be the chubby kid? that's a snailing. bully the chubby kid? that's a snailing. smash the eggs of the nice gay snail couple down the way? oh, you'd better believe that's a snailing.
Suichi is suffering a spiral the entire time - we witness him spiralling into *madness*. He starts depressed and paranoid and just keeps getting worse.
This got me thinking: the “spiral into madness” or “downward spiral” phrase in general work in English, but does the spiral translate into Japanese or other languages? Do other languages have that phrase too, or would it only work in an English interpretation?
In my opinion, this is the metaphor of the whole series. Ideas causing people to spiral down, and ultimately those ideas making a whole community spiral out of control.
@@KeitieKalopsia I thought of this too! It made me iamgine they MUST have turns of phrase around spirals, but they'd probably be grammatically structured different? But like many people and culturues can see a whirlpool or a tornado and come up with "Spiralling down into something" as an idea, so I suspect it's not uncommon.
I think Shuichi isn't patient zero he studies outside of town, he is the only one with an outsiders perspective, stuff that he grew up with, stuff all others are exposed to 24/7, he realizes those aren't normal Kirie on the other hand studies in the town, just like everybody else, stuff like this is may be weird at times, but it's the only home she's ever known. If anything, the illness he's spreading is awareness, nobody pays the weirdness much attention until he points out how abnormal it is.
Yeah, it's heavily implied throughout the story that part of the curse is "twisting" people's minds into forgetting or disregarding all the supernatural stuff happening, and people like Shuichi who leaves the town on a semi-regular basis is able to recognize that something's wrong. There are three things that basically confirms that to me, two of which happen in issue #2, the other is more an ongoing thing; the first is in Jack-in-the-Box chapter when Kirie's friend tells her that people have started doing live burials instead of cremation, and Kirie asks her why. Kirie, however, should know why, considering that she has witnessed first-hand how every time someone gets cremated, it creates a spiralling cloud of smoke over the whole town, which then gets sucked into the pond behind her house. The pond where her father got the clay he used to create pottery containing the souls of the people who perished, which should make the whole smoke spiral thing that much clearer in her mind. And yet she expresses complete obliviousness as to why people have forgone cremation in favor of live burials. The second one is in the Lighthouse chapter. Everyone knows there's something wrong with the lighthouse; it has started up again when it hasn't been in use for many years, and its light make dizzy and eventually walk in perpetual circles. A group of men does get sent to check it out, but nobody cares to investigate what happened when they just disappear. Even after Kirie escapes the lighthouse, having found the dead bodies of the men who were sent to investigate, and can explain exactly what happened, the only thing we ever hear is that there is talk about getting rid of the lighthouse. It never happens though. In chapter 17, you can catch the lighthouse in a panel on one of the first pages; the black building is almost in center and stands out prominently on the white paper. Mind you, the lighthouse chapter happens long before the storms destroy the town, so it's not that the town was planning it and suddenly needed to tend to something more pressing; Kirie spends "half the summer" in the hospital after her injuries in the lighthouse chapter, and yes, politician can take long when it comes to stuff like that, but they haven't even started by the time the storms hit, and they do nothing to even cart off the area to prevent more deaths. The third is Kirie herself; at the start of the manga she is disbelieving of Shuichi's story and rejects his idea of leaving town together. However, even as she gets more and more evidence of supernatural occurances, she never brings up the idea of leaving town again. Except for one point; the last chapter of issue #1. Kirie's hair gets infected with the curse and is both isolating and slowly killing her, and she starts wishing that she had taken Shuichi up on his offer to leave, but now her body is too weak to leave town. And yet, after she is saved, after she realizes that she could die from this curse, that Shuichi was right and they need to leave before it's too late, she never brings up leaving again. And yes, you could argue that she doesn't want to leave without her family, but she never says so. She doesn't bring up moving away to her family, she doesn't tell Shuichi that she can't leave without her family. She just stays in town even as things continue to escalate.
I think Kirie and Shuichi being "boringly comfortable" with each other is a rather cool way of showing they're in love tbh. Like, they're just content existing near one another and i can relate :]
Yup, it def felt like they were just really familiar with each other after most likely having grown up together. It wasn’t like they were fresh lovebirds.
As ive come to live with my bf of 3 years, i can def relate to Kirie and Shuichi more and more. I love Uzumaki and i esp love the defiant ending that they share. They were truly the only ones in love with each other in my eyes
Same! Especially since the things happening in the story are what they are. Shuichi is very obviously having a very bad time as the guy who thought that something was horribly wrong from the start and keeps getting proven right, and from at the very latest Medusa onward Kirie is in an adjacent boat to that concept. Any time where they're together and they can just sit with each other and just _exist_ is a testament to how strongly they care for and take comfort in each other. They are goals. The only non-enviable thing about their relationship is that they are in fact doomed by the narrative since they're in a cosmic horror story where there can be no survivors.
i didn't even understand they were supposed to be in a relationship when i read the manga. maybe something got lost in translation but i thought they were simply neighbors who barely knew each other, they were so reserved
Can I be a shuichi apologist for a sec. Really his main flaw is just being depressed, which is understandable given the situation. When he "snubbed" Kirie during the hair chapter, he was leaving to get the knife and plan. He couldve told her what his plan was in advance, but that would risk getting hypnotized by the hair or alerting it to his plans. Idk it makes sense to me. Also he chews her out during the storm episode because he warned her ahead of time and she went out anyway. Yeah from Kirie's perspective its crazy to think that the storm is targeting her. But crazy shit has been happening all the time and Shuichi is running himself ragged with worry. I have no justification for the gravedigging chapter. He was crazy lol
Yeah I don’t get the Shuichi criticism. He’s consistently proven right again and again, whatever that means, and he’s devoted whatever is left of his life to making sure Kirie is safe. She’s all he cares about. He’s not the best at showing affection but like.. have you not noticed what’s going on around him? Even at the very end, when he finally gives up, he waits for Kirie to find him so that he can tell her first. He refuses to succumb until he knows she’s okay and he can tell her in person. And then when they lie down together they coil up completely, like only the couple who dove into the sea did. It’s pretty romantic if you ignore the “horror” part of the horror manga. It also tracks with men in Japan not being socially allowed to show the depth of their emotion and care for their loved ones, so they endlessly provide without expecting anything in return. I like Shuichi a lot.
Nah you are 100% in the right, either Kirie and the rest of the town are all morons or the spiral is putting a veil over their eyes. Dude has a 100% track record of spotting spiral bullshit and everyone goes "I know you were right literally every single time but it can't be it THIS time"
Idk I thought shuichi was like the voice of reason and kirie just needed to catch up with what was going on around her, and she did but eventually it was too late
I think it’s sweet that he suggested to dig up the grave. If I was scared that someone who died was hounting me ot something and someone suggested to dig up their body and put a stage through their heart, I’d be weirded out but also, awww, that’s so considerate
i am a firm shuichi defender! i get why he gets frustrated with her because she acts so dense after actively seeing these weird things and dismissing them. shuichi stays just for her because he has no one else & where else would he go? i love kirie but i would’ve ran away with him & avoided the whole thing
Same here. I was super frustrated with Kirie as the other guys as well since she like all the others seem to forget the spooky shit that happened the other day and acts likes it's normal and Shuichi freaking out because he has no idea how will he able to save them and take them out of town when they won't even leave in the first place
Too real. If I would be Kirie, I would leave the town at least After chapter 3. When I see that my friend is "eating" a guy and turns into a Spiral, i would leave fast
Cochlea not only aids in hearing. It serves a crucial functionality of balancing oneself. It literally has fluids that lets brain know that the body is at balance and thus do not need to adjust one's position. In other words, if cochlea is damaged, your body will feel unbalanced and feel the utmost motion sickess even when lying down, completely still. And being sick to that degree literally feels your mind and body is spiraling
I've heard of people that obtain head injury from ( usually) motorcycle accidents having a hard time recovering from vertigo because of the difficulty of measuring or restoring cochlear damage. It's really quite frightening because I don't think there's much that can be done, other than hoping the body just heals and recovers 😢
@@cherylmaden5989 vertigo sickness is the worst. I get it from time to time and it's always almost impossible to function because you always feel like you are falling down from a great height even when you are standing still. Shuichi's mom's chapter probably scared me the most because I couldn't imagine having that feeling 24/7 while trapped on a bed.
The snails could fall under obsession as well. The first boy who turned was thought of as lazy and sloth-like, someone who probably would've preferred to be home. After the first snail-boy occurred, the bullies would probably feel guilty and fearful and would want to hide. I think it makes perfect sense that a person obsessed with being at home might eventually manifest said obsession through becoming a creature that takes their house wherever they go -- a snail. Kirie's little brother, stuck under the collapsed house, probably wished nothing more to be back home. Wanting to go home and giving up often overlap though, think "I don't want to do this anymore, I just want to go home".
Kinda reminds me of sweet home they voice a desire and the virus changes them to fit said desire only in it if the virus couldn’t understand it like wanting to watch an upcoming anime that’s almost impossible to watch with all the chaos it doesn’t have a hive mind to all other versions of themselves so it can’t call for whoever the creator or people who helped in the anime for the manga when they succumb However it seems that the spiral needs to be accepted in some way either it’s entirety or it’s concept or give the hosts their most desired form
Why the Shuichi hate? He is the only one to actually ackknowledge that things are wrong, yet for most of the stories people ignore him or try to talk him out of it, as if he is not right the whole time and things are not freaky as hell. He also tries to convince Kirie to leave multiple times, but she refuses, so he stays to save her.
I was wondering about that too. As a matter of fact. The outsider perspective is Shuichi and that the readers is him. Only the readers and Shuichi is aware of the happenings in kurozucho. this is why when I consume media I always do not immerse myself in it's world and put myself in the shoes of the character. I am an observer and I pay attention to it's story and details and my opinions about a character is only counted by the end of the series. This is how I write my characters too. From the eyes of the observer that they cannot see. I used to write for my publication in my college usually about short stories of people's lives viewed from the perspective of a stranger
I’d be a lil weird too if some freaky curse killed my parents and the only other person I care most about is too lost in the curse’s hold to run away with me
Yeah. I think my man's just depressed or smth (probably why he was patient zero as in the video it was both mentioned he might have been the first to catch the spiral disease and depressed people are susceptible to the disease. He's prob not evil though as just like how depression doesn't mean someone's evil or make someone evil, dude's just a bystander to the whole thing who happens to be depressed
Kirie and Shuichi are the final pieces of the puzzle that is the Spiral. They seem to be mostly ignored by the influence of it, Kirie only getting affected against her will out of nowhere. Kirie is the observer and Shuichi the omen. It's only when they give up that the spiral ends and starts. My interpretation is that the "ritual" needs two people to fill these roles before the cycle can restart anew.
I think this interpretation is maybe a bit literal and ignoring the symbolic and thematic elements to try to create a more literal narrative. To me uzumaki is very similar thematically to the book 100 years of solitude, as they both seem to explore this idea of the cyclical nature of time and the ways in which we repeat patterns that inevitably lead to our downfall. Junji Ito in general tends to explore horror in the form of body horror, a terror is rooted in the fact that there is something inside of ourselves that is our undoing that we can't control. I think uzumaki in some ways is the zenith of that idea by it being human nature itself that leads us to our own downfall. Not our bodies, but ourselves
I absolutely agree, especially since the radiation sickness idea in the title, which hints at a metaphorical reading, is basically clickbait. I feel like I just watched this long video only to get “this story about a town being infected by a spiral… is about an infection.”
I always imagined the "curse" in Uzumaki as some kind of mimetic hazard. Once a few people start noticing it, it's like the ruins underground awaken more and try to drag more people into the curse. It starts out small with the grass, clouds, and vibes of the town, but as more people notice it, it just keeps bringing about weirder phenomena until everyone kinda just accepts it and becomes one with whatever is down below. Something like that. It would make sense (to me at least) that some are affected and some aren't, and it can be reversed, because some have more mental fortitude than others. And also Shuichi being able to "spread" the curse since he always mentions something before it actually happens. Or, the whole area is one big organism that can directly impact what happens to itself, including whatever is living on it. Like flesh pit national park, but with more supernatural methods. The creature can somehow make spiral effects that eventually draw the inhabitants to madness, eventually "feeding" themselves to the creature. Then it just repeats that every few hundreds of years.
@@Fluffkitscripts I definitely agree. An unexplainable horror beyond anyone's comprehension is always more interesting in my opinion, and explaining it all away ruins the fear of the unknown (which arguably is the biggest fear of most people). But since the video was spitballing ideas of what could actually be happening, I just threw out some of my own. The two things we know for sure is that there's a cause, and an agent acting out said cause, and whatever all the details in between are are still fun to speculate despite the frivolity of it. Ultimately, the story itself seems to be more symbolic than anything to be taken literally, whether that be obsession, sentimentality, depression, or whatever. It's all up to how the reader wants to see it.
The problem is for Japanese society is that stuff is different, like the bystander effect is apparently MUCH stronger in japan. It's apparently super common for everyone to just stand around and do nothing about the bullying. Also i'm not sure about the CPS situation, it's just... a really common thing in manga and stuff that children can just live perfectly alone without CPS intervention...
I have heard about how different the education system is in Japan. The importance of education is taken to another level from like the time kids enter middle school from what I recall. Like it determines so much about how someone lives. Kids will live in different areas of Japan in order to go to a good school. It’s like some of them are college students moving out of their parent’s place to pursue something. Also apparently the bullying might be bad because of the stressful environment schools make. I heard teachers don’t do anything about it because the bullied person is like a sacrificial lamb. Everyone takes all their stress and just piles it onto some poor kid. Of course this should all be taken with a huge helping of salt because I don’t live there and I only retain information about video essays and autistic interest in random things.
@@jaydinotjd The "sacrificial lamb" as you put it is a real psychological tactic that, actually, is also used by the military. The drill Saergents aren't just rude for the hell of it. They act like that so that the rest of the Unit "unite" against them, if you will. Strengthen the units bonds against a common enemy. Bullying in school works a similar way. Have one collective victim, and all the other students bond better. They have one common "enemy" to unite against.
Honestly, most people I know have been bullied, myself included, and no one stepped it. Not a single person. It's a pretty common thing, they probably don't want to be the next target.
@@toolatetothestory the military using psychological tactics to mentally destroy and then rebuild people into soldiers is one of the most military things I’ve heard of aside from preying on the poor and vulnerable and bombing civilian cities, waiting for first responders, and then bombing it again.
@@jaydinotjd Not mentally destroy. It's essentially just... a team building tactic. And schools use it too, evidently, as seen by schools never doing f"ckall against bullying.
i don't get why you diss suichi so much when in fact, he's the first one who noticed the bad things happening and was convincing kirie to leave as early as possible. his reactions are justifiable because of how kirie's been so nonchalant all this time, but he still keeps helping her out through all this shite.
One thing that a lot of people miss is that Uzumaki is...extremely Japanese. Shuichi and Kirie's relationship is super Japanese, like they're very clearly in love? It just doesn't look like an American relationship. A further example is that your interpretation of "curse" is super SUPER Western; Uzumaki is a great example of the much broader Eastern concept of a "curse." In Eastern culture these are often situational, based on place and time rather than any active participation. Curses root in places and objects as often as people. Curses aren't exclusively a concept of punishment, and to claim that's the only way they work is really eurocentric and filtered through a very Christian interpretation.
I was born a christian though I am not one but in my country we have a different type of christian belief. Far from western Christianity because our beliefs is close to the jewish faith and Inanimate worship. Most of our curse related stuff if either a hereditary thing, something that you touched, you bad mouthed a dead person, you kicked a tree in a place you never lived in, offended some mountain god or that you pointed at a seemingly haunted place and that a spirit will take offense to thaf
That's pretty much my only critique of this video. I grew up loving Japanese culture, and the first half of the story-recap is a very western interpretation. Asking about social services or calling the police is a very western thing that not many small Japanese towns have. 😅 They exist, yes, but Junji Ito's work often takes place in a small town off the map where not many amenities we take for granted exist. Also commenting on the love between Shuichi and Kirei seeming boring; Japanese love dynamics aren't generally dramatic unless it's the focus of the story. Two people existing comfortably together is a pretty common thing, especially in highschool stories not focusing on relationship drama.
Clicked because I thought the reading of Uzumaki as a story about a town succumbing to radiation sickness as a potentially interesting one, but was let down by what felt like really specious, and like you said, eurocentric points.
I was waiting to see this kind of comment. As someone from a non-western country, I agree. The whole curse bit just came off super western. In my country, places can be cursed, land, houses, objects and it's not necessarily about wrong-doing or punishment. A curse can spring from any ill-feeling whether that's anger, maliciousness, guilt, pain, hurt, obsession etc. There's not necessarily a morality to curses. Someone doesn't have to be doing wrong or deserve punishment to be affected or trapped by a curse. I also think that there is a strong religious/theistic interpretation to this story, it's simply not a Christian one and I was disappointed she didn't branch out at any other religious possibilities other than Adam and Eve and Eden.
It almost sounds like you have a very christian view on the Uzumaki book. I feel like the story kinda have a nihilistic "nothing matters, anyone in a close proximity to the underground spiral opening is cursed because of the horror. It doesn't matter if you are 'good' or 'bad', because everyone is fucked anyways." One of the reasons why i find it so terrifying and great at once. The christian "good and evil" debate is very simplistic and doesn't take human nature, or just nature's cold empty void in to consideration. The best thing about Lovcraftian horror like Junji Ito is that there is no actual explanation for why something like that happenes to good, or at least decent people.
Kirie and Shuichi are probably one of my favorite anime/manga couples of all time. Idk why but they just do it for me, I love the way they care for one another and I just root for them so hard even tho I know it’s doomed.
