Although he is one of the more popular horror manga artist, I feel as though Junji Ito isn't talked about enough in the general horror sphere. It is, for me, a tragedy. So, let me fix that.
Uzumaki, or Spiral, Is a manga series published from 1998 to 1999. It consists of 3 volumes, 20 chapters, and makes a good short read.
What is the story of Uzumaki, you may wonder. It's all in the title! Simply put, you will watch a man fall into an increasingly worrying obsession with spirals. He thinks the whole city of Kurouzu is getting "infected" by spirals. Soon enough, this simple obsession not only spreads, but also turns into one so strong, it can break the rules of physics and biology as we know them.
Yes, indeed, in Uzumaki, the enemy isn't a serial killer, a demon, or even people's psyche. In Uzumaki, the enemy is the spiral shape itself. The grass becomes spirals, hair becomes spirals, the sky becomes spirals, you may even end up becoming a spiral... who knows? Maybe the real Uzumaki is the spirals we made along the way.
Uzumaki follows an unsettling story of a city slowly spiraling out of control. The characters cannot fight the enemy as much as they try to delay their fate and escape as far as the ever changing structure of their city allows them. For yes, even architecture becomes a spiral, even the geography itself becomes a spiral. Are you a spiral too yet?
But story isn't the only asset this manga has. The art of Ito's pencil stroke was and remains something of a kind. In a scene, he shows his talent at drawing beautiful sceneries and people. In the next, he draws stuff straight out of nightmares, forever printing the image of the horrors of the spiral into your head. Some scenes I still see in front of me, even though it has been a while since my last read.
The ending, for me, is the most powerful part of the story. It gave me a feeling I can never forget, that overshadows even the horrors of the previous chapters. But I won't say anymore, I'll let you find out for yourself.
In short, Uzumaki is a memorable story of cosmic horror, which Junji Ito's masterful art only makes even more so memorable and even more so deeply unsettling. It is, in my humble opinion, a must read.
Sorry for my english, it's not my first language, so I may have made many mistakes.