare, but this manages it. Superb stuff.

Gyo: The Death Stench Creeps

"Wow... it really reeks" - Tadashi

As my one hundreth book covered hoves into view, I have decided to expand outside of just looking at UK and US comics and will be covering manga, which you should already know is the Japanese term for comics.  Japanese manga work on similar principles to 2000AD.  A strip is published in an anthology magazine with several other strips aimed at the same audience.  When enough parts have been published they are collected together in a thick, squarish  volume of around 200 pages called a "tankabon". Manga is almost always written and drawn by the same person and is read from right to left unless the western publisher has "flipped" it to run left to right, though this is rarely done now and frowned upon when it is.  Most of the famous manga's have been running for a very long time and collections are in the thirties-plus with hundreds of chapters, but there are less well known limited series that I will be looking at on this blog.  And the first one I have chosen is a "Seinen" (aimed ostensibly at adult males, as opposed to "Josei" adult females, "Shonen" teen and older kid males and "Shojo" teen and older kid females) manga, Gyo - which means "fish"- by the genius horror writer and artist Junji Ito.  Serialised in the weekly manga magazine Big Comic Spirits from 2001 to 2002, this is a highly detailed, disgustingly gross, wonderfully imaginative series that has been released in the West by Viz Media (translated by Yuji Oniki) as a lavish hardback collection with superior paperstock than is usual for manga collections, and which is what I'll be looking at now.  Just a general warning, I'm a hardened horror nut from my teens onwards, but this story really made my stomach churn as I read it and the second bonus story published at the end truly freaked me out.  If you're faint-hearted or not big on body horror you might want to skip this one (wimp!).

Kaori and Tadashi

The story begins with Tadashi diving off the coast of Okinawa,  He is chased by sharks and swims quickly back to the boat where his girlfriend Kaori is waiting.  He mentions to her that he saw something else out there but it was moving too fast to see properly.  Kaori says can they go back to the house, the smell of the sea is making her sick.  They walk back through a fish market which Kaori says "stinks".  They get back to the house and have a fight about Tadashi having bad breath, Kaori can't take the smell anymore.

Tadashi: "Give me a break! I can't deal with your neuroses!!"

He says she just complains about everything.  She yells that she is going back to Tokyo and walks out.  Tadashi goes after her and finds her sitting amongst some grasss.  He also notices a bad smell in the air.  Something races past them smelling of putrid garbage.  Kaori returns to the house with Tadashi and says he has to get rid of the smell.  He goes to buy some air freshener while she takes a shower.

The first of many....

Something has got into the house and races around too fast to see.  Tadahsi returns to the house and finds Kaori passed out on the floor.  He manages to crush the thing in the house behind a cupboard and discovers it to be a fish with four legs.  He takes it outside, and when it starts twitching he beats it to death with a rock, then seals it inside a rubbish bag.

He returns to the house again and lays a feverish Kaori on the sofa.  She comes around and starts complaining about the smell,  Tadashi goes out to deal with the bagged fish only for it to float into the house and terrify Kaori.  She flees the house and it follows her.  She reaches the rocks on the coastline and she and Tadashi watch as it carrys on floating across the sea.  Tadashi goes to investigate further, much to Kaori's annoyance.

Kaori: "Forget about that stupid fish.  What's more important?  I'm your girlfriend!"

But Tadashi stands on the beach and spots more four legged fish in the water.  The next morning he takes a disbelieving policeman there to show him but they are gone and a sulking Kaori won't confirm his story.  On the way back to the house, Kaori says she is still sick and collapses.  Meanwhile some fishermen out to see, pull in a net full of four legged fish that start running about attacking them.  On the beach someone spots a shark and everyone races to the beach only to be further chased by the shark who also has four legs.

It won't go away.

With a wonderful sound effect, "GASHUNK, GASHUNK", the shark stomps its way to Tadashi and Kaori's house.  It gets inside the house and Tadashi tells Kaori to escape out of the window, but there are more legged fish outside.  The shark kicks down the interior door and squeezes down the corridor after Tadashi.  Outside Okinawa is being swarmed by walking sea creatures and assailed by a stench.  Tadashi finally manages to trick the shark into smashing through a window and falling out of the second story window which temparily disables it.