Also you don’t actually talk about radiation sickness? Like your main theory was about disease, and those aren’t the same. I was really interested in hearing your theory on that bc I think it fits really well- the town is a cursed area, similar to areas affected by accidents involving radiation. Disease comes and goes with people, but the town in the story and contaminated areas are still “cursed” even when there are no people left. Unless the disease is in the water? Which would work too, since the dad gets the possessed clay from the pond, the city thing is at the bottom of a hole/well, and of course everyone drinks water lol. It’s interesting 😅 I would have liked to hear more about radiation sickness, like the title suggests. There’s just so much there !
Yeah I really like her videos and I know theyre not a very big channel, but I’m kind of disappointed that there was no radiation sickness talk. Even just one crackpot theory about it would’ve been nice. I love radiation horror stories.
same!! it's disappointing because focusing in on the town "making people sick" and giving shuichi a headache felt like it was building up to that, not to mention how easily hand-in-hand cosmic horror and radiation go (something destructive you can't perceive)...really felt like wasted potential
I worked as a sterile compounding pharmacy technician before applying to medical school. Glass IV bottles for normal saline were the norm up until the late 1960s when the plastic bags we see today were first brought to market and were quickly adopted worldwide by 1970. There are still exceptions for certain medications that get delivered as an infusion, often "piggybacking" with a standard fluid drip. Type 1, borosilicate, glass is the most widely used in the pharmaceutical industry because it's nonporous, heat resistant, non-reactive, and contents are kept completely sterile provided the container is intact and has not been opened. It helps extend shelf life and does not pose the risk of altering drugs or reagents like certain pastics can over time. Amber vial also prevent exposure to UV light which can affect the stability of many compounds commonly used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. Type 1 glass also meets standard safety requirements for most countries and most pharmaceutical companies operate in multiple countries.
@@player0ne16 Grimmelle mentioned in the bit with Shuichi's mum in the hospital on why her IV bag was made of glass, as it shattered when it was toppled onto the ground. Also, no need to be so negative, it's just an interesting comment!
@@player0ne16 I don't recall the time stamp, but one of the pannels shows the hospital using an old-fashioned IV set-up. The creator then asked if glass IV bottles are actually a thing. I'm also a weirdo who has a real passion for biology and medicine and jumps at any chance to nerd out for a bit.🤷♀️ Sorry. My rambling is worse right now because I'm recovering from surgery after breaking my right ankle in 3 places. I have not been allowed to leave the house for almost 5 weeks. RUclips comments and IG have literally been my only human interaction. (See what I mean?^^^😅)
I think it's criticizing the use of biological weapons during a war and its effects on innocent people, but I can definately see where you're coming from with the idea of it criticizing nuclear testing.
I always interpreted it as the natural world reacting to manmade pollution, climate change, and the exploitation and destruction of natural habitats. As an example, the real life phenomenon of the Caribbean having way too many jellyfish in it now, because rising temperatures make the water so hot in summer that coral reefs and fish which would control and compete with jellyfish are being boiled in their natural habitat. It’s a bottom-up collapse of the ecosystem, resulting in an explosion of jellyfish, which are naturally more heat-tolerant than fish.
In Japanese folklore, any inanimate object that reaches a certain age can become animated and gain a soul of its own. The town isn’t falling prey to a disease, the town and the area it’s in is a living being, and once it gains sentience, it begins trying to clear itself of the parasites, humans, that are draining its resources. Kirie’s father takes clay from the lake. The school teacher destroys eggs. The area Kirie and Shuichi end up in is essentially a central nervous system. The town is focused on Kirie because her and Shuichi are the 0.1% of germs that the disinfectant can’t kill. The repeated cycles are akin to getting a new strain of the flu every year
The Shuichi hate is really uncomfortable and annoying. A lot of it is illogical and completely misinterprets events. However, what really discomforts me is that Shuichi represents a lot of mentally ill traits, and seeing him be hated for those traits is frankly unpleasant.
Here's a list of everything shuichi had to go through throughout the story Watch his father become obsessed with spirals due to the town's curse until he himself became a spiral (something shuichi had to watch while being powerless to stop it) Having his girlfriend dismiss all his reasonable concerns over her and other's safety even when it is crystal clear that the town is cursed Having to care for his paranoid mother traumatized by the death of his father until she died (once again being powerless to stop it) Digging up a child's grave in order to help his girlfriend's paranoia over her stalker's death Being ostracized for being an outsider all throughout his life despite the fact he only wanted what was best for everyone
I completely agree. I think a lot of the Shuichi hate also comes from people who don’t actually read much Junji Ito. Literally none of his main characters have good endings, all of his characters are doomed from the very beginning, that’s kind of his thing.
I dont buy the patient zero or the carrier part of the theory. most of the review and the analisis ignored the line that explained that shuichi realizes how odd the city is because of being out of town most of the time. And how is it anoying that someone says that the city is cursed by spirals, then the spirals kill his father and his mother and keep apearing around town and infecting people, and then you see a spiral shape on something weird and this dude says "this might be part of the curse" its just him pointing out that there is a conecction and there is danger.
In defense of Shuichi essentially calling Kirie gullible at his dads funeral: "falling down the stairs" is often considered to be something people say to cover up more sinister circumstances in media. A bit like excusing a black eye by saying you tripped and hit the eye somehow to cover up domestic ab*se. Although the stairs thing much more likely to be meant literally than the black eye.
I think it's wild that you never even uttered the words "cosmic horror" in your analysis. I absolutely think of Uzumaki as being in the same tradition as H.P. Lovecraft stories. An unknowable god like thing just so happens to drive the whole town mad, then destroy it in ways the human mind can barely comprehend. I do think your reading of Shoichi as "patient zero" is interesting though. There's maybe something there.
how are you going to call it radiation-like without actually talking about radiation sickness, or mentioning the real life implications of radiation in japan? im not even saying your theory is wrong but i think your title is misleading when your theory actually surrounds disease.
@@Da_bear-ij9gm in an essay you should fully explain your thesis, not only does she not really talk about radiation at all, but she could change the thesis to "uzumaki is about disease" and it would be the same. i think invoking radiation in this context without fully unpacking it does the video a disservice.
THANK YOU, I was at the part about the live-action movie and was like "wait, when does she bring up radiation poisoning?" I came here to hear this fresh take on Uzumaki that was implied in the title?
I absolutely agree. I was also disappointed by how literal the theory turned out to be. When you say “Uzumaki is about radiation sickness” the implication is that you’re talking about symbolism or metaphor, which is interesting analysis! But then it becomes “it’s about a literal supernatural disease” in the same way that a nature documentary is about animals. It doesn’t say anything about the themes of the text.
Since the video doesn’t really delve into the radiation sickness comparisons much and instead just theorizes that the spirals are a literal supernatural disease, I’m gonna talk about the radiation sickness similarities here a bit When a place is irradiated it stays that way for a really long time and will poison and even sometimes mutate anyone who stays there. An example is Chornobyl/Chernobyl in Ukraine, after the horrific incident there which took the lives of many and forced tons of people to leave their homes because of the radiation; this entire area is now uninhabitable and nobody can go in without really extreme protective measures lest they risk getting radiation poisoning. There are some dogs who have managed to survive and are basically running around fending for their lives. Some beetles have been recorded living there with mutated markings on their shells. It’s deadly to stay there and some of the creatures who managed to not die have been altered, similar to how the curse in Uzumaki alters its victims. It’s also deadly to stay in the town in Uzumaki because it’ll claim you no matter what, and even if you do manage to leave it’s established that your ashes will still fly back into the pond, similar to how a person can still die of ARS (acute radiation syndrome) even if they’ve left the area where they were exposed. You can’t get un-irradiated just by leaving the place you got irradiated at, the same way you can’t get rid of your connection to the spiral just because you leave the town. Using the Chornobyl/Chernobyl example again, plenty of people who escaped unfortunately died later on due to complications that can be traced to radiation, despite having successfully escaped the area that was compromised. Radiation sickness can also affect different people at different rates, depending on how much and how often they were exposed to radiation, just like how the curse affects people differently, although I’m not really sure what those differences are based on. For instance, the Radium Girls, a bunch of women who worked at a factory that had them lick radium-paint-covered paintbrushes while painting watches, pretty much all suffered from and died from radiation related causes, while still having their symptoms and times of death/affliction varying. Of course they didn’t all have unique symptoms from one another and some of them died around the same time as one another but my point still stands; this is comparable to the way the spiral curse works. Finally let’s discuss the significance of radiation in Japan specifically. Obviously you have to address the nuclear bombs launched on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the effects of which left many of their victims with horrific and tragic ARS symptoms, but contrary to what one might assume, the areas hit by these bombs aren’t really radioactive anymore. It has something to do with how nuclear weapons work vs how nuclear plants work, I don’t remember exactly. So while I feel it’s relevant to bring this up as it was such a terrible and monumental event in Japanese history and it relates to radiation, I’m not gonna focus on it because it doesn’t fit the “this place is irradiated and will stay that way for centuries” thing that I feel is a better comparison to Uzumaki. I was going to talk about Fukushima here, which is basically Japan’s version of the Chornobyl/Chernobyl meltdown, but then I realized that Uzumaki was written like fifteen years before the Fukushima incident took place so I scrapped that paragraph. Silly me misremembering dates This comment is very disjointed, I didn’t organize anything and kind of just wrote down the basic comparisons I had made in my thoughts. The story of Uzumaki is defiently comparable to a place that’s been irradiated and the affect that irradiation has on the citizens, slowly killing them in horrible ways until they’re all gone and a new group of people come by and eventually meet the same fate because the curse is everywhere in the town, and the spiral curse affects are defiently comparable to ARS. This is what I wished the video talked about because I’m really- well, I wouldn’t say interested- horrified by the effects of radiation and have spent many a day spiraling (lol) while reading every bit of information on it that I can find. So I was curious to see how it was going to be analyzed and compared to Uzumaki, a story I enjoyed. I did like the video but I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed by how little was done with the radiation poisoning allegory (Also if I got anything wrong in this comment pls let me know, this was just a quick dump of my simple thoughts on it and not meant to be an in depth analysis or anything, it was just for fun bc I wanted the allegory to be discussed more and it wasn’t)
good ass analysis! another thing someone mentioned in a different comment was that they personally felt like the final underground "spiral city" resembled a lot of what we would call in real life long-term radioactive waste warning monuments, which come from the idea that we need to be able to leave warning messages that last as long as radiation itself, which can be THOUSANDS of years (!!) and have it still be understood by whatever civilizations might come to be in that span of time. there are a LOT of ideas and a lot of discussion over "globally understood" symbols, and some of the proposed monuments absolutely feel similar to the ones in the spiral city. it's so fucking cool.
My take on shuichi yelling at kirie is that she seems so aloof with her head in the clouds from his perspective that he needs to shout to bring her to his level of awarness
personally, i kinda read uzumaki as a story about generational trauma kinda? not exactly sure how to articulate this, but the time loop thing, and the godforsaken mosquito women thing, just all the general themes and individual bits of each chapter reads as an allegory to me EDIT: THE TEACHER SMASHING THE SNAIL EGGS, i know they joked about it being homophobic, but looking at it outside of a jokey manner and more metaphorical, it seems kinda fucked up doesn't it? not just that, but how the bullied kid acted before he got snail-ed, with all the different spiral-symptoms, it makes me think its people being affected by different types of trauma
Honestly I think this is really interesting, and a deeper analysis than anything in the video. The fact that both main characters’ parents were among the first to be infected is a big piece of evidence in your favor!
I have to argue about curses usually being static and effecting certain people. In so much of japanese horror, curses can latch on to literally anyone who comes in contact with it. It always amuses me to see the evil angry ghosts or whatever just absolutely wreck whoever happens to walk into the house for completely innocent or innocuous reasons. Maybe it's a japanese thing?
This. Trying to analyze Uzumaki with a western lens won't get you anywhere. It's not a metaphor. It's not a disease. It's not radiation. It's a horror story about a curse. In Japanese horror, curses can be objects or places or bloodlines... they're not necessarily magic spells, like they are in the western conception of curses... like some old witch casting a hex on someone. They're like concentrations of evil, a concept out of the Taoist tradition. They don't have to have a purpose or a specific origin. They can occur naturally or through malice. The horror in this story being that it's an inexplicable, inescapable, bizarre thing that might be eternally reoccurring. Trying to explain it defeats the purpose.
Yeah i think this is just a case of cultural differences. Western curses are usually punishments for specific people or bloodlines. This story is not Western, so that’s not the case. I’m American myself so I usually think of curses as punishments but while listening to the story recap I kind of just figured that maybe the word “curse” just had a different connotation in Japan, like it entailed something different
I think it’s interesting because Japanese curses kind of work like radiation poisoning, so the overall idea still works? Like, a curse can literally be a person, place, or thing, and not even have too much of a reason to exist, but the way it can effect someone coming into contact with it just like exposure to radiation poisoning is the easiest way to analyze it for a western mind. That’s a really dumbed down version, but you get the idea. I think this kind of “it doesn’t need a reason, it just is” is why Japanese horror can be a lot scarier than western horror, as there’s always a reason, there’s always a start, there’s most of the time a way to break the curse. Japan says no thank you to that 😂
@@OuroborosChoked It can still be about radiation. Ito's also written Gyo, which I believe is about biological weapons testing, so the curse could still be an allegory for radiation. Unfortunately, radiation isn't talked about much in the video :/
Considering attention is what the spirals crave, it's very possible Suichi is a sort of unwitting herald, pointing out stuff to draws people's attention to it, thus giving the spirals what they desire and affecting more people. It's unknown whether this is through subconscious manipulation of Suichi or a sort of looped (lol) logic where trying to avoid something causes it.
Exactly! As a 90s Brazilian kid when a read Uzumaki as a teenager not only me but my friends as well pick up a unhiged parallels bc the Goiânia accident wasn't just a national commotion of nuclear waste incident but horrific consequences to families, the whole community was see as cursed.
The title made me think someone has somehow connected this story to the long lasting effects of nuclear bombings, just like how Amigara Fault is an allegory for rigid and harmful social roles. Turned out it's just a 10 minute section explaining how a curse isn't a curse
I'm 100% with Shuichi, like he's literally right about the Spiral Curse and everything happening since the start of the story and the best part is that he still remains mostly calm, almost never reaching the insanity of everything around him wich just gives him absolute depression, i don't know, in his situation i would be deep in the Spiral Curse insanity because i couldn't handle having my parents dead, my town destroyed, my friends dead, crazy shit happening all around and my stupid but oh so beloved girlfriend literally having dementia and forgetting the literal dunwich horror happening in front of her eyes just two seconds ago, it's INSANE MAN, i would've done a Kurt Cobain by that point.
the two cakes philosophy is so accurate, cause I ate wendigoons cake and was still hungry and have been starved until now. thank youuuu edit: oh god... "I ate wendigoons cake" I'm so sorry 😭😭
Look, I understand pointing out the “logic” of things. But the lighthouse chapter where you said “Why don’t they call the police?” They did? They were a group of workers would when up there to look inside to figure out what is happening however got burned alive. No hate, I love your video. ;w;
there's also the issue of the curse being seen as a punishment in this video. That's generally not how curses are in traditional Japanese (or hell, Shinto in general) tales. I liked their Tomie video, but this one is kinda disappointing
5:41 - Shuichi didn't shame Kirie for not magically knowing what happened to his father; he literally just asked her if she wanted to know what really happened. I didn't read him as snapping at her for not knowing, but rather just answering with a really intense energy, because what he was telling her was something he had really intense feelings about. I think the traumatized teenager who just saw his dad spiral himself to death can be excused for his lack of tact, you know?
When the title is a deeper analysis than the video… The title suggests its an analogy for radiation sickness from the atomic bomb. And how the inhumanity that was the source of the bomb parallels the dehumanization from its fall out like the propagation of a lovecraftian god (many of which are about racist fear of non white populations). But the video itself is some weird attempt at analysis about a magical virus that only affects people with depression and sadness… I literally read the title and was like “dang that’s brilliant” lol.
Cosmic horror doesn't need theories to explain exactly how it works. The spiral is an unexplainable force of nature that's been affecting Kurouzu-cho since before people were there. Theorizing about "what actually happened" just takes away the horror.
YES THIS im always a bit baffled when ppl try to comprehend cosmic horror - the point of the horror is that its incomprehensible for our tiny human minds - the spiral/curse/structure under the town is so far beyond the human conciousness, so alien that we cant possible understand it. explaining its motivations by way of comparison w human motivations, like a desire for attention/a need to be seen/etc. is missing the point a bit i think. i also dont think its allegorical, the horror is very obvious: theres something so much bigger than us that we're powerless to it, even if we can predict it (like shuichi) we still cant change anything.
@@nbucwa6621 because i thought it was going to be comparing the story of uzumaki to radiation sickness in a symbolic sense, not making a theory that it’s a literal sickness that’s also supernatural and making up random things that were never in the original text
I may sound like an idiot but isn't it just like a theory so it's not really taking away the horror it's still there we don't truly understand it it's just a theory so I kinda don't get it.
@@EmanAsheer I mean you’re right. It’s just a bad theory that’s unsupported by the text and completely misses the point of the story. Suichi is more aware of the obvious supernatural events when everyone else ignores them because he goes to school outside of the town. He’s the voice of reason. For some reason, the creator of this video hates him and thinks that he somehow contracted a disease outside of the town and spread it to his dad. The book literally says point blank that the cycle has been happening specifically in this town for centuries. I’d have to rewatch some of the video cause I honestly don’t remember most of the theory but from what I remember, it’s not a theory. It’s just fanfiction.
