J-horror with Uzumaki by Junji Ito

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For this weeks reading I decided to read a manga I had been meaning to read for a long time now. I read Uzumaki by Junji Ito. Junji Ito is seen by a lot of people as the master of master horror. His ability to give the reader the feeling of absolute confusion and never giving any of his secrets away, leaving the reader just as lost as the characters makes his stories fascinating and horrifying. He also writes about concepts never shown anywhere else in the world. For example, Uzumaki is all about spirals and how a town descends into madness from the supernatural fascination that come with them. I find it amazing that he can take something so mundane and everyday into something of nightmares. I think thats something that really special about j-horror is the lack of tropes/trying to find the story into a specific kind of horror. With western horror, theres just slashers, witches, zombies, demons, ect. But with j-horror, they look past just simple monsters and dive deep into what really makes people uncomfortable. I have not been afraid of any western horror that I've ever seen but reading Uzumaki did actually give me a feeling of uncomfortableness and fear. I think a lot of it comes from how nonsensical it is and the unknown. We never know why the spirals take over the town and what it actually is. There is no explanation, it just happens. Making us feel that it could happen anywhere and to anyone.

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