The action then cuts to a news bulletin saying Okinawa is in chaos and many are dead, but a load of hunters and the Japanese Self Defence Force have mobilised to try and deal with them.  People are also complaining about an overpowering stench.  The news also says fish have been captured and are being studied in the hope to find a way to stop them.

Tadashi and Kaori are back in Tokyo, but Kaori still feels unwell.  Tadashi goes to visit his uncle, Doctor Koyanagi who is a research scientist.  He was so absorbed in his work he hadn't heard about the plague of walking fis.  Tadashi fills him in and Koyanagi tells his assisstant Ms. Yoshiyama to book him a flight to Okinawa.  Tadashi returns to Kaori who is feaking out about the smell again.

Kaori: "It's getting stronger and stronger!!  Even now it's getting closer..."

She freaks out completely and runs out of the house.  Tadashi in hot pursuit.  Suddenly the dead fish they sealed in a bag comes floating after them. "Impossible" says Tadashi but it chases after them then the bag bursts and dumps the rotten fish at their feet, the legs stil moving.  Tadashi seals it in another bag and takes it to his uncle.

Uncle Koyanagi

His uncle decides to stay and examine this specimen and opens the bag releasing a powerfeul stench.  Tadashi returns to Kaori who is saying she can still smell things even though they are in Tokyo.  Tadashi in frustration says "I can't deal with your delusions" and takes her home.  To placate her, he searches the place and finds nothing unusual.  Later that night though, he wakes up and can smell the bad smell himself.

Doctor Koyanagi starts disecting the fish.  He removes the remains of the dead fish from the walking mechanism, which is made up of the four legs and a set of claw like clamps.  He prods it and suddenly it clamps onto his forearm.  He writhes in pain and calls for Ms. Yohsiyama.

We then cut to another news report which says the walking fish have reached the Japanese mainland.  Tadashi's uncle calls him to the lab and Tadashi and Kaori go there to hear what he has to say.  They all sit down to tea and Koyanagi starts to tell them a story abouthis father who was a scientist working for Imperial Japan during World War II.  During that time he and his fellow researchers discovered a germ that would produce a trmendous smell from the lab animals.  It was decided to use the smell as a weapon but the infected animals would die before they reached the enemy, so his father created a gas powered walking mechanism and even made a few before the Americans sank the boat he was on and he was the only survivor.

Koyanagi: "He was dead serious when he told me this story.  But who knows whether it's true?  It's so implausible and I can't find any corroborating records."

Kaori asks to use the bathroom and looks in the mirror and notices boils on her face.  Then another fast moving thing appears and turns out to be Koyanagi's severed forarm attached to the legs mechanism.  Koyanagi then shows them his missing arm and said he had to amputate it to stop the germs spreading to the rest of his body, and the arm is bloated because it is filled with gas.  Koyanagi is fascinated by how it moves via the gas powered pistons in the legs.  He says the fish are dead by the time they reach the shore, it's just the gas keeping them going.  Tadashi asks if the germs can be spread by the smell, his uncle has no reply.

Later, back home, Tadashi contemplates where he was stung by the fish he caught and wonders if he is infected.  He then goes into Kaori's room and is utterly horrified to see her bloated and covered in boils, expelling gas from her mouth and anus.  Shocked he can only wonder what the hell is going on.

Kaori, not looking so good.

Japan is being flooded by the walking fish, including things like whales rising up out of the sea on four legs.  Kaori tries to throw herself off the balcony saying she wants to die.  She screams at Tadashi saying that he wants to leave her for a prettier woman like his uncle's assisstant.  He tries to call his uncle but can't get ahold of him.  He then returns to Kaori's room to find her strung up from the light fitting.  He cuts her down, puts her on his back and starts to take her to his uncle's lab.