Your points about Suichi made me think more about the seer Cassandra than an inverse garden of Eden, as literary references go. The prophet who is cursed to always be *right,* but never *believed.* Because of whatever attunes him to the spiral more than anyone else, even if it's just him being a hyperaware person, he is always right when he talks about what will happen because of the curse, but it cannot be prevented, only predicted- and even if someone did fully take him at his word, what could they possibly do? Part of Cassandra's story is also the foretelling of her own death- she is aware of exactly how she will die and cannot even try to prevent it because, again, no one will believe her. Maybe Suichi knew the whole time that there was no escape due to this Cassandra factor, and that's why his character is so back and forth. It's human nature to try and fight fate, even when you know you'll lose.
Regarding the pacing, when you say that things happen too fast or conveniently timed, I feel like these stories are paced very much like a campfire story. They front load information, and when the information is laid out, then the action takes off. The sprawling detailed art feels like it slows down time as you read, it adds souch information to take in, but when you read out the story itself it feels very "there is a character in a place, and then this happened, and then that happened!", simple stories elevated by a medium being pushed to its limit.
My opinion is that it isn´t any kind of "infection" or curse. I also don´t think this is actively malicious, but the events that happen are a consquence of it´s mere existance. I think that it´s some kind of force, or being, that has an influence on reality. It makes it less stable, more mallable. That is why it seeps into everything, into realty itself. The spiral isn´t even neccesarly an integral part, it´s just that it is such a common shape, so universal in our reality, that it inadvertently dominates. Like how smoke will nearly always throw up spiraling patterns while dissipating in the air. All the things we see are just a consequence of what can and cannot be starting to flow into each other. And the fact that no one can escape also isn´t an active act, but a consequence of the concept of the spiral dominating. It will always wind down and things will and up at it´s center. And by influencing reality, once people start to notice it, this will kick off a feedback loop of it spreading more and more. Thats why it gets worse. It´s in that way an infohazard too. You know of it, it influences reality and you indadvertently catch yourself in it. And as it spreads it literally spirals out of controll. It`s kind of and infectious idea that seeps into reality and makes itself happen.
Small problem with your theory... Shuichi attends school in a different town, and while in Kurouzu-Cho makes comment on the town itself being so different from the town he goes to school in. Shouldn't he have spread it in the town he spent so much time in?
I have always taken it as an infrastructure thing, and how the earth is constantly battling with our man-made additions, dams, skyscrapers, heck, being in a western-style home in a hot climate, some of our modern shelters aren’t conducive to the environment. My theory is like you: the city under the town is alive, and pre-industrialization, the infrastructure is made from things that fit with this environment, placement based on the planes that already existed, houses made from wood native to the town (the row houses), but the modern world needs more, so new development starts, and a city is being built on top of an existing one ,that must be suffocating, so our living spiral city turns the townspeople and their ill-fitting homes into bricks for their own structure. This isn’t fully worked out i haven’t read this for a while but when i read this i took the ending to be townspeople are gonna become part of the underground city because her parents calcified the land seems to be drawing people through reconnecting with nature (ceramics) snails(not the ppl version) the galaxy, mosquitoes, hurricanes forcing it to be acknowledged in their modern life and you talking about how none can get anything done made me remember that Gonna to reread this great video!
I've always settled on the idea that the spiral knew that kirie would have been the one person who could break out of it (you get what i mean) because of how aware shuichi is so that's why everything surrounded her bc the spiral was pissed that shuichi is so smart so it knew that once it got kirie it would get shuichi too and then bam it wins.
The biblical implecations about obsession could be kinda connected to the 7 deadly sins if we strech it a bit. Like, the lazy person for sloth, the horny kids for lust, the howling kids for wrath, the ones who wish to devour the snails for gluttony, the hair girl for envy, the mosquito mothers for greed, and the ones who get stuck in the houses for pride.
and in case you are wondering how, for example kirie with the hair, got cursed without expressing for herself the negative trait, it could be assumed that it is the result of negative energy from other characters, impacting them.
That's actually a good point. Slight correction (slight!) but the 7 deadly sins are not in the Bible, it's a Catholic belife to lilitrate common human sins. But yeah your still right.
@@AlexMourning5635 you are absolutely right! I somehow forget about her! Probably because i was stuck in the mindset that others look at her like that, like they do with tomie, while indeed as you point out, she seeks the attention
If you think of things from Shuichi's point of view everything seems to run on nightmare logic. Everything he is worried will happen does happen. He even predicts when things are going to happen and things get worse as his mental state gets worn down. I'm not saying he's subconsciously making all this happen, but he's totally subconsciously making all this happen.
I thought it's because everything that happened has happend before there is still traces of the previous cycle left behind. He noticed the changes and makes a informed gessed. Earlier in the books he could still go to his school witch was out of town. So there was a possibility for his Girlfriend and her family, firends to get out. But they acted pretty casual about the events in the stories every day or week. I would go mad if no one listened to my warnings too. It's not until later that it becomes too late to leave that they even try after all the worning he tried telling his girlfriend.
@@Pale_Empress its coming out this year, the first 4 episodes are done and got junji's stamp of approval. sounds like its gonna be the first ever good adaptation of his work
9:08 "Why is her IV drip made of glass?" Because IV infusions used to be administered via vacuum sealed glass bottles. Plastic IV bags weren't wildly in use in North America until the 1970s (despite being invented probably in the 1950s) and glass bottles didn't disappear entirely until the early 1980s. Uzumaki is set mostly in coastal rural area of Japan during the 1980s or the 1990s at the latest (I'm not actually sure) and given that Japan was, and still is, kinda a decade or so behind the times, it stands to reason that the local hospital would still be using glass bottles. I'm sure some parts of the world still use glass bottles actually.
Something I noticed which I've never seen anyone talk about is how the teacher snail is different looking to the others. The snails prior have very wrinkled skin but it's fairly smooth and solid, they also very quickly lose their limbs Meanwhile the teacher himself has a completely different texture, it's lumpy and segmented, as well as having his arms still. It looks gross, but more than that, I think he's either made of, or covered in, snail eggs. Maybe it's like a punishment for stomping the eggs, to then being their carrier or whatever. Either way I hate it, I have a weird fear of slugs and snails lmao
I always thought of the Uzumaki spiral as a black hole, or maybe a sort of 'spiritual black hole' (depression?). 'Kurouzu' also translates literally to 'black vortex'. Veritasium has a great (and mindbending) video called 'Something strange happens when you follow Einstein's math' which explains the really weird stuff better, but black holes: - are found in the centre of galaxies like the ones in the lost chapter, and also emit blasts of radio waves EXACTLY like the lighthouse's beam - bend spacetime near themselves so that, as you approach, the direction of 'future' gets twisted around to point 'inward' - slow down time as you approach, and therefore if you're already caught and start moving away time speeds up (like when the characters try to escape and come back to find years have passed, and at the end time slows down) - time stops as you cross the event horizon - this is the point of no return, there's no past and no future, like the final page says 'the curse was over the same moment it began' - as stuff is pulled in, it forms a spiral because it's orbiting but also being pulled inwards - the gravity gets stronger rapidly as you approach the black hole (tidal forces), so if you were falling in feet first then your feet would be pulled more strongly than your head and you'd get stretched out and distorted - if the black hole is spinning (another spiral?), theoretically you could pass through the outer layers, fly past the singularity and be ejected into another universe (spiral city?) Like you said, all of the weird events are following Shuichi around, he starts off looking depressed and that's BEFORE his parents die, and one of the first people affected is his dad who's stopped going to work and sits at home all day. Some symptoms of depression include feeling tired all the time (like the girls with spiral hair), and moving slowly and finding it difficult to keep up with personal hygiene (like the snail people). And then finally everybody gets sucked in when they're all living in the row houses which are linked to poverty. Junji Ito doesn't seem to have ever talked about black holes so this might just be coincidence but that's my theory anyway because I like black holes and think they should be in more media 🌌🌀 :)
there's an extra episode (idk if this video talks about it) of Uzumaki where everyone in the town is "discovering" new galaxies in the sky. Take that how you will
I think by the time kirie and her family went to the row houses. The people who are smart enough to leave town did leave town. I think that point in the chapter anthology is where the point of no return for Kirie as if she was smart and understood the spooks that this town isn’t safe. She would left already with her family but she did which tells a lot about the story.
@@nikogarcia201 could be as it is a theory that people who figured out the spooky things have left and sometimes the spiral curse selectively picks the person to be influenced from as how they let go of kirie’s father from the earlier chapters but the curse still took Kirie’s father anyways. It could be the people who did left we’re able to leave fine as the curse has no use for them but once the event of spiral ended. The spiral curse could influence the people with death and their spirit came back to dragonfly pond before the event ended. Or it did the call of Cthulhu story where the event happened in dreams and the main event came and went and people forgot and no one is affected and go back to mundane life. Or lastly the theory you the people who do got out and survived aren’t so lucky and are forever traumatized by it thinking the spiral curse is there but it has ended a long time ago. A more so theory of “you delved too deep” and your mind can’t comprehend what is real and fiction.
@@vibespidersstudios8895 When the town inhabitants started to used the row house to hide, there were still sane people that that try to escape by ship instead of giving into despair or madness as the spiral seal pretty much any entry to the town. Kirie saw them almost succeeded before the water start to spiral into a whirlpool and swallow the ship and its occupants. It’s pretty much confirmed none of them survive. That what I meant that the spiral actively prevented any escape attempts.
I think the Uzumaki "curs" is a being similar to "The Colour" from HP Lovecraft's The colour out of space. It's a being hat found itself on our planet and is just trying to survive and is influencing the environment to make it more suitable for itself. Nothing is happening on purpose, just a coincidence of an un oblivious being trying to survive. The ending is the being becoming self sufficient on the planet and being complete. Some more parallels in between the books is that's it's something endless and vague, like a colour or shape, and it just arrived one day, grew around a body of water and when it was big enough it tried to escape but a bit of it stays every time. That's just my autistic rant about it, probably just a coincidence of 2 horror writers doing a similar work around corruption and mutation.
Yea I read it more as a Lovecraft/ eldritch being. Is it a god? Is it an alien? Is it lost? We don't know. It's not for us to know - but it's a being imprinting on the world around it. The obsession with attention implies a need for worship. And the constant fixation on Kirie - who is the "final piece" at the end- implies a consciousness and desire to complete the loop. So something sentient.
I was about to comment this 😭 it’s not punishing anybody for anything, it’s just this incomprehensible supernatural thing that’s affecting eveyrone around it. Nobody made it come or anything, it just showed up and is now destroying and warping everything in its path because it’s too incomprehensible and cosmic and whatever. In fact, the similarities between this story and that Lovecraft story are kind of startling- small town, incomprehensible thing, stemming from some sort of water supply, affects the people and the environment, everything gets demolished by the end, it’s implied that one day it’ll happen again- now I want a video just talking about that lol
"The color out of space" was inspired by Lovecraft's vague understanding of light outside the visible spectrum being a thing, and the symptoms are eerily similar to radiation poisoning. Between that and the general Japanese nuclear trauma...hm. A possible polarization of light is circular polarization, which can be visualized as a spiral...
The radiation interpretation is interesting, but I think that should be understood as an applicable metaphor rather than something literal. None of this is out of the realm of possibility for curses in mythology. There are many instances in myths of beings cursing generations of an entire place because of the actions of one person. Those stories aren't meant to depict a situation that's fair.
Wendi love Shuichi and is annoyed by Kirie, and Grimelle loves Kirie and is annoyed by Shuichi. By watching both videos I have found a nirvana-level equilibrium and understanding
I have to say, I'm incredibly disappointed. This video was mostly synopsis and then what analysis was done seemed to absolutely miss the glaring cultural connection involved in the title. Uzumaki as allegory for radiation poisoning is a novel and compelling read, I expected a lot more consideration of Japans history with nuclear fallout and disaster, be it the 3/11 catastrophe or the lingering effects of the bombs dropped during WWII. Art exists within and is the result of cultural and personal context. That can make for a great lens to analyze media through. It's a shame that didn't happen here at all. I expected something filling but ended up getting empty calories of recap and half baked theory that fails to live up to what the video was advertised as.
I would argue that what's going on is that the town keeps resetting. At the end of the story I know the characters believe that they went ahead in time but I would argue that they actually went back in time and that everyone in the town has done this many many many many many many many times before and didn't realize it, however Suichi the only one who who seems to have a vague recollection of it
I think trying to find a "logic" to Uzumaki is part of the trap. It's a "lovecraftian" event that cannot be comprehended by human minds, which adds to the horror of it. No matter how much the characters try to escape, understand or fight, the spiral pulls them in. It's unavoidable and eternal.
tl;dr, these are my opinions and I kinda struggle with the video's thesis and smaller details. I feel like I should point out; some of the things you're questioning in the recap are actually pretty common in manga, though you're approaching it from a very western stance. Small towns or villages in Japan aren't always going to have cops or social services, it's usually depicted as a close-knit community. Some towns only have one or two police. Same with Kirei and Shuichi's relationship. Often in manga or anime, if the relationship isn't the focus of the drama then it's going to be shown with more of a comfortable silence between two people. Two people who can coexist without much talking or needing to say "I love you" is usually a sign of a strong relationship. I'm not seeing what you're seeing, mentioning that they're bored with each other. Kirei and Shuichi go out of their way to comfort each other or protect each other when they're struggling or in danger. In Japanese storytelling, that's pretty common for people who are in love. Telling him to lay down in a gutter because he's too sad to go on? He's going on for Kirei, he doesn't want to see her harmed. I'm not convinced that Shuichi or Kirei are patients 0 and 1, though it is a nice theory. Narratively, it's common for someone to be untouched by horror to give us a POV on the inside - Kirei mostly fills this role. Tomie introduced new side characters to follow in most stories, The Fault of Amigawara (Drr Drr Drr) follows one person as he witnesses then succumbs to the hole, etc. I think it's more that Shuichi is the only one in town leaving then coming back for school. Depressed people, sadly, are often hyper aware of their surroundings. Shuichi's parents being the first victims to die might have made him more perceptive of the illness. I think he might be more of a soothsayer in the story rather than someone spreading the disease I'm also struggling to relate how the spiral disease is like radiation? You bring up radiation a handful of times and how it's "like radiation" to permeate everywhere, but outside of "it affects everything" I'm failing to see the connection. I would have really loved a "why" it's like radiation section. I thought you were gonna relate the ending to some ideas we have for radiation architecture; if you're curious look up "This is not a place of honor", but the tl;dr of it is tall spires and pointed edges reaching into the sky to indicate a dangerous area. Outside of that, I unfortunately don't see the difference between this or a story depicting most supernatural illnesses. Junji Ito's work reminds me a lot of The Twilight Zone, which was more of a "wow, that was scary and weird, wouldn't that be strange to happen in real life?" I'm not sure there's meant to be an answer or even a clean explanation for anything. It seems unknowable or something we can't solve, especially since the spirals appear in so many different ways. I do think it might be obsession, at least in some way. Giving in to obsession seems to be what makes people physically spiral or twist up. Those touched with obsession tow the line delicately - Kirei briefly having obsession with attention until it backfires, and Shuichi could be obsessed with keeping Kirei safe because she's the last thing he has. Those who refuse to fall to obsession drag their feet to leave, hence becoming snails. I'm not married to this idea, just Shuichi's comments that they're moving too slow to escape sounds like not leaving is a consequence in it's own. Since we don't see snails in the pit, it might be a "banned from salvation" type thing (not that the spirals are saving anyone, just that those who refuse the illness are banned from the contorting spiral and are made snails as a consequence). It also might be a "dragging your feet in life" thing, people who would rather be anywhere else without obsession seem to turn into snails. The town seems obsessed with spirals, more as bemusement than fear. People start exploring, giving in to the spirals, learning to control the wind with them. I think the lighthouse might've been foreshadowing what the malaise is. Wrapping up with this: I think it's meant to be a small-town mystery that isn't really answered. Manga especially tends to have whole towns be affected by a spiritual malaise, beginning once you're in it's borders and ending just on the outskirts. That on it's own is like radiation, but something "enveloping a whole town" isn't uncommon. A very specific and dated example is the Darkarai Pokemon movie, where the town outskirts are enveloped in fog that makes people loop back on themselves. A honey trap that loops back on itself makes a lot of sense in this regard. It may be that it's a town designed to draw in multiple generations, an unknowable force pulling people into it's whirlpool. Bring in enough conscious observers to start the story over again, not necessarily with the same names and faces.
Even though it's rather stereotypical, I see the spiral as a classic eldritch entity. Very much like IT's Pennywise, it has come from outer space and now sustains itself with this endless circle (or dare I say... spiral?) of deformation and destruction. All of the townspeople and the town itself gradually melt into one. The radiation sickness analogy fits this theory quite well with the contortion and breakdown of bodies, the rather slow progress and, of course, radiation very much being a thing in outer space.
I don't want to be too harsh, but a lot of this video, almost the complete bulk of it, was just rehashing the story; and your actual anaylsis at the end had little to do with radiation sickness. There's so much that could've been said, from the town making people sick and giving Shuichi a headache, to the bright light that burns people up into nothing, to post-ww2 life and the overlap between cosmic horror and radiation... I'd change the title of this video, currently its very misleading and made me (and from what im seeing, others in the comments) feel like they invested time into something that didn't have the pay-off promised in the title and thumbnail
This doesn't really sound like there was much research done into Japanese customs, superstitions or the history of ritual and curses specific to them. I'm not saying that's exactly where Ito pulled from, but I'm just a bit surprised this video seems to be making a bunch of guesses based on zero research done into Ito or Japanese culture. Especially the simplistic view on curses. Without any of that this is just a book review with a bunch of guess work
okay, 3 minutes in but I have to explain the low romantic relationship. Physical intimacy in public is NOT an accepted thing in Japan. Even saying I Love You isn't normalized. Suichi and Kirie's romantic relationship is as expected from a regular young japanese relationship. She runs to go see him, and he'd literally die for her. They care a lot about each other, but caring doesn't always meaning being all over each other.
