In a dimly lit forest, on a moonless night, a witch emerges from the shadows, carrying a flickering lantern. Her hunched figure casts eerie shadows on the twisted trees that surround her. With each step, her gnarled staff taps the ground, creating an unsettling rhythm that echoes through the stillness of the night. The witch's flickering lantern seems to hold a mysterious power, its pale light wavering as if it were alive. It illuminates her path, guiding her through the dense undergrowth and revealing the hidden secrets of the woodland. Its erratic glow dances across her weathered face, emphasizing the lines of wisdom etched upon it.
Uzumaki curse
Uzumaki translates as the spiral, or the swirl. The story is about a Japanese town that is suffering under a supernatural curse in which its inhabitants become obsessed about spirals they see everywhere, in nature and so on, leading to extreme obsession or extreme fear and grotesque body transformations. A horror manga by arguably Japan’s foremost horror manga artist (at least in the West), Junji Ito, and this being arguably his most popular work.
This is proper, afraid-to-turn-the-page horror. I thought to myself: what could be so scary about spirals? Ito made them scary by using a lot of psychological tricks and highlighting the human experiences. Here is one chapter I will talk about as an example: chapter two concerns the mother of one of the main characters and she developed a deep phobia for spirals because she hears her husband’s ghost in them. She’s taken to the hospital when she cuts off her hair and the tips of her fingers because there are spirals in her fingerprints. The chapter is basically a panic chase for her son to keep his mother from finding out that one of the inner ear bones, the cochlea, is a spiral. It ends horrifically. It was one of the most effective little horror stories that I’ve ever read, perfectly set up and written.
There are 20 chapters in Uzumaki and for the first half of them, each one tells a little contained spiral-related horror story in this town, where things keep getting worse and worse. Ito’s imagination is really impressive, and so is the quality of his horror writing. Each chapter is well written with a good setup, an effective building of dread, and because of the unfamiliar subject matter you never have a good idea where the story is going. You are effectively a passenger on the rollercoaster of Ito’s imagination. Finally he pounces on you the big moment of horror in a page-wide panel and it is unsettling every time. There is imagery in here that really creeped me out. The art style plays an important role here too. Ito draws his stories in a really clean, meticulous style, full of straight lines for all the houses and furniture. I think he did this on purpose to make the environment feel realistic and for the spiral shapes stand out more. And perhaps the contrast between the straight lines of our artificial environments and spirals as a natural shape is a comment on how we have removed ourselves from nature, and this curse is nature taking revenge.
There are two main characters, a young couple, and most events we see from the perspective of the girl. They are both curiously passive about all that is happening and this could be the result of a general madness that has fallen over the town. The girl’s passivity is tied to hope, she never loses hope that things will be ok, and that seems to halt her from acting, whereas her boyfriend’s passivity is tied to resignation. He has the clearer idea of what is going on but through that has also lost all will to keep fighting against it.
Later in the book, so many horrific events have been occurring that the whole town descends into madness. The separate little stories of the first chapters now start to combine as pieces of worldbuilding that Ito has been creating, like puzzle pieces finally clicking together. Some of the horror here is strange in an arresting way that made me giggle in response, and some of it is viscerally, disgustingly wrong in a way that makes me doubt my own capacity to digest this stuff. In horror fashion, the situation becomes inescapable. The spiral itself as a visual object tends to draw you in when you look at it, and Ito stretches that to include the loss of control and loss of autonomy and builds the fear on that. The town itself becomes impossible to exit as it tries to turn itself into a spiral and gets decimated in all sorts of ways.
I was fascinated from start to finish. Ito has a great imagination and towards the end he takes a lot of disparate elements from the earlier chapters and lets them build upon each other. He drives the concept so far into territories of desperation that he is showing things on the page that you’ve never seen before anywhere and you are presented with something unique, and I was always curious about what was going to happen next. Not all the material in the book plays a key role in the conclusion and some chapters seem like dead ends in the story as we get to the end. So, looking back, the plot is a bit loose and meandering, but the journey is fantastic.
Why You Need to Read the Horror Masterpiece UZUMAKI
Last week, we learned that Adult Swim would be producing an anime miniseries based on horror manga legend Junji Ito’s Uzumaki. The teaser looked like Ito’s startling drawings come to life which made us very excited for the anime next year. But if you’ve never read—or even heard of—Uzumaki, you may not understand why it’s such an important work. Something of the Watchmen of horror manga, Uzumaki combines Ito’s penchant for disgusting body horror, the perversion of ordinary life, and massive cosmic phenomena. It’s the most perfect epic of its creator’s psyche. And here’s why you should read it.
