Uzumaki

A classic horror for a reason. I picked up the manga after watching the film adaption, and loved it.

Surreal, calm horror at its best. Fantastic art and situations.

What could I possibly say about Junji Ito’s works that have not already been said? He is a master at taking bizarre or mundane ideas and turning them into a creeping horror with his fantastic art style. This collection of stories about this doomed town and the people who live in it initially feels disconnected and disparate, but ultimately built up into a suitably Lovecraftian conclusion. If you are interested in horror manga and have not yet tried out this book, do yourself a favor and check it out.

An absolute gem of cosmic horror. Junji Ito manages spectacularily to hold the mood throughout the entire book. It starts weird and gets just weirder, presenting the reader with unsettling things one after another, without ever feeling stale or somehow forced. I really enjoyed the ending.

For any fans of H.P. Lovecraft, and I kinda found something similar here as in Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic, which I completed just recently, in that regular people get caught in something inexplicable and alien, looking for answers and closure.

first off I'd strongly advise against reading this (or any of Junji Ito's works, probably) if body horror is a big problem for you. that said, Uzumaki is really good! the art is amazingly done, and the slow escalation from relatively self-contained (and occasionally kind of silly) spiral-based phenomena to... the stuff that happens at the end... is just fantastic.