I feel as though its implied that the "curse" has happened before, mainly because of the exsistance of the old row houses. I assumed that once the town has been "reset" overtime another town is built, leaving the parts old row houses (which is why we see them) and in the future another town will build around/destroy but leave some row houses. Also the map in the row house implies that their origional form, thus its been like that before, thus this whole thing has happened before. (hope this makes sence lol) And for the weird time stuff, I think of the town as in a bubble, and once things go to shit (or when everyones locked in) time doesnt really hold up and has its own rules. But I like this interpatation! Exspecially the idea that Shuichi causes things to happen. But personally, i think it might just be a simple way to introduce the idea/ make Shuichi seem more creepy/knowledgeable about the curse. I also follow the idea that things are just unexsplainable,,,Which is good! :D
Honestly the hospital is my favorite part of uzumaki. Mosquito larva hatch and thrive in bodies of water. If the spiral has infected dragonfly pond then the mosquitos who mature there should be spirally. A spiral is also recursion. The mosquitos bite the people, but are never filled. Mosquito born illnesses are common knowledge and do effect pregnant people more severely(like most things). Recursion also means that the mothers cannot stop being mothers. The babies are transfixing, like any spiral, fed on spiral cranked blood, and wish to return into the origin, like all those who are pulled to the center of the spiral. Im a big binding of isaac fan though, so gory and twisted maternal themes are my jam.
It has been a while since I read Uzumaki, but I seem to remember interpreting Shuichi's assholishness as a combination of trauma of losing both his parents and Kirie refusing to believe him about the spiral curse, even as shit gets weirder around her. I also seem to remember him trying to persuade Kirie to leave with him, implying he stays in the town out of worry for her wellbeing.
Im glad to find a video about Uzumaki that's a actual analysis/personal interpretation usually Uzumaki videos on yt are just a recap of the whole story
I believe this is a nightmare. I have always had trouble explaining my nightmares to people, but this manga is a perfect description. It's usually something that doesn't sound scary on it's surface, like a spiral shape. There's always someone I know in the nightmare explaining what is happening and everyone acts as if it's normal. There are usually time shifts, and things seem to get worse as time goes on, but certain actions end and are almost forgotten when something else happens. Lastly, no matter how hard I try to leave the situation in my dream, I can't.
Loooved this video! This story has sooo many similar elements to Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. I really think you were super close when you looked for a biblical interpretation! Japan is primarily Shinto & Buddhist, so I feel like it’s a reference to Samsara (Buddhism, saṃsāra is the "suffering-laden, continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end"), and tends to be depicted as a sort of cosmic wheel.
Ngl Kirie got me tight most of the time. She saw everything that was happening and R E F U S E D to leave the town while they still could. Suichi actually stood with her even tho he was mentally declining. Now that’s not to say that kirie wasn’t spiraling too but she sat there and was like “ye this cool”.
Let’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO They also announced that the Uzumaki anime’s finally coming later this year. Unfortunately, it’s 11:30 where I’m at and I have a work interview tomorrow morning. So I’ll save this tomorrow after I do a good job on the interview. Uzumaki’s doubtlessly the magnum opus of Junji Ito and it gave me my spiral obsession. So I’m very very very excited for this! Also sorry to hear about the struggles you had with this video. I’ll just leave in my two cents regarding Uzumaki: Kirie seems like almost a deconstruction of the oblivious horror protagonist, especially the ones from HP Lovecraft. No matter what happens, Kirie doesn’t make any decisions based on how the spiral would affect her. Kirie ultimately technically wins against the spiral because she never gives herself to it. I hope I explained what I mean well, and would love to talk about it more. Also love your new avatar girl, it’s very archaic looking, like from a storybook from the Grimm Brothers. Much love and thanks for this video:)
obsession and depression are both types of fixation, and if you generalize to fixation, then kirie might not be as asymptomatic as she seems. I believe kirie's fixation is familiarity/normalcy, and the fact that she usually comes out of every chapter largely unharmed (both physically and mentally) is her manifestation of the uzumaki contagion
Bruh, Shuichi is the most sane and reasonable person in the entire manga. The dude is super aware and rightfully paranoid. I have no idea why you're dogging on him so badly over honest to god justifiable reactions. He doesn't "just leave town" because he cares about Kirie and even suggests running away together, but she ignores this suggestion and continues to ignore Shuichi being RIGHT! He didn't run away from Kirie. He ran to get the scissors. How do you make something up, scold him, and then ignore the reason he "ran away".
I always thought it was about the fear of obsession. The spiral representing how someone gets sucked into their, likes and hobbies, like a whirlpool. The closer to the center you get the harder it is to excape it.
pls continue to operate by the two cakes philosphy-u have no idea how upset I get when I see any horror media that only has a select few analyses videos, especially if those videos r only 10 - 20 minutes long. never doubt the value that a very long video on any horror media has !! ❤
Your two-cakes decision was ABSOLUTELY correct, I adore watching different analysis videos on the same topic, sometimes they don't even have to say different things, i 100% would spend 10 hours a day watching different creators talk about the same spun topic over and over again, thank you for another comfort video!!!
i think this analysis could benefit from a deeper look into the japanese context within which it unfolds. the connotations of the word "curse" alone mean something totally different in japan - sometimes a curse latching on to or drawing a person in is as simple as being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which makes it more tragic and terrifying imo, because you are so helpless, sometimes even unaware of what is after you and why. the unfairness and inevitability of it adds to the horror, and i think the spiral curse, as this lovecraftian, defying-human-understanding phenomenon implied to loop back into itself like a spiral that transcends the physical world and warps space and time into its form, works very well as just this - a curse. plus, just things like suichi and kirie's dynamic as a couple, and the potential in interpreting uzumaki through the lens of radiation considering japan's real-world history with it... i think a relook with japanese cultural and historial lenses could take this analysis somewhere very interesting i would also like to hop on board the shuichi apologist train lmao, i think there's a special and haunting kind of tragedy to being fully cognizant of your world collapsing into the grip of forces outside your control or comprehension but sticking it through for the sake of the one person you have left who matters to you. if anything, i like the fact that shuichi and kirie become the heart of that spiral, twined together in one last and eternal act of devotion, one final act of defiance against this cosmic horror entity whose entire existence is there to suck people in. he acts insane sometimes, sure, but i'd like to say he's facing an insane set of circumstances - if i remember correctly, he decides to dig up the grave because the jack in the box the dead boy gifted kirie started speaking and saying that he would come to get her? i mean what would ANYONE do in that situation? ;-;
I do like your take on all of this. With the Spiral obsession and the effects of which being more akin to a disease. There is one grand aspect you're missing here and that's Uzumaki is Junji Ito's take on Cosmic Lovecraftian Horror. This is why we are not to know what the city... Entity... At the end is, or what Motives it may have. Same with Hellstar Remina. So thru that Lense I'll answer your questions at the end of this video. 1:00:38 Why did it take so long to gestate... Answer in my opinion as a lifelong fan of Cosmic horror (over 30 years) SCALE! Cosmic beings do not operate on our scale of time but their own. There so incomprehensibly powerful that they define their own scale of time. What may have taken a year from phase one to phase three for us. Could have been but Minutes to its time scale. 2: Why Now...? Why Not! Just so happened that this is when whatever that thing is, decided to wake up. 3: The disease can't spread because of proximity. As the Entity is the source of it. The farther away from it you go the less impact it has upon you. Imagine a Sickness that gets weaker the further away you go from its source. Like you mentioned even in the title. Radiation! Radiation only affects you so long as you are near the source. This explains Shuichi involvement as he is the only one who is getting fresh air away from the Entity to begin realizing its effects. Thoe as he was born in that town, and is a member of its population, he like everyone else is bound to the Entity. This is why Shuichi cannot spread the Entity's effects wile outside of its Aria of effect. Going back to the radiation analogy. If somebody is stricken with radiation poisoning, they themselves cannot spread that same level of radiation poisoning. Once Shuichi leaves town, the Entity's effect on him begins to diminish to the point of none existence. 4: Why would the Entity send out the Disease? Who is to say that what we see here is a Deliberate Act, But instead an indirect action of the Entity's existence. Sure, people died but to the Entity that doesn't matter. People go insane and destroy themselves upon knowing of Cthulhu's existence but that is not Cthulhu's intent. All that mattered to it, if anything. Was those who succumbed to its will and became a part of its whole. What is the life of a single ant when you're caring for the whole colony. One final answer I can give. At the Entity's peek it was able to bend and fold time itself. Likely the snail people were themselves bound to these laps in time, and only once the last one had died it would conclude its Waking Cycle. Also, Patient Zero if anything was the town itself. Take another look at the back cover again... Ito Literally tells you. "Spirals... The TOWN is contaminated... With Spirals. The town is the source. Thats my opinion anyways. As a person who is a lifelong fan and author of Cosmic Horror.
I've always interpreted Uzumaki as being Lovecraft and eldridge horror inspired. In Junji Ito's stories like Hellstar Remina, The Enigma of Amegiri Falls, The Supernatural Transfer Student, etc., he explores ideas of uncaring deities and ancient remnants of cosmic dealings (like the spiral city that causes the curse). It brings to mind the "Idiot God" written about in the necronomicon that plays a flute endlessly and accidentally created reality and humanity as an extension, therefore making life insignificant on an existential scale. There's also the highest god in the Lovecraftian pantheon where all things exist in his dreams, and if he awakes, we all fade to nonexistence. Interestingly, Lewis Carroll released Through the Looking Glass in like 1871 or something, and Alice learns she may be in the Red King's dream and will fade if he wakes. She's like "I don't like being part of someone else's dream," and... I forget who she's talking to, but he's like "U called the rest of us dreams, but now the show is on the other foot, and ur perspective doesn't matter in the grand scheme." Love craft was born like 20 years after that book was released, so he def would've read and been inspired by that. Anyways, I think Junji Ito enjoys the horror of ancient, intelligent things existing before us and not caring about our perspectives. The eldest Lovecraft God isn't physical so much as a living embodiment of the universe or whatever. Similarly, the spiral city is a living concept. A sleeping god. I think it merely is a being that awakens, absorbs it's snacks, then sleeps again, indifferent to the feelings of the snacks. When it awakens, it manipulates reality to achieve it's goal of absorbing all sentient life in it's domain (the town). Once satisfied, inclosed it's mouth (the drill), and it sleeps again until the next town is established and thriving. This is just my thought tho. I haven't looked into any theories yet 🤷🏽♂️😋
1:02:35 so a visual novel lol 1:09:09 I think this was in the manga too! 5:185:24 48:17 I think this totally makes sense as a curse. Time folds in on itself and the moment the spiral ends is when it begins, because the curse is cyclical. Every time the town returns to its fully spiral state, that begins a new cycle of people settling the town, which eventually returns to its spiral state. It’s like the circle of life, I think? 56:14 what’s the difference between a supernatural disease and a curse? 1:00:40 because it’s a cursed location 1:01:48 and nobody in town has ever been depressed or obsessed before? This is personal theorizing stuff: 49:24 but we don’t know how the curse started, hat’s left ambiguous. We don’t know if the dad was the beginning of the spiral reclaiming the town or not, we don’t know if he was chosen for a reason. I don’t think he was, I think that sometimes, bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it, just like in real life. You can just be chilling in your town and suddenly it’s a war zone, doomed by spirals or an air raid or a geological event, you know? It doesn’t mean that everyone did something wrong to deserve it, it’s a tragedy. Weird, awful stuff happens to people who creep on girls, kids who are bullied, parents doing their best, newborn and… de-born? babies, rescue teams… and it’s all a part of a greater tragedy, of a cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Reminds me of history repeating itself, too 49:51 for this part, I think it could be like how people handle adverse situations differently based on their nature and history, etc. Like you describe here! 58:49
As i see it, both Kirie and Suichi were afected by the curse even before the end of the story. Kirie with her hair (obviously) and it Suichi's case it's more subtle, this might be very far-fetched but i think that as tge story goes on he falls more and more into a spiral of madness and/or despair
If there’s one thing in this video that I really take umbrage with, it’s your definition of a curse. I feel like it is unfair to look at another property’s definition of a curse (and I vaguely remember even an interpretation of Edith finch that there is no curse at play and the “curse” was just the grandma or whatever’s rationalization of generational trauma and the consequences of her own actions) and use that to announce that another thing must definitionally have something else going on. Now if there had been examples of other Junji Ito works where a ‘curse’ is explicitly defined as something contradictory to this example, then you might have a point, but even then it’s a weak argument. Also, the pre-existence of the old rowhouses is, in my opinion, good evidence of the cyclical nature of the spiral curse, and in my reading I thought the town locked in some sort of long-term time loop.
YES „curses don’t work like that“ … curses are a concept that differs wildly between cultures, religions, media, personal interpretation etc. etc.. so … who is to say that they don’t??
@@Emberbun Ikr? its like seeing a novel or whatever with a monotheistic cosmology where one eternal god resides over all creation, unchanging and all-powerful and going "Well this clearly isn't a god, gods are shifting beings of formless energy which require the belief of mortals to sustain themselves and who mould their forms to fit their believers' faith, a-la The Elder Scrolls or Discworld, so this must be some kind of supernatural king instead of a god".
Suichi and Kirie seem to genuinely love each other. They look out for each other and genuinely worry for one another they just aren't overly affectionate which to me makes sense. Both with general Japanese culture and my own lack of physically being an affectionate person. I think things like the hurricane targeting Kirie being seen as one of Suichi's "symptoms" of the curse would sort of prove that.
I'm glad you made this video, Wendigoon's felt more like a surface level analysis, which left me a bit unsatisfied. I enjoyed the theories you brought up, helps to add another level of horror to the story as a whole
I love this Manga not just because it is a great story and has amazing horror imagery but also because the horror is clearly influenced by Japanese folklore, some of the best horror is rooted in folklore. This 'curse' plays into the Japanese folklore curses where innocents are just caught up in something out of their hands; in this case a possible cosmic entity. It is pure nihilism and the story leaves a deep impression.
be the chubby kid? that's a snailing.
bully the chubby kid? that's a snailing.
smash the eggs of the nice gay snail couple down the way?
oh, you'd better believe that's a snailing.
The Snayl agenda
@@necrodeus6811GODDAMMIT THATS HILARIOUS 🤣
Straight to snail.
So it's not about morality, but it is about how we ascribe morality onto wild nature and it's effects on us.
funny as hell because most snails are hermaphrodites
Suichi is suffering a spiral the entire time - we witness him spiralling into *madness*. He starts depressed and paranoid and just keeps getting worse.
Wait that’s a good point
You could also say that Kirie’s life spiraled out of control more and more as she consistently resisted the process that was taking place
This got me thinking: the “spiral into madness” or “downward spiral” phrase in general work in English, but does the spiral translate into Japanese or other languages? Do other languages have that phrase too, or would it only work in an English interpretation?
In my opinion, this is the metaphor of the whole series. Ideas causing people to spiral down, and ultimately those ideas making a whole community spiral out of control.
@@KeitieKalopsia I thought of this too! It made me iamgine they MUST have turns of phrase around spirals, but they'd probably be grammatically structured different? But like many people and culturues can see a whirlpool or a tornado and come up with "Spiralling down into something" as an idea, so I suspect it's not uncommon.
I bet junji I to just learnt about the golden ratio being everywhere in nature and thought how do I make this horror
That being said this video was amazing and I really enjoyed your theory.
I mean that's basically his creative process so i wouldn't be surprised😂
It’s a good thing I read Jojo part 7 before reading this. I was laughing the whole way through 😂. The whole town is just a bunch of failed spin users.
Thats what i was thinking lmao
*"The Golden Ratio is everywhere"*
Steel Ball Run fans: 😀
Uzumaki fans: 💀
I think Shuichi isn't patient zero
he studies outside of town, he is the only one with an outsiders perspective, stuff that he grew up with, stuff all others are exposed to 24/7, he realizes those aren't normal
Kirie on the other hand studies in the town, just like everybody else, stuff like this is may be weird at times, but it's the only home she's ever known.
If anything, the illness he's spreading is awareness, nobody pays the weirdness much attention until he points out how abnormal it is.
Yeah, it's heavily implied throughout the story that part of the curse is "twisting" people's minds into forgetting or disregarding all the supernatural stuff happening, and people like Shuichi who leaves the town on a semi-regular basis is able to recognize that something's wrong.
There are three things that basically confirms that to me, two of which happen in issue #2, the other is more an ongoing thing; the first is in Jack-in-the-Box chapter when Kirie's friend tells her that people have started doing live burials instead of cremation, and Kirie asks her why. Kirie, however, should know why, considering that she has witnessed first-hand how every time someone gets cremated, it creates a spiralling cloud of smoke over the whole town, which then gets sucked into the pond behind her house. The pond where her father got the clay he used to create pottery containing the souls of the people who perished, which should make the whole smoke spiral thing that much clearer in her mind. And yet she expresses complete obliviousness as to why people have forgone cremation in favor of live burials.
The second one is in the Lighthouse chapter. Everyone knows there's something wrong with the lighthouse; it has started up again when it hasn't been in use for many years, and its light make dizzy and eventually walk in perpetual circles. A group of men does get sent to check it out, but nobody cares to investigate what happened when they just disappear. Even after Kirie escapes the lighthouse, having found the dead bodies of the men who were sent to investigate, and can explain exactly what happened, the only thing we ever hear is that there is talk about getting rid of the lighthouse. It never happens though. In chapter 17, you can catch the lighthouse in a panel on one of the first pages; the black building is almost in center and stands out prominently on the white paper. Mind you, the lighthouse chapter happens long before the storms destroy the town, so it's not that the town was planning it and suddenly needed to tend to something more pressing; Kirie spends "half the summer" in the hospital after her injuries in the lighthouse chapter, and yes, politician can take long when it comes to stuff like that, but they haven't even started by the time the storms hit, and they do nothing to even cart off the area to prevent more deaths.
