Uzumaki

Uzumaki is a landmark long-form horror manga by Japanese cartoonist Junji Ito. The simplified Chinese edition was published by New Star Press in 2020, translated by Mu Di, as part of the "Midnight Library" series. The story is set in Kurozu-cho, a small town nestled between mountains and water: high school girl Kirie Goshima has lived there all her life, and her childhood friend and boyfriend Shuichi Saito has just returned from school in a neighboring town. Shuichi realizes the town seems cursed by a "living spiral"—his father is obsessed with spiral shapes and behaves more and more strangely. Before long, bizarre phenomena spread from individuals to the whole town: people develop spiral-shaped scars, hair curls into whirlpools, bodies twist and slow down like snails, and even pottery in the kiln, typhoons, swarms of mosquitoes, lighthouses, and the umbilical cords of fetuses are drawn into the same pattern. The townspeople begin collecting spirals, worshipping them, and then devouring one another in fear. Kirie and Shuichi try several times to escape, only to find the power of the spiral is far beyond human ability to break free of. The book unfolds through a series of short-story-like episodes that finally converge on the terminal collapse of Kurozu-cho as a whole; the imagery is oppressive and cold, making it one of the most recognizable works in the history of horror manga.