Uzumaki is Japanese for “spiral,” the crux of the entire piece. Ito originally wrote the story for the serialized publication Big Spirit Comics between 1998 and 1999. The story, as many Ito stories do, concerns a small suburban community facing strange, inexplicable, and ever-growing supernatural forces. This force is simply a spiral. The shape. Spirals are everywhere in nature, but slowly the town’s fixation on them manifests more and more spirals. They infect the town like a plague, one that distorts people’s minds as well as their bodies.
The beauty of Uzumaki is how Ito starts small and builds. The opening two chapters—known as “The Spiral Obsession”—have a sense of dread throughout but nothing actually happens for a bit. Our lead character Kirie walks home from school one day to find her reclusive boyfriend Shuichi’s father hunched over, staring at a wall. We quickly find out that he’s staring at a snail, its shell in a perfect spiral pattern. Seemingly innocuous. But Shuichi’s father is obsessed with spirals. He talks about them constantly, locks himself in his office drawing them and sculpting them and collecting them. It worries Shuichi, and he wants Kirie to leave town with him. But of course they don’t.
Shuichi’s father has cracked. Everything from the bathtub drain to noodles wrapped around his chop sticks reminds him of spirals. Eventually, Shuichi’s mother throws all of the spirals away and his father loses it entirely. He no longer needs to look at spirals because the spirals are in him. He starts spinning his eyes around independently, later Kirie sees him make a massive spiral out of his own tongue. Finally, Shuichi relays the horrible account of finding his father dead, inside a round box, having spiraled himself to death.
And that’s literally just the first two chapters, folks. The spiral obsession infects everything in this little town. And it’s through the seemingly endless terrifying possibilities of the spiral that Ito enacts some of his most repulsive scenarios. A girl has a scar on her head that slowly grows into a spiral before the spiral, now a vortex, engulfs her whole head; a perpetually late student begins to turn into a human-sized snail, complete with spiral shell; a lighthouse lamp melts and the lens turns into a massive, fiery spiral; you don’t want to know what happens to newborn babies’ umbilical cords.
Chapter after chapter, Ito employs his trademark ability to create scares on a page turn. Throughout the book, Ito will end a page with a tiny panel of a character seeing something and reacting in horror and disbelief. Then it’s incumbent upon the reader to flip the page. The choice to scare oneself rather than have the scare foisted upon one. And almost every time, the thing the character sees is a full-page, supremely detailed nightmare image that the reader will have a hard time forgetting any time soon.
As Uzumaki continues, the vignettes get less about body horror and more about the supremely cosmically upsetting implications of this unchecked phenomenon. The sea surrounding the town begins to have constant whirlwinds and typhoons; boats can no longer arrive or leave. Airplanes can’t fly overhead because the sky is full of tiny tornadoes. The town is subsumed by spirals and eventually everyone has to live in bungalows in the center of town; the ground itself overtaken with spirals.
Just my telling you what happens doesn’t do justice to the degree of mind-bending terror Ito conveys through his art and pacing. It’s a horrifying tale of humanity breaking down, but it’s also a supremely sad story. A community falls apart, afraid of each other and the world outside. And like the best cosmic horror, there’s really no explanation. It’s an infection that erodes everything it touches, but we have no idea why it happens.
In Uzumaki, as with all of his works, Junji Ito finds horror in familiar places through the perversion of mundane events. Everyone’s had an earache; not everyone realizes their ear canals are trying to kill them. It’s disturbing, disgusting, but undeniably compelling. Uzumaki is a work completely unlike anything that’s come before and it deserves a look, whether you traditionally enjoy manga or not. And once you read that, read his graphic novel Gyo about a mysterious horde of undead fish with metal legs powered by an odor known as the “death stench.” Now that’s an image that’ll spiral its way into your brain.
Featured Image: Viz Media
Kyle Anderson is the Editor at Large for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
The Spiral
The Spiral is a mysterious and malevolent entity or force that brutally wipes out the entire population of Kurôzu-Cho every few centuries or millenia, at irregular intervals.
The identity and nature of the Spiral are unknown, though it does seem to be sentient to an extent, as shown when it repeatedly takes an interest in Kirie (and to a lesser extent, Shuichi). It may or may not originate from the City of Spirals underneath Kurôzu-Cho. Whether the Spiral is a curse, an infection, a being, or a force, is completely unknown.
It is seen able to infect, and then control the minds and bodies of humans. From what is shown in the manga, the Spiral can only be seen, heard, or felt, by people who are cursed (with the exception of Shuichi Saito).
It is confirmed that the Spiral only affects Kurôzu-Cho, and follows a pattern when killing off the town: first come the "random" deaths and disappearances, and "strange" cases of obsession with the pattern, then come more severe effects such as multiple hurricanes and tornadoes, then the town becomes an inescapable pile of rubble, until finally, Kurôzu-Cho is rebuilt as a giant spiral row-house and everyone inside is sucked into the City of Spirals.