The third is Kirie herself; at the start of the manga she is disbelieving of Shuichi's story and rejects his idea of leaving town together. However, even as she gets more and more evidence of supernatural occurances, she never brings up the idea of leaving town again. Except for one point; the last chapter of issue #1. Kirie's hair gets infected with the curse and is both isolating and slowly killing her, and she starts wishing that she had taken Shuichi up on his offer to leave, but now her body is too weak to leave town. And yet, after she is saved, after she realizes that she could die from this curse, that Shuichi was right and they need to leave before it's too late, she never brings up leaving again. And yes, you could argue that she doesn't want to leave without her family, but she never says so. She doesn't bring up moving away to her family, she doesn't tell Shuichi that she can't leave without her family. She just stays in town even as things continue to escalate.
@@Matheegreat analysis!
@@Mathee That an excellent theory for Kirie constant denial. The curse affecting her mind to not leave the town.
He’s not a carrier, he’s a canary.
@@anonymousdratini Excellently put
I think Kirie and Shuichi being "boringly comfortable" with each other is a rather cool way of showing they're in love tbh. Like, they're just content existing near one another and i can relate :]
Yup, it def felt like they were just really familiar with each other after most likely having grown up together. It wasn’t like they were fresh lovebirds.
As ive come to live with my bf of 3 years, i can def relate to Kirie and Shuichi more and more. I love Uzumaki and i esp love the defiant ending that they share. They were truly the only ones in love with each other in my eyes
Same! Especially since the things happening in the story are what they are. Shuichi is very obviously having a very bad time as the guy who thought that something was horribly wrong from the start and keeps getting proven right, and from at the very latest Medusa onward Kirie is in an adjacent boat to that concept. Any time where they're together and they can just sit with each other and just _exist_ is a testament to how strongly they care for and take comfort in each other. They are goals. The only non-enviable thing about their relationship is that they are in fact doomed by the narrative since they're in a cosmic horror story where there can be no survivors.
i didn't even understand they were supposed to be in a relationship when i read the manga. maybe something got lost in translation but i thought they were simply neighbors who barely knew each other, they were so reserved
@@juliashirokova8374 I read it in Spanish so it could be different, but I always read them as a couple.
Can I be a shuichi apologist for a sec. Really his main flaw is just being depressed, which is understandable given the situation. When he "snubbed" Kirie during the hair chapter, he was leaving to get the knife and plan. He couldve told her what his plan was in advance, but that would risk getting hypnotized by the hair or alerting it to his plans. Idk it makes sense to me.
Also he chews her out during the storm episode because he warned her ahead of time and she went out anyway. Yeah from Kirie's perspective its crazy to think that the storm is targeting her. But crazy shit has been happening all the time and Shuichi is running himself ragged with worry.
I have no justification for the gravedigging chapter. He was crazy lol
Ur so right idk why people still question Shuichi,, like basically bro was right from the START😭‼️
Yeah I don’t get the Shuichi criticism. He’s consistently proven right again and again, whatever that means, and he’s devoted whatever is left of his life to making sure Kirie is safe. She’s all he cares about. He’s not the best at showing affection but like.. have you not noticed what’s going on around him? Even at the very end, when he finally gives up, he waits for Kirie to find him so that he can tell her first. He refuses to succumb until he knows she’s okay and he can tell her in person. And then when they lie down together they coil up completely, like only the couple who dove into the sea did.
It’s pretty romantic if you ignore the “horror” part of the horror manga. It also tracks with men in Japan not being socially allowed to show the depth of their emotion and care for their loved ones, so they endlessly provide without expecting anything in return. I like Shuichi a lot.
Nah you are 100% in the right, either Kirie and the rest of the town are all morons or the spiral is putting a veil over their eyes. Dude has a 100% track record of spotting spiral bullshit and everyone goes "I know you were right literally every single time but it can't be it THIS time"
Idk I thought shuichi was like the voice of reason and kirie just needed to catch up with what was going on around her, and she did but eventually it was too late
I think it’s sweet that he suggested to dig up the grave. If I was scared that someone who died was hounting me ot something and someone suggested to dig up their body and put a stage through their heart, I’d be weirded out but also, awww, that’s so considerate
i am a firm shuichi defender! i get why he gets frustrated with her because she acts so dense after actively seeing these weird things and dismissing them. shuichi stays just for her because he has no one else & where else would he go? i love kirie but i would’ve ran away with him & avoided the whole thing
Same here. I was super frustrated with Kirie as the other guys as well since she like all the others seem to forget the spooky shit that happened the other day and acts likes it's normal and Shuichi freaking out because he has no idea how will he able to save them and take them out of town when they won't even leave in the first place
Too real. If I would be Kirie, I would leave the town at least After chapter 3. When I see that my friend is "eating" a guy and turns into a Spiral, i would leave fast
Cochlea not only aids in hearing. It serves a crucial functionality of balancing oneself. It literally has fluids that lets brain know that the body is at balance and thus do not need to adjust one's position. In other words, if cochlea is damaged, your body will feel unbalanced and feel the utmost motion sickess even when lying down, completely still. And being sick to that degree literally feels your mind and body is spiraling
I've heard of people that obtain head injury from ( usually) motorcycle accidents having a hard time recovering from vertigo because of the difficulty of measuring or restoring cochlear damage. It's really quite frightening because I don't think there's much that can be done, other than hoping the body just heals and recovers 😢
@@cherylmaden5989 vertigo sickness is the worst. I get it from time to time and it's always almost impossible to function because you always feel like you are falling down from a great height even when you are standing still.
Shuichi's mom's chapter probably scared me the most because I couldn't imagine having that feeling 24/7 while trapped on a bed.
I remember that Suichi's mom suffered from constant and extreme vertigo before she passed in the manga, If I remember correctly.
The snails could fall under obsession as well.
The first boy who turned was thought of as lazy and sloth-like, someone who probably would've preferred to be home. After the first snail-boy occurred, the bullies would probably feel guilty and fearful and would want to hide. I think it makes perfect sense that a person obsessed with being at home might eventually manifest said obsession through becoming a creature that takes their house wherever they go -- a snail.
Kirie's little brother, stuck under the collapsed house, probably wished nothing more to be back home. Wanting to go home and giving up often overlap though, think "I don't want to do this anymore, I just want to go home".
Kinda reminds me of sweet home they voice a desire and the virus changes them to fit said desire only in it if the virus couldn’t understand it like wanting to watch an upcoming anime that’s almost impossible to watch with all the chaos it doesn’t have a hive mind to all other versions of themselves so it can’t call for whoever the creator or people who helped in the anime for the manga when they succumb
However it seems that the spiral needs to be accepted in some way either it’s entirety or it’s concept or give the hosts their most desired form
Ah fuck if that's what does it I'd be done in like immediately lmao.
Why the Shuichi hate?
He is the only one to actually ackknowledge that things are wrong, yet for most of the stories people ignore him or try to talk him out of it, as if he is not right the whole time and things are not freaky as hell. He also tries to convince Kirie to leave multiple times, but she refuses, so he stays to save her.
I was wondering about that too. As a matter of fact. The outsider perspective is Shuichi and that the readers is him. Only the readers and Shuichi is aware of the happenings in kurozucho. this is why when I consume media I always do not immerse myself in it's world and put myself in the shoes of the character. I am an observer and I pay attention to it's story and details and my opinions about a character is only counted by the end of the series. This is how I write my characters too. From the eyes of the observer that they cannot see. I used to write for my publication in my college usually about short stories of people's lives viewed from the perspective of a stranger
exactly! He's the reader's stand-in, the voice of reason who is slowly being pulled into the madness himself
Yes!!! He’s my favorite character by far! The hate was driving me insane!
I’d be a lil weird too if some freaky curse killed my parents and the only other person I care most about is too lost in the curse’s hold to run away with me
Yeah. I think my man's just depressed or smth (probably why he was patient zero as in the video it was both mentioned he might have been the first to catch the spiral disease and depressed people are susceptible to the disease. He's prob not evil though as just like how depression doesn't mean someone's evil or make someone evil, dude's just a bystander to the whole thing who happens to be depressed
Kirie and Shuichi are the final pieces of the puzzle that is the Spiral. They seem to be mostly ignored by the influence of it, Kirie only getting affected against her will out of nowhere. Kirie is the observer and Shuichi the omen.
It's only when they give up that the spiral ends and starts.
My interpretation is that the "ritual" needs two people to fill these roles before the cycle can restart anew.
I think this interpretation is maybe a bit literal and ignoring the symbolic and thematic elements to try to create a more literal narrative. To me uzumaki is very similar thematically to the book 100 years of solitude, as they both seem to explore this idea of the cyclical nature of time and the ways in which we repeat patterns that inevitably lead to our downfall. Junji Ito in general tends to explore horror in the form of body horror, a terror is rooted in the fact that there is something inside of ourselves that is our undoing that we can't control. I think uzumaki in some ways is the zenith of that idea by it being human nature itself that leads us to our own downfall. Not our bodies, but ourselves
I absolutely agree, especially since the radiation sickness idea in the title, which hints at a metaphorical reading, is basically clickbait. I feel like I just watched this long video only to get “this story about a town being infected by a spiral… is about an infection.”
Ito has never mentioned radiation. He has literally said it's a cosmic horror though
I always imagined the "curse" in Uzumaki as some kind of mimetic hazard. Once a few people start noticing it, it's like the ruins underground awaken more and try to drag more people into the curse. It starts out small with the grass, clouds, and vibes of the town, but as more people notice it, it just keeps bringing about weirder phenomena until everyone kinda just accepts it and becomes one with whatever is down below. Something like that. It would make sense (to me at least) that some are affected and some aren't, and it can be reversed, because some have more mental fortitude than others. And also Shuichi being able to "spread" the curse since he always mentions something before it actually happens.
Or, the whole area is one big organism that can directly impact what happens to itself, including whatever is living on it. Like flesh pit national park, but with more supernatural methods. The creature can somehow make spiral effects that eventually draw the inhabitants to madness, eventually "feeding" themselves to the creature. Then it just repeats that every few hundreds of years.
I mean… it could be, but I don’t think granular discussions of what it “is” are quite as interesting as what it *means.*
@@Fluffkitscripts I definitely agree. An unexplainable horror beyond anyone's comprehension is always more interesting in my opinion, and explaining it all away ruins the fear of the unknown (which arguably is the biggest fear of most people). But since the video was spitballing ideas of what could actually be happening, I just threw out some of my own. The two things we know for sure is that there's a cause, and an agent acting out said cause, and whatever all the details in between are are still fun to speculate despite the frivolity of it.
Ultimately, the story itself seems to be more symbolic than anything to be taken literally, whether that be obsession, sentimentality, depression, or whatever. It's all up to how the reader wants to see it.
@@Leoviathan symbols are of something. Thats what makes them symbols, they stand in for specific concepts, people objects.
Interesting theory, I have just one important question.
Have you seen the yellow sign?
@@Fluffkitscriptswhat do you mean by this?
The problem is for Japanese society is that stuff is different, like the bystander effect is apparently MUCH stronger in japan. It's apparently super common for everyone to just stand around and do nothing about the bullying. Also i'm not sure about the CPS situation, it's just... a really common thing in manga and stuff that children can just live perfectly alone without CPS intervention...
I have heard about how different the education system is in Japan. The importance of education is taken to another level from like the time kids enter middle school from what I recall. Like it determines so much about how someone lives. Kids will live in different areas of Japan in order to go to a good school. It’s like some of them are college students moving out of their parent’s place to pursue something.
Also apparently the bullying might be bad because of the stressful environment schools make. I heard teachers don’t do anything about it because the bullied person is like a sacrificial lamb. Everyone takes all their stress and just piles it onto some poor kid.
Of course this should all be taken with a huge helping of salt because I don’t live there and I only retain information about video essays and autistic interest in random things.
@@jaydinotjd The "sacrificial lamb" as you put it is a real psychological tactic that, actually, is also used by the military.
The drill Saergents aren't just rude for the hell of it. They act like that so that the rest of the Unit "unite" against them, if you will. Strengthen the units bonds against a common enemy.
Bullying in school works a similar way. Have one collective victim, and all the other students bond better. They have one common "enemy" to unite against.
Honestly, most people I know have been bullied, myself included, and no one stepped it. Not a single person. It's a pretty common thing, they probably don't want to be the next target.
@@toolatetothestory the military using psychological tactics to mentally destroy and then rebuild people into soldiers is one of the most military things I’ve heard of aside from preying on the poor and vulnerable and bombing civilian cities, waiting for first responders, and then bombing it again.
@@jaydinotjd Not mentally destroy. It's essentially just... a team building tactic.
And schools use it too, evidently, as seen by schools never doing f"ckall against bullying.
i don't get why you diss suichi so much when in fact, he's the first one who noticed the bad things happening and was convincing kirie to leave as early as possible. his reactions are justifiable because of how kirie's been so nonchalant all this time, but he still keeps helping her out through all this shite.
One thing that a lot of people miss is that Uzumaki is...extremely Japanese. Shuichi and Kirie's relationship is super Japanese, like they're very clearly in love? It just doesn't look like an American relationship. A further example is that your interpretation of "curse" is super SUPER Western; Uzumaki is a great example of the much broader Eastern concept of a "curse." In Eastern culture these are often situational, based on place and time rather than any active participation. Curses root in places and objects as often as people. Curses aren't exclusively a concept of punishment, and to claim that's the only way they work is really eurocentric and filtered through a very Christian interpretation.
I was born a christian though I am not one but in my country we have a different type of christian belief. Far from western Christianity because our beliefs is close to the jewish faith and Inanimate worship. Most of our curse related stuff if either a hereditary thing, something that you touched, you bad mouthed a dead person, you kicked a tree in a place you never lived in, offended some mountain god or that you pointed at a seemingly haunted place and that a spirit will take offense to thaf
That's pretty much my only critique of this video. I grew up loving Japanese culture, and the first half of the story-recap is a very western interpretation. Asking about social services or calling the police is a very western thing that not many small Japanese towns have. 😅 They exist, yes, but Junji Ito's work often takes place in a small town off the map where not many amenities we take for granted exist.
Also commenting on the love between Shuichi and Kirei seeming boring; Japanese love dynamics aren't generally dramatic unless it's the focus of the story. Two people existing comfortably together is a pretty common thing, especially in highschool stories not focusing on relationship drama.
Thank you, this was my problem with the description of a curse. Especially that someone needs to do something "wrong". That isn't always the case.
Clicked because I thought the reading of Uzumaki as a story about a town succumbing to radiation sickness as a potentially interesting one, but was let down by what felt like really specious, and like you said, eurocentric points.
I was waiting to see this kind of comment. As someone from a non-western country, I agree. The whole curse bit just came off super western. In my country, places can be cursed, land, houses, objects and it's not necessarily about wrong-doing or punishment. A curse can spring from any ill-feeling whether that's anger, maliciousness, guilt, pain, hurt, obsession etc. There's not necessarily a morality to curses. Someone doesn't have to be doing wrong or deserve punishment to be affected or trapped by a curse.
I also think that there is a strong religious/theistic interpretation to this story, it's simply not a Christian one and I was disappointed she didn't branch out at any other religious possibilities other than Adam and Eve and Eden.
It almost sounds like you have a very christian view on the Uzumaki book. I feel like the story kinda have a nihilistic "nothing matters, anyone in a close proximity to the underground spiral opening is cursed because of the horror. It doesn't matter if you are 'good' or 'bad', because everyone is fucked anyways." One of the reasons why i find it so terrifying and great at once. The christian "good and evil" debate is very simplistic and doesn't take human nature, or just nature's cold empty void in to consideration.
The best thing about Lovcraftian horror like Junji Ito is that there is no actual explanation for why something like that happenes to good, or at least decent people.
Kirie and Shuichi are probably one of my favorite anime/manga couples of all time. Idk why but they just do it for me, I love the way they care for one another and I just root for them so hard even tho I know it’s doomed.
But in general I just love comfortable, established relationships in media
Theyre about as functional as possible considering everything happening to them
Same! They're very sweet, and the most believable and healthy Genki Girl/Depressed Boy pairing I've ever seen.
Same here! I remember thinking it was so sweet he stood around for her when he otherwise had no reason to stay.
Shuichi is the most reasonable and realistic person yet nobody listens to him even after horrifying shit happens the day prior
Also you don’t actually talk about radiation sickness? Like your main theory was about disease, and those aren’t the same. I was really interested in hearing your theory on that bc I think it fits really well- the town is a cursed area, similar to areas affected by accidents involving radiation. Disease comes and goes with people, but the town in the story and contaminated areas are still “cursed” even when there are no people left. Unless the disease is in the water? Which would work too, since the dad gets the possessed clay from the pond, the city thing is at the bottom of a hole/well, and of course everyone drinks water lol. It’s interesting 😅 I would have liked to hear more about radiation sickness, like the title suggests. There’s just so much there !
i was thinking that exact same thing. I was curious to hear what they had to say only to get 1 hour 20 in and realise id kind of wasted time?
