![]() However, my issues with the characters are minor. I suppose it's easy to deflect this criticism with Shuichi's motto of 'they were contaminated by the spiral'. In fact, the only time we get the sense that anyone is disturbed enough by the happenings in the town to get out is just before the climax of the novel. For instance, she has several opportunities to leave the town with her boyfriend but doesn't - even after a string of spiral-related deaths throughout this sleepy coastal town. The main character also has a severe case of 'Horror-protagonist-itus' and does things which normal people wouldn't do. Also the primary cast of characters that permeate the majority of the novel have little substance to them, and pretty much no character development. After a certain point, it just feels pointless to introduce a new character, since anyone with half a brain knows that that character will be dead by the end of the chapter. My biggest gripe with the characters is that, from my recollection, only two, both minor, are introduced after the first couple chapters that don't die by the end of the chapter. While I'm on this topic, let's talk about the characters. ![]() I guess that format is somewhat inevitable when reading a serialised manga. Like, I get it, the town is cursed by the spiral. Admittedly, it does eventually pick up, but when it finally did, I was beginning to lose interest. I think the reason I finished the manga so quickly was partially due to me wanting to keep reading so I could get to a point where the plot actually advances. And the episodes aren't in themselves badly done, and they fulfil their purpose of increasing the reader's feeling that this town is bad news (a feeling we get in the very first chapter), but at a certain point it feels repetitive. It's basically just a series of episodes of weird shit relating to spirals. For the first half of the book, the plot more-or-less doesn't progress. And the manga does little to subvert the expectations you would have from knowing that (though I don't really blame it for doing that). When reading this, I didn't really have an idea about what to expect outside of 'Lovecraftian horror involving spirals'. Unlike the visual element, I do have a couple issues with it, however. And that's without talking about the actual body horror that Ito uses, which, drawn in this art-style, is some of the best depictions of visual horror I've ever seen. It has the same 'familiar-but-something-not-quite-right' vibe as Uncanny Valley animation. The result is this unsettling feeling, even when nothing creepy is happening. Junji Ito's art style is acutely distinct instead of the traditional pristine, big-eyed manga/anime characters you expect, Uzumaki's characters are drawn with a degree of realism you don't usually see in anime/manga. Uzumaki would be nowhere near the quality it is if it were in prose or some other medium- comic book is the perfect form for this story. In my opinion, this is the jewel in the crown for this manga. Being both a weeb and a Lovecraft fan, people irl and online have been constantly telling me to read it.įirstly, the art. I've probably been familiar with Ito's works for years now, and I owned Uzumaki for over a year before I actually read it in the past couple days. In addition, Kirie's relationship with Shuichi is often described as heartwarming, but the manga didn't go into much detail about why thus, it could be improved in the anime.Last night I finished the three-volume Manga series Uzumaki by Junji Ito. Since not only does protagonist Kirie's personality seem off-balance in the beginning, but as many exciting side characters are typically killed off abruptly, leaving readers unhappy, the anime might also focus on fleshing out both main and side characters. If the studio attempts to connect the stories from the start, the anime could break records even before touching its whole source material, considering it is simply on another level compared to previous adaptations. While this may be accepted in manga due to the prevalence of works that consist of interconnected short stories rather than a continuous narrative, the same cannot be said of anime. However, even manga readers often feel it falls short in that regard due to the narrative being broken due to the frequent shift between seemingly unconnected but thematically related short events. Typically, an anime is deemed short if it has eleven or twelve episodes, but what if it only has four? It will likely comprise small stories rather than a larger plot, which is probably what Uzumaki intends to do to see how well audiences will receive it.
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