On the way they are chased by another shark.  It traps them in a dead end, but gets stuck itself and they manage to squeeze out from under it.  It backs out and pursues them all the way to his uncles.  Koyonagi examines Kaori and says she needs to be taken to hospital and leaves with her, but tells Tadashi to stay.  He decides to go home, but on the way is attacked by a squid and knocked into a storm drain full of fish.  He has a vision of the gas having human faces, and one that looks like Kaori reaches out to him. He passes out and wakes up in hospital one month later.

There is some black humour here as well.

He had been pulled out of the storm drain and brought to the hospital.  The nurse attending says everyone has got used to the stench, and the walking machines have overrun the whole world.  Tadashi enquires after Kaori, but is told they have no record of her.  He wanders into the street and bumps into some soldiers who tell him there is martial law in effect. He goes to his uncle and is told Kaori died.

Tadashi is grief stricken and his uncle tells him he can sleep in a bed at the lab to get his strength back.  But later, ms. Yoshiyama wakes him and tells him she can't lie to him anymore.  She takes him to the main lab and shows him the awful sight of Kaori hooked up to a homemade walking machine.  Outraged Tadashi demands to know why.  His uncle says he created his own walking machine and Kaori is powering it.  He turns it on and it walks round the room.  He says he built the machine to check that the machines were indeed powered by the germ induced gas.  Now he knows for sure his work can continue in earnest.

In a rage Tadashi goes to yank the pipes out of Kaori's mouth, but she knocks him to one side and stabs Koyanagi through the chest with her sharp legs then makes a getaway.  Tadashi goes after her, walking through the smell filled streets.  All the humans he meets are infected and expelling gas.  He then stumbles across a whole crowd of humans attached to the walking machines.  Horrified he sees a gas bloated human stagger over to one of the empty walkers and get hooked up to it.

Kaori in the custom walker.

Shots are then fired by a Self Defence Force soldier trying to kill the walkers.  Tadashi says he shouldn't, that they should try and find a way to save them, but the soldier threatens to shoot him if he interferes.  Suddenly a monstrous sight hoves into view, it's a walker made up of many, many humans.  It kills the soldier and sucks in a nearby infected human and adds it to its bulk.

Tadashi runs away, chased by the faces he can see in the gas.  He finally gets away, but then hears the sound of loud music.  Curious he follows it and it leads to... a circus tent of all things.  Inside the tent are lions and elephants attached to walkers, and walkers on tightropes.  The sinister ringmaster introduces it as the "Citrous Circus". He shows Tadashi the orchestra, playing their instruments using gas.  He says the gas is alive:

Ringmaster: "And it will still be alive when all the humans and animals are gone.  Even our troupe who sought to band together have fallen prey to natural selection".

The living gas.

He then demonstrates the gas powered cannon, firing an infected man across the tent.  Then he introduces the "human flame thrower" who expells a huge amount of flaming gas in which Tadashi sees skull like faces.  Finally they drag out Kaori, because her walking machine is different from the others.  But she attacks the men who pulled her and rips through the tent and makes her getaway.  Tadashi manages to catch her and turns her machine off.  Then he drags her back to his uncle's lab.

Ms. Yoshiyama answers the door.  Tearfully she tells him his uncle died from the stab wound Kaori inflicted on him.  Before he died he asked to be taken to lab number two so he could die peacefully.  Tadashi asks if she can get Kaori out of the walker.  She tries but then tells Tadashi that Kaori is dead.  Tadashi says he knows, but he wants to be able to cremate her body.

Koyanagi: Officially nuts.

Suddenly they hear a noise from the second lab and Tadashi goes to investigate.  He finds his uncle hooked up to a flying, gas powered machine.  It smashes it's way out of the lab and inflates a zeppilin style balloon to keep it airborn.  It starts firing gunk at Tadashi and Yoshiyama.  Forcing them back into the main lab building.  They wonder if it's attacking because they are not infected and are together.

Yoshiyama: "That's absurd.  He can't possibly be conscious.  It's supposed to be the germs and not the doctor that's making the machine move."

They are still holding each other when Kaori proves to be not quite dead and switches her walker on and attacks Yoshiyama forcing her outside where Koyanagi grabs her and flies away.  Kaori is then surrounded by lots of human walkers.  After a pause they all attack her, then swarm away carrying her with them.  Undeterred, Tadashi follows.