In the movie, the spiral is shown as being less sentient than in the manga, and targets mainly Kirie. It also has a lesser effect on the plot than in the manga. The pattern of deaths is limited to the first stage; loosely spiral-related deaths and disappearances, followed by a huge wave of deaths which wipe out the town. It does not seem to be able to forcibly keep people inside the town.
Its erratic glow dances across her weathered face, emphasizing the lines of wisdom etched upon it. The flickering lantern is more than just a source of light; it is a symbol of the witch's ancient knowledge and connection to the spiritual realm. It is said that the lantern contains the soul of a long-departed ancestor, channeling their wisdom and energy.
Abilities [ ]
Being a nearly omnipotent force, the Spiral can control the minds and bodies of humans and animals. It can also bend nature and the laws of physics to its own will, as it demonstrates constantly. As demonstrated in chapters 3( the Scar) and 20 (Galaxies), the Spiral can also grant humans supernatural abilities before killing them. As also demonstrated in chapter 20, it is capable of telepathic communication with humans, and may be present throughout the entire universe and capable of controlling entire galaxies. It can also deform and mutate humans into humanoid snails
The Spiral can control the weather, atmosphere, and air pressure inside Kurozu-Cho, as well as the ocean within the town's limits. It can use stones and bricks to produce a scorching light (see chapter 9). As shown in chapters 14 (Butterflies) and onwards, the Spiral is able to effectively close Kurozu-Cho from being entered or exited.
In the movie, the Spiral is significantly less powerful; it seems less skilled at infecting people's minds than their bodies, is not sapient in any way and thus cannot communicate, cannot affect the abilities of humans, and is confined entirely to Kurozu-Cho with no implication of controlling other galaxies. It can control the clouds, but not the rest of the weather or air pressure, and can only control the water in Dragonfly Pond as opposed to the ocean. Additionally, the Spiral seems not to be able to control animals or plants; only humans. It is also incapable of forcibly making the town impossible to leave.
The flickering light represents the constant struggle between darkness and enlightenment, a reminder of the delicate balance that she must maintain in her magical practice. As she traverses deeper into the forest, the witch's presence evokes a sense of both fear and reverence among the woodland creatures. They pause in their nocturnal activities, their eyes fixated on her as if sensing the power that she possesses. The flickering lantern seems to draw them closer, as if offering guidance and protection to those who seek it. In the midst of her journey, the witch comes upon a small clearing, bathed in the soft glow of the full moon. She pauses, her flickering lantern casting an ethereal light that dances among the trees. In this moment, she feels at one with the natural world around her, connected to the ancient forces that govern it. With a wave of her hand, the flickering lantern's glow intensifies, illuminating the clearing with a burst of otherworldly light. The spirits of the forest gather, drawn to the energy she emanates. Together, they perform a ritual of healing and renewal, using the flickering lantern as a conduit for their collective power. As dawn approaches, the witch extinguishes the flickering lantern, its dim light fading into nothingness. She leaves the clearing, her purpose fulfilled for the night. The forest returns to its stillness, but the memory of the flickering lantern lingers, a testament to the witch's presence and the magic she possesses. In the days to come, whispers of the witch with a flickering lantern spread throughout the land. Some fear her, associating her with dark enchantments and malevolence. Others revere her, seeking her wisdom and guidance in times of need. But in the heart of the forest, the witch continues her solitary journey, her flickering lantern a symbol of her eternal connection to the mystical world that surrounds her..
Reviews for "The Witch's Light: Mysterious Tales of the Flickering Lantern"
1. Robert - 2/5 stars
I was really excited to read "Witch with a flickering lantern" as I am a fan of supernatural stories. However, I found this book to be quite disappointing. The plot was weak and predictable, with very little suspense or excitement. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked depth, making it difficult to connect with them on any level. Additionally, the writing style was clumsy and often awkward. Overall, I was not impressed with this book and would not recommend it to others.
2. Lisa - 2/5 stars
I had high hopes for "Witch with a flickering lantern", but it failed to live up to my expectations. The story felt repetitive and dragged on for too long. The main character lacked development and her actions seemed forced and unrealistic. The dialogue was also stilted and unconvincing, making it difficult to engage with the characters or become invested in the plot. I was left feeling unsatisfied and uninterested in the outcome. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book.
3. Michael - 1/5 stars
I found "Witch with a flickering lantern" to be a complete waste of time. The story lacked originality and felt like a poor imitation of other supernatural novels. The pacing was slow and the plot had no clear direction. Additionally, the writing was bland and lacked any sort of personality. I struggled to finish this book as it failed to hold my attention. I would not recommend it to anyone looking for an engaging and well-written supernatural tale.