Yeah I really like her videos and I know theyre not a very big channel, but I’m kind of disappointed that there was no radiation sickness talk. Even just one crackpot theory about it would’ve been nice. I love radiation horror stories.
she should have said "radial" not "radiation" 😞
i agree completely, i felt like it was total click bait and was really frustrated at the end...
same!! it's disappointing because focusing in on the town "making people sick" and giving shuichi a headache felt like it was building up to that, not to mention how easily hand-in-hand cosmic horror and radiation go (something destructive you can't perceive)...really felt like wasted potential
I worked as a sterile compounding pharmacy technician before applying to medical school. Glass IV bottles for normal saline were the norm up until the late 1960s when the plastic bags we see today were first brought to market and were quickly adopted worldwide by 1970. There are still exceptions for certain medications that get delivered as an infusion, often "piggybacking" with a standard fluid drip.
Type 1, borosilicate, glass is the most widely used in the pharmaceutical industry because it's nonporous, heat resistant, non-reactive, and contents are kept completely sterile provided the container is intact and has not been opened. It helps extend shelf life and does not pose the risk of altering drugs or reagents like certain pastics can over time. Amber vial also prevent exposure to UV light which can affect the stability of many compounds commonly used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry.
Type 1 glass also meets standard safety requirements for most countries and most pharmaceutical companies operate in multiple countries.
okay cool but what does that have to do with the video
@@player0ne16 Grimmelle mentioned in the bit with Shuichi's mum in the hospital on why her IV bag was made of glass, as it shattered when it was toppled onto the ground. Also, no need to be so negative, it's just an interesting comment!
@@player0ne16 I don't recall the time stamp, but one of the pannels shows the hospital using an old-fashioned IV set-up. The creator then asked if glass IV bottles are actually a thing.
I'm also a weirdo who has a real passion for biology and medicine and jumps at any chance to nerd out for a bit.🤷♀️
Sorry. My rambling is worse right now because I'm recovering from surgery after breaking my right ankle in 3 places. I have not been allowed to leave the house for almost 5 weeks. RUclips comments and IG have literally been my only human interaction. (See what I mean?^^^😅)
@@KirstenMarie_MS3 Thanks for clarifying, I didn’t know that. Good luck on your recovery.
I mean Junji ito other big book, Gyo. Its a tale about how fish mutated with machines. That is a critisism about nuclear testing in the sea i think.
I mean it explicitly mentions they were created by imperial japanese scientists during ww2, right?
I read it as relating to Unit 731
I think it's criticizing the use of biological weapons during a war and its effects on innocent people, but I can definately see where you're coming from with the idea of it criticizing nuclear testing.
I always interpreted it as the natural world reacting to manmade pollution, climate change, and the exploitation and destruction of natural habitats.
As an example, the real life phenomenon of the Caribbean having way too many jellyfish in it now, because rising temperatures make the water so hot in summer that coral reefs and fish which would control and compete with jellyfish are being boiled in their natural habitat. It’s a bottom-up collapse of the ecosystem, resulting in an explosion of jellyfish, which are naturally more heat-tolerant than fish.
it's not just the fish or the machines, it's a disease
In Japanese folklore, any inanimate object that reaches a certain age can become animated and gain a soul of its own.
The town isn’t falling prey to a disease, the town and the area it’s in is a living being, and once it gains sentience, it begins trying to clear itself of the parasites, humans, that are draining its resources. Kirie’s father takes clay from the lake. The school teacher destroys eggs. The area Kirie and Shuichi end up in is essentially a central nervous system.
The town is focused on Kirie because her and Shuichi are the 0.1% of germs that the disinfectant can’t kill. The repeated cycles are akin to getting a new strain of the flu every year
This is an amazing comment and makes so much sense
@@LittleMissSkelling thanks, it came into my head and I was so sure of it that I snuck off into the back at work to type it up lol
Tsukumogami is what that flavor of yakai is called BTW.
I never thought of looking at it through the lens of it being akin to a Tsukumogami
The Shuichi hate is really uncomfortable and annoying. A lot of it is illogical and completely misinterprets events. However, what really discomforts me is that Shuichi represents a lot of mentally ill traits, and seeing him be hated for those traits is frankly unpleasant.
I agreee
same
Here's a list of everything shuichi had to go through throughout the story
Watch his father become obsessed with spirals due to the town's curse until he himself became a spiral (something shuichi had to watch while being powerless to stop it)
Having his girlfriend dismiss all his reasonable concerns over her and other's safety even when it is crystal clear that the town is cursed
Having to care for his paranoid mother traumatized by the death of his father until she died (once again being powerless to stop it)
Digging up a child's grave in order to help his girlfriend's paranoia over her stalker's death
Being ostracized for being an outsider all throughout his life despite the fact he only wanted what was best for everyone
I completely agree. I think a lot of the Shuichi hate also comes from people who don’t actually read much Junji Ito. Literally none of his main characters have good endings, all of his characters are doomed from the very beginning, that’s kind of his thing.
I dont buy the patient zero or the carrier part of the theory.
most of the review and the analisis ignored the line that explained that shuichi realizes how odd the city is because of being out of town most of the time.
And how is it anoying that someone says that the city is cursed by spirals, then the spirals kill his father and his mother and keep apearing around town and infecting people, and then you see a spiral shape on something weird and this dude says "this might be part of the curse" its just him pointing out that there is a conecction and there is danger.
In defense of Shuichi essentially calling Kirie gullible at his dads funeral: "falling down the stairs" is often considered to be something people say to cover up more sinister circumstances in media. A bit like excusing a black eye by saying you tripped and hit the eye somehow to cover up domestic ab*se. Although the stairs thing much more likely to be meant literally than the black eye.
I think it's wild that you never even uttered the words "cosmic horror" in your analysis. I absolutely think of Uzumaki as being in the same tradition as H.P. Lovecraft stories. An unknowable god like thing just so happens to drive the whole town mad, then destroy it in ways the human mind can barely comprehend.
I do think your reading of Shoichi as "patient zero" is interesting though. There's maybe something there.
Definitely get those kind of vibes from Uzumaki, especially with the final chapter.
how are you going to call it radiation-like without actually talking about radiation sickness, or mentioning the real life implications of radiation in japan? im not even saying your theory is wrong but i think your title is misleading when your theory actually surrounds disease.
Its embedded into the environment itself, like radioactive contamination. It doesn't matter if you leave, once exposed, it's too late.
Somehow people can manage to see the connections in Godzilla without anyone saying aloud “this is a metaphor for radiation poisoning”
@@Da_bear-ij9gm in an essay you should fully explain your thesis, not only does she not really talk about radiation at all, but she could change the thesis to "uzumaki is about disease" and it would be the same. i think invoking radiation in this context without fully unpacking it does the video a disservice.
THANK YOU, I was at the part about the live-action movie and was like "wait, when does she bring up radiation poisoning?"
I came here to hear this fresh take on Uzumaki that was implied in the title?
I absolutely agree. I was also disappointed by how literal the theory turned out to be. When you say “Uzumaki is about radiation sickness” the implication is that you’re talking about symbolism or metaphor, which is interesting analysis! But then it becomes “it’s about a literal supernatural disease” in the same way that a nature documentary is about animals. It doesn’t say anything about the themes of the text.
Since the video doesn’t really delve into the radiation sickness comparisons much and instead just theorizes that the spirals are a literal supernatural disease, I’m gonna talk about the radiation sickness similarities here a bit
When a place is irradiated it stays that way for a really long time and will poison and even sometimes mutate anyone who stays there. An example is Chornobyl/Chernobyl in Ukraine, after the horrific incident there which took the lives of many and forced tons of people to leave their homes because of the radiation; this entire area is now uninhabitable and nobody can go in without really extreme protective measures lest they risk getting radiation poisoning. There are some dogs who have managed to survive and are basically running around fending for their lives. Some beetles have been recorded living there with mutated markings on their shells. It’s deadly to stay there and some of the creatures who managed to not die have been altered, similar to how the curse in Uzumaki alters its victims. It’s also deadly to stay in the town in Uzumaki because it’ll claim you no matter what, and even if you do manage to leave it’s established that your ashes will still fly back into the pond, similar to how a person can still die of ARS (acute radiation syndrome) even if they’ve left the area where they were exposed. You can’t get un-irradiated just by leaving the place you got irradiated at, the same way you can’t get rid of your connection to the spiral just because you leave the town. Using the Chornobyl/Chernobyl example again, plenty of people who escaped unfortunately died later on due to complications that can be traced to radiation, despite having successfully escaped the area that was compromised.
Radiation sickness can also affect different people at different rates, depending on how much and how often they were exposed to radiation, just like how the curse affects people differently, although I’m not really sure what those differences are based on. For instance, the Radium Girls, a bunch of women who worked at a factory that had them lick radium-paint-covered paintbrushes while painting watches, pretty much all suffered from and died from radiation related causes, while still having their symptoms and times of death/affliction varying. Of course they didn’t all have unique symptoms from one another and some of them died around the same time as one another but my point still stands; this is comparable to the way the spiral curse works.
Finally let’s discuss the significance of radiation in Japan specifically. Obviously you have to address the nuclear bombs launched on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the effects of which left many of their victims with horrific and tragic ARS symptoms, but contrary to what one might assume, the areas hit by these bombs aren’t really radioactive anymore. It has something to do with how nuclear weapons work vs how nuclear plants work, I don’t remember exactly. So while I feel it’s relevant to bring this up as it was such a terrible and monumental event in Japanese history and it relates to radiation, I’m not gonna focus on it because it doesn’t fit the “this place is irradiated and will stay that way for centuries” thing that I feel is a better comparison to Uzumaki. I was going to talk about Fukushima here, which is basically Japan’s version of the Chornobyl/Chernobyl meltdown, but then I realized that Uzumaki was written like fifteen years before the Fukushima incident took place so I scrapped that paragraph. Silly me misremembering dates
This comment is very disjointed, I didn’t organize anything and kind of just wrote down the basic comparisons I had made in my thoughts. The story of Uzumaki is defiently comparable to a place that’s been irradiated and the affect that irradiation has on the citizens, slowly killing them in horrible ways until they’re all gone and a new group of people come by and eventually meet the same fate because the curse is everywhere in the town, and the spiral curse affects are defiently comparable to ARS. This is what I wished the video talked about because I’m really- well, I wouldn’t say interested- horrified by the effects of radiation and have spent many a day spiraling (lol) while reading every bit of information on it that I can find. So I was curious to see how it was going to be analyzed and compared to Uzumaki, a story I enjoyed. I did like the video but I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed by how little was done with the radiation poisoning allegory
(Also if I got anything wrong in this comment pls let me know, this was just a quick dump of my simple thoughts on it and not meant to be an in depth analysis or anything, it was just for fun bc I wanted the allegory to be discussed more and it wasn’t)
Thank you for the analysis! Good point
Also gaster pfp❤❤❤❤
good ass analysis! another thing someone mentioned in a different comment was that they personally felt like the final underground "spiral city" resembled a lot of what we would call in real life long-term radioactive waste warning monuments, which come from the idea that we need to be able to leave warning messages that last as long as radiation itself, which can be THOUSANDS of years (!!) and have it still be understood by whatever civilizations might come to be in that span of time.
there are a LOT of ideas and a lot of discussion over "globally understood" symbols, and some of the proposed monuments absolutely feel similar to the ones in the spiral city. it's so fucking cool.
You might call it "Boringly comfortable" I call it "Life goals"
Exactly , how is boringly comfortable a bad thing lol ?
My take on shuichi yelling at kirie is that she seems so aloof with her head in the clouds from his perspective that he needs to shout to bring her to his level of awarness
personally, i kinda read uzumaki as a story about generational trauma kinda? not exactly sure how to articulate this, but the time loop thing, and the godforsaken mosquito women thing, just all the general themes and individual bits of each chapter reads as an allegory to me
EDIT: THE TEACHER SMASHING THE SNAIL EGGS, i know they joked about it being homophobic, but looking at it outside of a jokey manner and more metaphorical, it seems kinda fucked up doesn't it? not just that, but how the bullied kid acted before he got snail-ed, with all the different spiral-symptoms, it makes me think its people being affected by different types of trauma
Honestly I think this is really interesting, and a deeper analysis than anything in the video.
The fact that both main characters’ parents were among the first to be infected is a big piece of evidence in your favor!
also "[shuichi] is THE most depressed man i've ever seen" WELL CAN YOU BLAME HIM??
I have to argue about curses usually being static and effecting certain people. In so much of japanese horror, curses can latch on to literally anyone who comes in contact with it. It always amuses me to see the evil angry ghosts or whatever just absolutely wreck whoever happens to walk into the house for completely innocent or innocuous reasons. Maybe it's a japanese thing?
This. Trying to analyze Uzumaki with a western lens won't get you anywhere. It's not a metaphor. It's not a disease. It's not radiation. It's a horror story about a curse.
In Japanese horror, curses can be objects or places or bloodlines... they're not necessarily magic spells, like they are in the western conception of curses... like some old witch casting a hex on someone. They're like concentrations of evil, a concept out of the Taoist tradition. They don't have to have a purpose or a specific origin. They can occur naturally or through malice. The horror in this story being that it's an inexplicable, inescapable, bizarre thing that might be eternally reoccurring. Trying to explain it defeats the purpose.
Yeah i think this is just a case of cultural differences. Western curses are usually punishments for specific people or bloodlines. This story is not Western, so that’s not the case. I’m American myself so I usually think of curses as punishments but while listening to the story recap I kind of just figured that maybe the word “curse” just had a different connotation in Japan, like it entailed something different
I think it’s interesting because Japanese curses kind of work like radiation poisoning, so the overall idea still works? Like, a curse can literally be a person, place, or thing, and not even have too much of a reason to exist, but the way it can effect someone coming into contact with it just like exposure to radiation poisoning is the easiest way to analyze it for a western mind. That’s a really dumbed down version, but you get the idea. I think this kind of “it doesn’t need a reason, it just is” is why Japanese horror can be a lot scarier than western horror, as there’s always a reason, there’s always a start, there’s most of the time a way to break the curse. Japan says no thank you to that 😂
@@victoriavidaud yeah the allegory totally works!! It’s a shame the video didn’t really explore it
@@OuroborosChoked It can still be about radiation. Ito's also written Gyo, which I believe is about biological weapons testing, so the curse could still be an allegory for radiation. Unfortunately, radiation isn't talked about much in the video :/
you are so mean so shuichi 😭 he's just genre aware
IKR!? Bad bunny! BAD! 😡😤🗞🐰
Suichi = Spiralphoid Mary
I wanna disagree from a character perspective, but that pun is too good to debunk.
Wouldn't it be Kirie, considering she's an asymptomatic carrier?
New mini chatacter name!
Considering attention is what the spirals crave, it's very possible Suichi is a sort of unwitting herald, pointing out stuff to draws people's attention to it, thus giving the spirals what they desire and affecting more people. It's unknown whether this is through subconscious manipulation of Suichi or a sort of looped (lol) logic where trying to avoid something causes it.
for me Uzumaki as a whole did reminded me a lot of the Goiânia accident, one of the world's worst radiological incidents in history
you're brazilian?
@@tacianalima2345 It's regularly covered by both science education and real-life spooky stories types.
there was a barrel full of radioactive material lost in São Paulo this week lol
Exactly! As a 90s Brazilian kid when a read Uzumaki as a teenager not only me but my friends as well pick up a unhiged parallels bc the Goiânia accident wasn't just a national commotion of nuclear waste incident but horrific consequences to families, the whole community was see as cursed.
The title made me think someone has somehow connected this story to the long lasting effects of nuclear bombings, just like how Amigara Fault is an allegory for rigid and harmful social roles. Turned out it's just a 10 minute section explaining how a curse isn't a curse
I'm 100% with Shuichi, like he's literally right about the Spiral Curse and everything happening since the start of the story and the best part is that he still remains mostly calm, almost never reaching the insanity of everything around him wich just gives him absolute depression, i don't know, in his situation i would be deep in the Spiral Curse insanity because i couldn't handle having my parents dead, my town destroyed, my friends dead, crazy shit happening all around and my stupid but oh so beloved girlfriend literally having dementia and forgetting the literal dunwich horror happening in front of her eyes just two seconds ago, it's INSANE MAN, i would've done a Kurt Cobain by that point.
"There are Snildren around!" Had my sides hurting bro!
😂yeah and snomophobic!❤
the two cakes philosophy is so accurate, cause I ate wendigoons cake and was still hungry and have been starved until now. thank youuuu
edit: oh god... "I ate wendigoons cake" I'm so sorry 😭😭
wendigoons cake 🥵
@@bilis2866BAD. DOWN BOY, DOWN
The two cakes philosophy is based 👍
"ate wendigoons cake" BRO??? 😢🤨
AYOOOO
Look, I understand pointing out the “logic” of things. But the lighthouse chapter where you said “Why don’t they call the police?” They did? They were a group of workers would when up there to look inside to figure out what is happening however got burned alive. No hate, I love your video. ;w;
there's also the issue of the curse being seen as a punishment in this video. That's generally not how curses are in traditional Japanese (or hell, Shinto in general) tales. I liked their Tomie video, but this one is kinda disappointing
5:41 - Shuichi didn't shame Kirie for not magically knowing what happened to his father; he literally just asked her if she wanted to know what really happened. I didn't read him as snapping at her for not knowing, but rather just answering with a really intense energy, because what he was telling her was something he had really intense feelings about. I think the traumatized teenager who just saw his dad spiral himself to death can be excused for his lack of tact, you know?
Yes, he's been through a lot. He deserves a little leeway here
When the title is a deeper analysis than the video… The title suggests its an analogy for radiation sickness from the atomic bomb. And how the inhumanity that was the source of the bomb parallels the dehumanization from its fall out like the propagation of a lovecraftian god (many of which are about racist fear of non white populations). But the video itself is some weird attempt at analysis about a magical virus that only affects people with depression and sadness…
I literally read the title and was like “dang that’s brilliant” lol.
Cosmic horror doesn't need theories to explain exactly how it works. The spiral is an unexplainable force of nature that's been affecting Kurouzu-cho since before people were there. Theorizing about "what actually happened" just takes away the horror.