Even abominations are prejudiced.

He comes across the gas cannon from the circus and it fires an infected human at Koyanagi's zeppelin, bursting it, but he sporuts wings instead and flies away.  Tadashi then bumps into some more uninfected humans.  They are scientists who theorise that the walkers were created by the gas bacteria in the sea.  They are from Kyoto university and are workng on an antidote to fight back.  They ask if Tadashi wants to join them.  He spots Kaori's burned skeletal corpse and wrecked walker and says he'll join them in a while.  Sadly he sits by her body and says "You're finally free from the smell".  And the story ends.

Gyo is a superb horror story.  It uses the "decompressed" style of manga to slowly build, and build and build piling gross out moment after gross out moment and makes effective use of the claustrophobia inherent in only have four main characters.  The fact that the origins of the apocalyptic disaster are only guessed at adds to the feeling of impotence for the characters trying to fight back and survive.  While there is a small note of hope injected in the end by Tadashi meeting up with other immune characters, the final image of him sat with the burned up, mutated corpse of his girlfriend is what stays with you as the story comes to a close.  There are some fantastically audacious moments, such as the appearance of sharks, squid and even a whale attached to the parasitic legs as well as the pants-on-head lunacy of the "death stench" powered circus.  The whole thing is superbly drawn and paced and well worth seeking out for anyone who enjoys a good, creepy, horror comic.

And he lived unhappily ever after.

Oh But Wait, There's More....!

There are two bonus stories in this volume.  THE SAD TALE OF THE PRINCIPLE POST is an odd little four pager about a man who gets trapped under the concrete post holding up his house and dies, with his body left to decay under it.  But the real spine chiller is the second tale  THE ENIGMA OF THE AMIGARA FAULT.  There was a great earthquake and afterwards a fault was found on the Amigara mountain.  A young man called Owaki and a young woman called Yoshida meet up on their way to see it.

Both have been drawn to the mountain fault without knowing why and when they reach it they find it covered with human shaped holes and a whole crowd of people already there.  The scientists present are investigating how deep they go, but their scops don't go far enough.  They can't figure out if the holes are natural or man made.

The faultline

Yoshida starts searching saying she knows one of the holes that she saw on TV, "it was my shape".  Owaki is dubious but Yoshida insists it is so.  A man called Nagagaki says they are all looking for their holes and he finally found his.  He strips down to his underwear and walks into "his" hole. He disappears, going deeper than the scientists can track.  Later that night, camping nearby, Owaki has a nightmare about being trapped deep in a hole and wakes up in terror. 

He meets up with Yoshida who shows him her hole.  She shouts in fear, saying it was made for her and when she goes in she'll be trapped.  Another man climbs into a hole and another.  Yoshida says the hole is inviting her in:

Yoshida: "I'm going to have to enter that hole.  I'm going to die inside that hole!"

Owaki blocks the entrance to her hole with rocks to calm her down.  Later she confides in him, saying she's always been lonely.  Owaki says that must be why she is so frightened of the hole because nothing could be lonelier than being inside it.

Owaki's nightmare

That night he has another nightmare.  It was a long time ago and he has committed an unforgivable crime and his punishment was to go into the hole which then stretched and distorted his body.  He wakes in fear again and finds Yoshida gone.  He goes to her hole and find the entrance unblocked.  She has gone inside.  He sits and thinks for a moment, then sees his hole.  He strips down and walks inside.

Several months later the scientists find holes on the otherside of the mountain, but they are distorted.  Someone peers inside one of them and sees a horrifically distorted human inside, slowly making it's way to the surface. The End.

Blaaargh!!

Brrrr.  This really is the perfect little one-shot horror story.  The sense of forces beyond human control drawing people to the holes, the dread and claustrophobia it induces in the reader and the incredibly effective twist ending with monstrously mutated humans about to escape the other end of the holes with an image that I am not afraid to say has haunted me ever since I read it.  Junji Ito shows his mastery of both long and short form story telling making this an essential purchase for any lover of the macabre.