YES THIS im always a bit baffled when ppl try to comprehend cosmic horror - the point of the horror is that its incomprehensible for our tiny human minds - the spiral/curse/structure under the town is so far beyond the human conciousness, so alien that we cant possible understand it. explaining its motivations by way of comparison w human motivations, like a desire for attention/a need to be seen/etc. is missing the point a bit i think. i also dont think its allegorical, the horror is very obvious: theres something so much bigger than us that we're powerless to it, even if we can predict it (like shuichi) we still cant change anything.
Then why watch a video about something you don't like or want?
@@nbucwa6621 because i thought it was going to be comparing the story of uzumaki to radiation sickness in a symbolic sense, not making a theory that it’s a literal sickness that’s also supernatural and making up random things that were never in the original text
I may sound like an idiot but isn't it just like a theory so it's not really taking away the horror it's still there we don't truly understand it it's just a theory so I kinda don't get it.
@@EmanAsheer I mean you’re right. It’s just a bad theory that’s unsupported by the text and completely misses the point of the story. Suichi is more aware of the obvious supernatural events when everyone else ignores them because he goes to school outside of the town. He’s the voice of reason. For some reason, the creator of this video hates him and thinks that he somehow contracted a disease outside of the town and spread it to his dad. The book literally says point blank that the cycle has been happening specifically in this town for centuries. I’d have to rewatch some of the video cause I honestly don’t remember most of the theory but from what I remember, it’s not a theory. It’s just fanfiction.
"Ive never met someone who whole-heartedly wanted to be a snail" words of someone who never played snail simulator
Your points about Suichi made me think more about the seer Cassandra than an inverse garden of Eden, as literary references go. The prophet who is cursed to always be *right,* but never *believed.* Because of whatever attunes him to the spiral more than anyone else, even if it's just him being a hyperaware person, he is always right when he talks about what will happen because of the curse, but it cannot be prevented, only predicted- and even if someone did fully take him at his word, what could they possibly do? Part of Cassandra's story is also the foretelling of her own death- she is aware of exactly how she will die and cannot even try to prevent it because, again, no one will believe her. Maybe Suichi knew the whole time that there was no escape due to this Cassandra factor, and that's why his character is so back and forth. It's human nature to try and fight fate, even when you know you'll lose.
Regarding the pacing, when you say that things happen too fast or conveniently timed, I feel like these stories are paced very much like a campfire story. They front load information, and when the information is laid out, then the action takes off. The sprawling detailed art feels like it slows down time as you read, it adds souch information to take in, but when you read out the story itself it feels very "there is a character in a place, and then this happened, and then that happened!", simple stories elevated by a medium being pushed to its limit.
My opinion is that it isn´t any kind of "infection" or curse. I also don´t think this is actively malicious, but the events that happen are a consquence of it´s mere existance. I think that it´s some kind of force, or being, that has an influence on reality. It makes it less stable, more mallable. That is why it seeps into everything, into realty itself. The spiral isn´t even neccesarly an integral part, it´s just that it is such a common shape, so universal in our reality, that it inadvertently dominates. Like how smoke will nearly always throw up spiraling patterns while dissipating in the air. All the things we see are just a consequence of what can and cannot be starting to flow into each other. And the fact that no one can escape also isn´t an active act, but a consequence of the concept of the spiral dominating. It will always wind down and things will and up at it´s center.
And by influencing reality, once people start to notice it, this will kick off a feedback loop of it spreading more and more. Thats why it gets worse. It´s in that way an infohazard too. You know of it, it influences reality and you indadvertently catch yourself in it. And as it spreads it literally spirals out of controll. It`s kind of and infectious idea that seeps into reality and makes itself happen.
Small problem with your theory... Shuichi attends school in a different town, and while in Kurouzu-Cho makes comment on the town itself being so different from the town he goes to school in. Shouldn't he have spread it in the town he spent so much time in?
I have always taken it as an infrastructure thing, and how the earth is constantly battling with our man-made additions, dams, skyscrapers, heck, being in a western-style home in a hot climate, some of our modern shelters aren’t conducive to the environment.
My theory is like you: the city under the town is alive, and pre-industrialization, the infrastructure is made from things that fit with this environment, placement based on the planes that already existed, houses made from wood native to the town (the row houses), but the modern world needs more, so new development starts, and a city is being built on top of an existing one ,that must be suffocating, so our living spiral city turns the townspeople and their ill-fitting homes into bricks for their own structure.
This isn’t fully worked out i haven’t read this for a while but when i read this i took the ending to be townspeople are gonna become part of the underground city because her parents calcified the land seems to be drawing people through reconnecting with nature (ceramics) snails(not the ppl version) the galaxy, mosquitoes, hurricanes forcing it to be acknowledged in their modern life and you talking about how none can get anything done made me remember that
Gonna to reread this great video!
I've always settled on the idea that the spiral knew that kirie would have been the one person who could break out of it (you get what i mean) because of how aware shuichi is so that's why everything surrounded her bc the spiral was pissed that shuichi is so smart so it knew that once it got kirie it would get shuichi too and then bam it wins.
i saw Suichi more as representative of the audience / the person aware that it's a horror story. love your video though! didn't know about the movie
The biblical implecations about obsession could be kinda connected to the 7 deadly sins if we strech it a bit. Like, the lazy person for sloth, the horny kids for lust, the howling kids for wrath, the ones who wish to devour the snails for gluttony, the hair girl for envy, the mosquito mothers for greed, and the ones who get stuck in the houses for pride.
and in case you are wondering how, for example kirie with the hair, got cursed without expressing for herself the negative trait, it could be assumed that it is the result of negative energy from other characters, impacting them.
That's actually a good point. Slight correction (slight!) but the 7 deadly sins are not in the Bible, it's a Catholic belife to lilitrate common human sins. But yeah your still right.
I wonder if the crescent-scar girl could be pride as well. Once her "I can have every boy I want" status is challenged, she seems to spiral herself.
@@AlexMourning5635 you are absolutely right! I somehow forget about her! Probably because i was stuck in the mindset that others look at her like that, like they do with tomie, while indeed as you point out, she seeks the attention
If you think of things from Shuichi's point of view everything seems to run on nightmare logic. Everything he is worried will happen does happen. He even predicts when things are going to happen and things get worse as his mental state gets worn down. I'm not saying he's subconsciously making all this happen, but he's totally subconsciously making all this happen.
I thought it's because everything that happened has happend before there is still traces of the previous cycle left behind. He noticed the changes and makes a informed gessed. Earlier in the books he could still go to his school witch was out of town. So there was a possibility for his Girlfriend and her family, firends to get out. But they acted pretty casual about the events in the stories every day or week. I would go mad if no one listened to my warnings too. It's not until later that it becomes too late to leave that they even try after all the worning he tried telling his girlfriend.
@@gbalonso8261 Plot twist: Shuichi is actually Mukoda from long dream. That's why he appears to be the only character with agency.
Uzumaki deserves a show honestly
Like, a perfect adaptation
Adult swim is actually working on an adaptation. There is a teaser trailer already released like 2 years ago?
Adult swim is actually working on an adaptation. There is a teaser trailer already released like 2 years ago?
Adult swim is making one. Look up the trailer and stuff
@@Pale_Empress its coming out this year, the first 4 episodes are done and got junji's stamp of approval. sounds like its gonna be the first ever good adaptation of his work
@@Bala_NirannaI pray so, madman deserves it all.
9:08 "Why is her IV drip made of glass?" Because IV infusions used to be administered via vacuum sealed glass bottles. Plastic IV bags weren't wildly in use in North America until the 1970s (despite being invented probably in the 1950s) and glass bottles didn't disappear entirely until the early 1980s. Uzumaki is set mostly in coastal rural area of Japan during the 1980s or the 1990s at the latest (I'm not actually sure) and given that Japan was, and still is, kinda a decade or so behind the times, it stands to reason that the local hospital would still be using glass bottles. I'm sure some parts of the world still use glass bottles actually.
Something I noticed which I've never seen anyone talk about is how the teacher snail is different looking to the others.
The snails prior have very wrinkled skin but it's fairly smooth and solid, they also very quickly lose their limbs
Meanwhile the teacher himself has a completely different texture, it's lumpy and segmented, as well as having his arms still. It looks gross, but more than that, I think he's either made of, or covered in, snail eggs.
Maybe it's like a punishment for stomping the eggs, to then being their carrier or whatever.
Either way I hate it, I have a weird fear of slugs and snails lmao
I always thought of the Uzumaki spiral as a black hole, or maybe a sort of 'spiritual black hole' (depression?). 'Kurouzu' also translates literally to 'black vortex'. Veritasium has a great (and mindbending) video called 'Something strange happens when you follow Einstein's math' which explains the really weird stuff better, but black holes:
- are found in the centre of galaxies like the ones in the lost chapter, and also emit blasts of radio waves EXACTLY like the lighthouse's beam
- bend spacetime near themselves so that, as you approach, the direction of 'future' gets twisted around to point 'inward'
- slow down time as you approach, and therefore if you're already caught and start moving away time speeds up (like when the characters try to escape and come back to find years have passed, and at the end time slows down)
- time stops as you cross the event horizon - this is the point of no return, there's no past and no future, like the final page says 'the curse was over the same moment it began'
- as stuff is pulled in, it forms a spiral because it's orbiting but also being pulled inwards
- the gravity gets stronger rapidly as you approach the black hole (tidal forces), so if you were falling in feet first then your feet would be pulled more strongly than your head and you'd get stretched out and distorted
- if the black hole is spinning (another spiral?), theoretically you could pass through the outer layers, fly past the singularity and be ejected into another universe (spiral city?)
Like you said, all of the weird events are following Shuichi around, he starts off looking depressed and that's BEFORE his parents die, and one of the first people affected is his dad who's stopped going to work and sits at home all day. Some symptoms of depression include feeling tired all the time (like the girls with spiral hair), and moving slowly and finding it difficult to keep up with personal hygiene (like the snail people). And then finally everybody gets sucked in when they're all living in the row houses which are linked to poverty.
Junji Ito doesn't seem to have ever talked about black holes so this might just be coincidence but that's my theory anyway because I like black holes and think they should be in more media 🌌🌀 :)
there's an extra episode (idk if this video talks about it) of Uzumaki where everyone in the town is "discovering" new galaxies in the sky. Take that how you will
It's weak, but it was the hand drills. You need to turn them and they're spiral shaped.
I think by the time kirie and her family went to the row houses. The people who are smart enough to leave town did leave town.
I think that point in the chapter anthology is where the point of no return for Kirie as if she was smart and understood the spooks that this town isn’t safe. She would left already with her family but she did which tells a lot about the story.
I don't think so. We see the spiral actively eliminate those that try to leave.
@@nikogarcia201 could be as it is a theory that people who figured out the spooky things have left and sometimes the spiral curse selectively picks the person to be influenced from as how they let go of kirie’s father from the earlier chapters but the curse still took Kirie’s father anyways.
It could be the people who did left we’re able to leave fine as the curse has no use for them but once the event of spiral ended. The spiral curse could influence the people with death and their spirit came back to dragonfly pond before the event ended. Or it did the call of Cthulhu story where the event happened in dreams and the main event came and went and people forgot and no one is affected and go back to mundane life.
Or lastly the theory you the people who do got out and survived aren’t so lucky and are forever traumatized by it thinking the spiral curse is there but it has ended a long time ago. A more so theory of “you delved too deep” and your mind can’t comprehend what is real and fiction.
@@vibespidersstudios8895 When the town inhabitants started to used the row house to hide, there were still sane people that that try to escape by ship instead of giving into despair or madness as the spiral seal pretty much any entry to the town. Kirie saw them almost succeeded before the water start to spiral into a whirlpool and swallow the ship and its occupants. It’s pretty much confirmed none of them survive. That what I meant that the spiral actively prevented any escape attempts.
I think the Uzumaki "curs" is a being similar to "The Colour" from HP Lovecraft's The colour out of space. It's a being hat found itself on our planet and is just trying to survive and is influencing the environment to make it more suitable for itself. Nothing is happening on purpose, just a coincidence of an un oblivious being trying to survive. The ending is the being becoming self sufficient on the planet and being complete.
Some more parallels in between the books is that's it's something endless and vague, like a colour or shape, and it just arrived one day, grew around a body of water and when it was big enough it tried to escape but a bit of it stays every time.
That's just my autistic rant about it, probably just a coincidence of 2 horror writers doing a similar work around corruption and mutation.
Yea I read it more as a Lovecraft/ eldritch being. Is it a god? Is it an alien? Is it lost? We don't know. It's not for us to know - but it's a being imprinting on the world around it.
The obsession with attention implies a need for worship.
And the constant fixation on Kirie - who is the "final piece" at the end- implies a consciousness and desire to complete the loop. So something sentient.
I was about to comment this 😭 it’s not punishing anybody for anything, it’s just this incomprehensible supernatural thing that’s affecting eveyrone around it. Nobody made it come or anything, it just showed up and is now destroying and warping everything in its path because it’s too incomprehensible and cosmic and whatever. In fact, the similarities between this story and that Lovecraft story are kind of startling- small town, incomprehensible thing, stemming from some sort of water supply, affects the people and the environment, everything gets demolished by the end, it’s implied that one day it’ll happen again- now I want a video just talking about that lol
That sounds similar to viruses
"The color out of space" was inspired by Lovecraft's vague understanding of light outside the visible spectrum being a thing, and the symptoms are eerily similar to radiation poisoning. Between that and the general Japanese nuclear trauma...hm.
A possible polarization of light is circular polarization, which can be visualized as a spiral...
@@NXTangl I KNOW ITS SUCH AN INTERESTIG PARALELL
The radiation interpretation is interesting, but I think that should be understood as an applicable metaphor rather than something literal. None of this is out of the realm of possibility for curses in mythology. There are many instances in myths of beings cursing generations of an entire place because of the actions of one person. Those stories aren't meant to depict a situation that's fair.
Wendi love Shuichi and is annoyed by Kirie, and Grimelle loves Kirie and is annoyed by Shuichi. By watching both videos I have found a nirvana-level equilibrium and understanding
i love when there is the whole essay for 1h abt smth like junji ito (I've watched tomie one before ig) kinda sleepy rn so I'll enjoy this tmrw
I have to say, I'm incredibly disappointed. This video was mostly synopsis and then what analysis was done seemed to absolutely miss the glaring cultural connection involved in the title. Uzumaki as allegory for radiation poisoning is a novel and compelling read, I expected a lot more consideration of Japans history with nuclear fallout and disaster, be it the 3/11 catastrophe or the lingering effects of the bombs dropped during WWII. Art exists within and is the result of cultural and personal context. That can make for a great lens to analyze media through. It's a shame that didn't happen here at all. I expected something filling but ended up getting empty calories of recap and half baked theory that fails to live up to what the video was advertised as.
Felt the exact same, so much missed potential.
When I read the title I thought „oh wait yeah I can see that!“ but the video didn’t give me anything…
I would argue that what's going on is that the town keeps resetting. At the end of the story I know the characters believe that they went ahead in time but I would argue that they actually went back in time and that everyone in the town has done this many many many many many many many times before and didn't realize it, however Suichi the only one who who seems to have a vague recollection of it
I think trying to find a "logic" to Uzumaki is part of the trap. It's a "lovecraftian" event that cannot be comprehended by human minds, which adds to the horror of it. No matter how much the characters try to escape, understand or fight, the spiral pulls them in. It's unavoidable and eternal.
I am so glad you made this I LOVE IT and not enough people talk about Uzumaki
tl;dr, these are my opinions and I kinda struggle with the video's thesis and smaller details.
I feel like I should point out; some of the things you're questioning in the recap are actually pretty common in manga, though you're approaching it from a very western stance.
Small towns or villages in Japan aren't always going to have cops or social services, it's usually depicted as a close-knit community. Some towns only have one or two police. Same with Kirei and Shuichi's relationship. Often in manga or anime, if the relationship isn't the focus of the drama then it's going to be shown with more of a comfortable silence between two people. Two people who can coexist without much talking or needing to say "I love you" is usually a sign of a strong relationship. I'm not seeing what you're seeing, mentioning that they're bored with each other. Kirei and Shuichi go out of their way to comfort each other or protect each other when they're struggling or in danger. In Japanese storytelling, that's pretty common for people who are in love. Telling him to lay down in a gutter because he's too sad to go on? He's going on for Kirei, he doesn't want to see her harmed.
I'm not convinced that Shuichi or Kirei are patients 0 and 1, though it is a nice theory. Narratively, it's common for someone to be untouched by horror to give us a POV on the inside - Kirei mostly fills this role. Tomie introduced new side characters to follow in most stories, The Fault of Amigawara (Drr Drr Drr) follows one person as he witnesses then succumbs to the hole, etc. I think it's more that Shuichi is the only one in town leaving then coming back for school. Depressed people, sadly, are often hyper aware of their surroundings. Shuichi's parents being the first victims to die might have made him more perceptive of the illness. I think he might be more of a soothsayer in the story rather than someone spreading the disease
I'm also struggling to relate how the spiral disease is like radiation? You bring up radiation a handful of times and how it's "like radiation" to permeate everywhere, but outside of "it affects everything" I'm failing to see the connection. I would have really loved a "why" it's like radiation section. I thought you were gonna relate the ending to some ideas we have for radiation architecture; if you're curious look up "This is not a place of honor", but the tl;dr of it is tall spires and pointed edges reaching into the sky to indicate a dangerous area. Outside of that, I unfortunately don't see the difference between this or a story depicting most supernatural illnesses.
Junji Ito's work reminds me a lot of The Twilight Zone, which was more of a "wow, that was scary and weird, wouldn't that be strange to happen in real life?" I'm not sure there's meant to be an answer or even a clean explanation for anything. It seems unknowable or something we can't solve, especially since the spirals appear in so many different ways.
I do think it might be obsession, at least in some way. Giving in to obsession seems to be what makes people physically spiral or twist up. Those touched with obsession tow the line delicately - Kirei briefly having obsession with attention until it backfires, and Shuichi could be obsessed with keeping Kirei safe because she's the last thing he has. Those who refuse to fall to obsession drag their feet to leave, hence becoming snails. I'm not married to this idea, just Shuichi's comments that they're moving too slow to escape sounds like not leaving is a consequence in it's own. Since we don't see snails in the pit, it might be a "banned from salvation" type thing (not that the spirals are saving anyone, just that those who refuse the illness are banned from the contorting spiral and are made snails as a consequence). It also might be a "dragging your feet in life" thing, people who would rather be anywhere else without obsession seem to turn into snails. The town seems obsessed with spirals, more as bemusement than fear. People start exploring, giving in to the spirals, learning to control the wind with them. I think the lighthouse might've been foreshadowing what the malaise is.
Wrapping up with this: I think it's meant to be a small-town mystery that isn't really answered. Manga especially tends to have whole towns be affected by a spiritual malaise, beginning once you're in it's borders and ending just on the outskirts. That on it's own is like radiation, but something "enveloping a whole town" isn't uncommon. A very specific and dated example is the Darkarai Pokemon movie, where the town outskirts are enveloped in fog that makes people loop back on themselves. A honey trap that loops back on itself makes a lot of sense in this regard. It may be that it's a town designed to draw in multiple generations, an unknowable force pulling people into it's whirlpool. Bring in enough conscious observers to start the story over again, not necessarily with the same names and faces.
In love with the inverse Adam and eve theory.
Even though it's rather stereotypical, I see the spiral as a classic eldritch entity. Very much like IT's Pennywise, it has come from outer space and now sustains itself with this endless circle (or dare I say... spiral?) of deformation and destruction. All of the townspeople and the town itself gradually melt into one. The radiation sickness analogy fits this theory quite well with the contortion and breakdown of bodies, the rather slow progress and, of course, radiation very much being a thing in outer space.
never seen stuff from this channel before, got recommended it, loving it so far. Can't wait to see this all unfold
I don't want to be too harsh, but a lot of this video, almost the complete bulk of it, was just rehashing the story; and your actual anaylsis at the end had little to do with radiation sickness. There's so much that could've been said, from the town making people sick and giving Shuichi a headache, to the bright light that burns people up into nothing, to post-ww2 life and the overlap between cosmic horror and radiation... I'd change the title of this video, currently its very misleading and made me (and from what im seeing, others in the comments) feel like they invested time into something that didn't have the pay-off promised in the title and thumbnail
This doesn't really sound like there was much research done into Japanese customs, superstitions or the history of ritual and curses specific to them. I'm not saying that's exactly where Ito pulled from, but I'm just a bit surprised this video seems to be making a bunch of guesses based on zero research done into Ito or Japanese culture. Especially the simplistic view on curses. Without any of that this is just a book review with a bunch of guess work
okay, 3 minutes in but I have to explain the low romantic relationship. Physical intimacy in public is NOT an accepted thing in Japan. Even saying I Love You isn't normalized. Suichi and Kirie's romantic relationship is as expected from a regular young japanese relationship. She runs to go see him, and he'd literally die for her. They care a lot about each other, but caring doesn't always meaning being all over each other.
I feel as though its implied that the "curse" has happened before, mainly because of the exsistance of the old row houses. I assumed that once the town has been "reset" overtime another town is built, leaving the parts old row houses (which is why we see them) and in the future another town will build around/destroy but leave some row houses. Also the map in the row house implies that their origional form, thus its been like that before, thus this whole thing has happened before. (hope this makes sence lol)
And for the weird time stuff, I think of the town as in a bubble, and once things go to shit (or when everyones locked in) time doesnt really hold up and has its own rules.
But I like this interpatation! Exspecially the idea that Shuichi causes things to happen. But personally, i think it might just be a simple way to introduce the idea/ make Shuichi seem more creepy/knowledgeable about the curse. I also follow the idea that things are just unexsplainable,,,Which is good! :D
Yeah I’m pretty sure they say that or something (I read it ages ago so I’m not too sure)
Edit: yeah it’s said in the video oops lol
Honestly the hospital is my favorite part of uzumaki. Mosquito larva hatch and thrive in bodies of water. If the spiral has infected dragonfly pond then the mosquitos who mature there should be spirally. A spiral is also recursion. The mosquitos bite the people, but are never filled. Mosquito born illnesses are common knowledge and do effect pregnant people more severely(like most things). Recursion also means that the mothers cannot stop being mothers. The babies are transfixing, like any spiral, fed on spiral cranked blood, and wish to return into the origin, like all those who are pulled to the center of the spiral. Im a big binding of isaac fan though, so gory and twisted maternal themes are my jam.
It has been a while since I read Uzumaki, but I seem to remember interpreting Shuichi's assholishness as a combination of trauma of losing both his parents and Kirie refusing to believe him about the spiral curse, even as shit gets weirder around her. I also seem to remember him trying to persuade Kirie to leave with him, implying he stays in the town out of worry for her wellbeing.
Im glad to find a video about Uzumaki that's a actual analysis/personal interpretation usually Uzumaki videos on yt are just a recap of the whole story
I believe this is a nightmare. I have always had trouble explaining my nightmares to people, but this manga is a perfect description. It's usually something that doesn't sound scary on it's surface, like a spiral shape. There's always someone I know in the nightmare explaining what is happening and everyone acts as if it's normal. There are usually time shifts, and things seem to get worse as time goes on, but certain actions end and are almost forgotten when something else happens. Lastly, no matter how hard I try to leave the situation in my dream, I can't.
"Boringly comfortable" in other words "my head is Dense"
Loooved this video! This story has sooo many similar elements to Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. I really think you were super close when you looked for a biblical interpretation! Japan is primarily Shinto & Buddhist, so I feel like it’s a reference to Samsara (Buddhism, saṃsāra is the "suffering-laden, continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end"), and tends to be depicted as a sort of cosmic wheel.
Ngl Kirie got me tight most of the time. She saw everything that was happening and R E F U S E D to leave the town while they still could. Suichi actually stood with her even tho he was mentally declining. Now that’s not to say that kirie wasn’t spiraling too but she sat there and was like “ye this cool”.
Let’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
They also announced that the Uzumaki anime’s finally coming later this year.
Unfortunately, it’s 11:30 where I’m at and I have a work interview tomorrow morning. So I’ll save this tomorrow after I do a good job on the interview.
Uzumaki’s doubtlessly the magnum opus of Junji Ito and it gave me my spiral obsession. So I’m very very very excited for this!
Also sorry to hear about the struggles you had with this video.
I’ll just leave in my two cents regarding Uzumaki: Kirie seems like almost a deconstruction of the oblivious horror protagonist, especially the ones from HP Lovecraft. No matter what happens, Kirie doesn’t make any decisions based on how the spiral would affect her. Kirie ultimately technically wins against the spiral because she never gives herself to it. I hope I explained what I mean well, and would love to talk about it more.
Also love your new avatar girl, it’s very archaic looking, like from a storybook from the Grimm Brothers. Much love and thanks for this video:)
obsession and depression are both types of fixation, and if you generalize to fixation, then kirie might not be as asymptomatic as she seems. I believe kirie's fixation is familiarity/normalcy, and the fact that she usually comes out of every chapter largely unharmed (both physically and mentally) is her manifestation of the uzumaki contagion
Bruh, Shuichi is the most sane and reasonable person in the entire manga.
The dude is super aware and rightfully paranoid.
I have no idea why you're dogging on him so badly over honest to god justifiable reactions.
He doesn't "just leave town" because he cares about Kirie and even suggests running away together, but she ignores this suggestion and continues to ignore Shuichi being RIGHT!
He didn't run away from Kirie. He ran to get the scissors. How do you make something up, scold him, and then ignore the reason he "ran away".
I always thought it was about the fear of obsession. The spiral representing how someone gets sucked into their, likes and hobbies, like a whirlpool. The closer to the center you get the harder it is to excape it.
pls continue to operate by the two cakes philosphy-u have no idea how upset I get when I see any horror media that only has a select few analyses videos, especially if those videos r only 10 - 20 minutes long. never doubt the value that a very long video on any horror media has !! ❤
Your two-cakes decision was ABSOLUTELY correct, I adore watching different analysis videos on the same topic, sometimes they don't even have to say different things, i 100% would spend 10 hours a day watching different creators talk about the same spun topic over and over again, thank you for another comfort video!!!
while I don't agree with your theory and think it's a stretch, i do appreciate the video, i truly enjoyed listening to your musings :)
i think this analysis could benefit from a deeper look into the japanese context within which it unfolds. the connotations of the word "curse" alone mean something totally different in japan - sometimes a curse latching on to or drawing a person in is as simple as being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which makes it more tragic and terrifying imo, because you are so helpless, sometimes even unaware of what is after you and why. the unfairness and inevitability of it adds to the horror, and i think the spiral curse, as this lovecraftian, defying-human-understanding phenomenon implied to loop back into itself like a spiral that transcends the physical world and warps space and time into its form, works very well as just this - a curse. plus, just things like suichi and kirie's dynamic as a couple, and the potential in interpreting uzumaki through the lens of radiation considering japan's real-world history with it... i think a relook with japanese cultural and historial lenses could take this analysis somewhere very interesting
i would also like to hop on board the shuichi apologist train lmao, i think there's a special and haunting kind of tragedy to being fully cognizant of your world collapsing into the grip of forces outside your control or comprehension but sticking it through for the sake of the one person you have left who matters to you. if anything, i like the fact that shuichi and kirie become the heart of that spiral, twined together in one last and eternal act of devotion, one final act of defiance against this cosmic horror entity whose entire existence is there to suck people in. he acts insane sometimes, sure, but i'd like to say he's facing an insane set of circumstances - if i remember correctly, he decides to dig up the grave because the jack in the box the dead boy gifted kirie started speaking and saying that he would come to get her? i mean what would ANYONE do in that situation? ;-;
I do like your take on all of this. With the Spiral obsession and the effects of which being more akin to a disease.
There is one grand aspect you're missing here and that's Uzumaki is Junji Ito's take on Cosmic Lovecraftian Horror. This is why we are not to know what the city... Entity... At the end is, or what Motives it may have. Same with Hellstar Remina. So thru that Lense I'll answer your questions at the end of this video.
1:00:38 Why did it take so long to gestate... Answer in my opinion as a lifelong fan of Cosmic horror (over 30 years) SCALE!
Cosmic beings do not operate on our scale of time but their own. There so incomprehensibly powerful that they define their own scale of time. What may have taken a year from phase one to phase three for us. Could have been but Minutes to its time scale.
2: Why Now...? Why Not!
Just so happened that this is when whatever that thing is, decided to wake up.
3: The disease can't spread because of proximity. As the Entity is the source of it. The farther away from it you go the less impact it has upon you.
Imagine a Sickness that gets weaker the further away you go from its source. Like you mentioned even in the title. Radiation! Radiation only affects you so long as you are near the source.
This explains Shuichi involvement as he is the only one who is getting fresh air away from the Entity to begin realizing its effects. Thoe as he was born in that town, and is a member of its population, he like everyone else is bound to the Entity.
This is why Shuichi cannot spread the Entity's effects wile outside of its Aria of effect. Going back to the radiation analogy. If somebody is stricken with radiation poisoning, they themselves cannot spread that same level of radiation poisoning. Once Shuichi leaves town, the Entity's effect on him begins to diminish to the point of none existence.
4: Why would the Entity send out the Disease?
Who is to say that what we see here is a Deliberate Act, But instead an indirect action of the Entity's existence. Sure, people died but to the Entity that doesn't matter.
People go insane and destroy themselves upon knowing of Cthulhu's existence but that is not Cthulhu's intent.
All that mattered to it, if anything. Was those who succumbed to its will and became a part of its whole. What is the life of a single ant when you're caring for the whole colony.
One final answer I can give. At the Entity's peek it was able to bend and fold time itself. Likely the snail people were themselves bound to these laps in time, and only once the last one had died it would conclude its Waking Cycle.
Also, Patient Zero if anything was the town itself.
Take another look at the back cover again... Ito Literally tells you. "Spirals... The TOWN is contaminated... With Spirals.
The town is the source.
Thats my opinion anyways. As a person who is a lifelong fan and author of Cosmic Horror.
I've always interpreted Uzumaki as being Lovecraft and eldridge horror inspired. In Junji Ito's stories like Hellstar Remina, The Enigma of Amegiri Falls, The Supernatural Transfer Student, etc., he explores ideas of uncaring deities and ancient remnants of cosmic dealings (like the spiral city that causes the curse). It brings to mind the "Idiot God" written about in the necronomicon that plays a flute endlessly and accidentally created reality and humanity as an extension, therefore making life insignificant on an existential scale. There's also the highest god in the Lovecraftian pantheon where all things exist in his dreams, and if he awakes, we all fade to nonexistence. Interestingly, Lewis Carroll released Through the Looking Glass in like 1871 or something, and Alice learns she may be in the Red King's dream and will fade if he wakes. She's like "I don't like being part of someone else's dream," and... I forget who she's talking to, but he's like "U called the rest of us dreams, but now the show is on the other foot, and ur perspective doesn't matter in the grand scheme." Love craft was born like 20 years after that book was released, so he def would've read and been inspired by that. Anyways, I think Junji Ito enjoys the horror of ancient, intelligent things existing before us and not caring about our perspectives. The eldest Lovecraft God isn't physical so much as a living embodiment of the universe or whatever. Similarly, the spiral city is a living concept. A sleeping god. I think it merely is a being that awakens, absorbs it's snacks, then sleeps again, indifferent to the feelings of the snacks. When it awakens, it manipulates reality to achieve it's goal of absorbing all sentient life in it's domain (the town). Once satisfied, inclosed it's mouth (the drill), and it sleeps again until the next town is established and thriving. This is just my thought tho. I haven't looked into any theories yet 🤷🏽♂️😋
1:02:35 so a visual novel lol
1:09:09 I think this was in the manga too! 5:18 5:24
48:17 I think this totally makes sense as a curse. Time folds in on itself and the moment the spiral ends is when it begins, because the curse is cyclical. Every time the town returns to its fully spiral state, that begins a new cycle of people settling the town, which eventually returns to its spiral state. It’s like the circle of life, I think?
56:14 what’s the difference between a supernatural disease and a curse?
1:00:40 because it’s a cursed location
1:01:48 and nobody in town has ever been depressed or obsessed before?
This is personal theorizing stuff:
49:24 but we don’t know how the curse started, hat’s left ambiguous. We don’t know if the dad was the beginning of the spiral reclaiming the town or not, we don’t know if he was chosen for a reason. I don’t think he was, I think that sometimes, bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it, just like in real life. You can just be chilling in your town and suddenly it’s a war zone, doomed by spirals or an air raid or a geological event, you know? It doesn’t mean that everyone did something wrong to deserve it, it’s a tragedy. Weird, awful stuff happens to people who creep on girls, kids who are bullied, parents doing their best, newborn and… de-born? babies, rescue teams… and it’s all a part of a greater tragedy, of a cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Reminds me of history repeating itself, too
49:51 for this part, I think it could be like how people handle adverse situations differently based on their nature and history, etc. Like you describe here! 58:49
As i see it, both Kirie and Suichi were afected by the curse even before the end of the story. Kirie with her hair (obviously) and it Suichi's case it's more subtle, this might be very far-fetched but i think that as tge story goes on he falls more and more into a spiral of madness and/or despair
If there’s one thing in this video that I really take umbrage with, it’s your definition of a curse. I feel like it is unfair to look at another property’s definition of a curse (and I vaguely remember even an interpretation of Edith finch that there is no curse at play and the “curse” was just the grandma or whatever’s rationalization of generational trauma and the consequences of her own actions) and use that to announce that another thing must definitionally have something else going on. Now if there had been examples of other Junji Ito works where a ‘curse’ is explicitly defined as something contradictory to this example, then you might have a point, but even then it’s a weak argument. Also, the pre-existence of the old rowhouses is, in my opinion, good evidence of the cyclical nature of the spiral curse, and in my reading I thought the town locked in some sort of long-term time loop.
YES „curses don’t work like that“ … curses are a concept that differs wildly between cultures, religions, media, personal interpretation etc. etc.. so … who is to say that they don’t??
@@Emberbun Ikr? its like seeing a novel or whatever with a monotheistic cosmology where one eternal god resides over all creation, unchanging and all-powerful and going "Well this clearly isn't a god, gods are shifting beings of formless energy which require the belief of mortals to sustain themselves and who mould their forms to fit their believers' faith, a-la The Elder Scrolls or Discworld, so this must be some kind of supernatural king instead of a god".
Suichi and Kirie seem to genuinely love each other. They look out for each other and genuinely worry for one another they just aren't overly affectionate which to me makes sense. Both with general Japanese culture and my own lack of physically being an affectionate person. I think things like the hurricane targeting Kirie being seen as one of Suichi's "symptoms" of the curse would sort of prove that.
I'm glad you made this video, Wendigoon's felt more like a surface level analysis, which left me a bit unsatisfied. I enjoyed the theories you brought up, helps to add another level of horror to the story as a whole
I love this Manga not just because it is a great story and has amazing horror imagery but also because the horror is clearly influenced by Japanese folklore, some of the best horror is rooted in folklore. This 'curse' plays into the Japanese folklore curses where innocents are just caught up in something out of their hands; in this case a possible cosmic entity. It is pure nihilism and the story leaves a deep impression.