poIntLesS dIscuSsiOns

As some Otaku readers might have noticed a few weeks ago… there was this manga review on "Uzumaki", which tells the story of a town going berserk obsessed with spirals.

In my very, very, VERY humble opinion, DO NOT READ THIS MANGA AT ALL COSTS. It will freak the daylights out of anyone. I’m serious here.

But then again, some of you are just so bloody inquisitive… so here goes.

Volume 1

• The Spiral Obsession Part 1 - High school student Kirie
  Goshima finds out that her boyfriend Shuichi is worried about his
  father, who has begun a strange obsession about spirals. He collects
  anything featuring a spiral pattern, and eventually he stops going to
  work to stay at home and stare at his spiral collection. His obsession
  becomes so disturbing that he starts to use his own body to create
  spirals.

• The Spiral Obsession Part 2 - After he dies in a strange
  suicide, Shuichi’s father’s body is cremated, but during the funeral,
  the smoke from the cremation forms a spiral shape in the sky,
  consequently driving Shuichi’s mother to insanity. She develops a
  phobia of spirals and starts to rid herself of everything in her body
  that looks like a spiral.

• The Scar - Kirie’s class friend Azami asks Kirie if she can
  meet Shuichi. Although hesitant, Kirie agrees, but when they go to
  Shuichi’s house something weird happens: Shuichi feels a sinister
  presence coming from Azami’s forehead, and Azami reveals that she has a
  crescent-moon shaped scar which she believes has the power to make any
  boy fall in love with her. However, Shuichi suspects that the scar is
  causing terrible effects in Azami, and is proven right.

• The Firing Effect - For some reason, the bowls, pots and
  vases that Kirie’s father, a potter, creates in his workshop are
  turning into hideous failures featuring spiral patterns and the faces
  of people who have recently died in the city of Kurozu.

• Twisted Souls - Kirie meets a former classmate who has
  recently been having a problem with his girlfriend’s family. It seems
  that both families of the couple are in a constant and aggressive feud,
  and do not agree to let their kids date. Kirie decides to help her
  friend and his girl to escape from their parents, but the story ends in
  a grotesque way.

• Medusa - Kirie’s hair begins to grow unusually, and when
  Kirie goes to cut it, the hair comes to life and refuses to be cut. It
  starts to control Kirie, forcing her to seek the attention of everybody
  in the town. The problem worsens when Kirie’s classmate, Sekino,
  becomes jealous and decides that her hair should have the same gift.

  Volume 2

• Jack-in-the-Box - Kirie is being stalked by a boy named
  Mitsuru, who likes to jump out and surprise people, which gained him
  the nickname Jack-in-the-Box. When Kirie refuses to be his girlfriend,
  Mitsuru decides to prove his love by trying to stop a speeding car.
  However, Mitsuru is killed and he is buried because the town is now
  afraid to cremate bodies. Kirie still has no peace, as she receives a
  strange message that Mitsuru will come back from his grave.

• Snail People - A classmate of Kirie’s starts to behave
  strangely: He only goes to school when it is raining and he walks and
  talks in an oddly slow way. Also, he has a big and strange
  spiral-shaped scar in his back. It’s only the beginning of a bizarre
  epidemic that makes people turn into giant, mutant snails.

• Dark Lighthouse - The lighthouse of Koruzu begins to switch
  on by itself mysteriously. Anyone who is caught by its light is blinded
  and caused to walk in circles. Some people of the town decide to go
  there to investigate, including Kirie’s brother Mitsuo and his friends.
  Kirie goes to bring her brother and the others back from the building,
  but as she enters she faces the terrible truth about the lighthouse.

• Mosquitoes - Admitted to the hospital due to the burnings
  made by the lighthouse’s light, Kirie discovers a body drained of blood
  on hospital grounds. Later, Kirie’s pregnant cousin Keiko moves into
  her room in the hospital after suffering an attack from a swarm of mosquitoes.
  At first everything seems normal, but one night Kirie discovers that
  her cousin, as well other pregnant women, have a dark secret which is
  related to the mosquitoes.

• Umbilical Cord - The pregnant women finally give birth to
  adorable babies. To Kirie’s relief they all look normal, but after a
  strange accident she discovers that she is mistaken, and that the
  babies are as dangerous as their mothers.

• Typhoon 1 - When a typhoon passes by Koruzu, Kirie is caught
  by the typhoon’s eye and somehow, the typhoon falls in love with her
  and begins to stalk her everywhere, causing horrible damage. Shuichi
  then appears to protect Kirie.

 Volume 3

Volume 3 contains the final 6 chapters, plus an extra chapter that forms an epilogue with a story connecting to Volume 1.

• Haunted Apartment - After the typhoon destroyed much of the
  city including Kirie’s house, Kirie moves into a previously abandoned
  apartment provided by the town officer with her family. It happens that
  the apartment is an old shack in bad conditions. Her neighbors are a
  young man with the secret habit as a peeping tom named Wakabayashi, and
  a mysterious couple of mother and son. Everyone living in the apartment
  starts to catch a strange skin disease. The disease will only get worse
  and lead to a horrible outcome.

• Butterfly - Maruyama Chie, an anchor girl comes at the town
  with her co-workers in a van, only to be chased after by a typhoon.
  Only Chie survives the car crash and she travels into the town seeing
  ruins and dead bodies everywhere. Now the townpeople realize they can
  create twisters with nothing more than a sudden movement or a strong
  exhalation of air. It appears that the previously abandoned apartments
  around the town is the only sort of shelters not destroyed by twisters,
  so every apartment becomes crowded and tension amongst dwellers
  tightens. Some naughty kids group up to destroy the town for fun,
  creating twisters only by blowing wind.

• Chaos - The gangsters and some young men form a gang called
  ‘Butterfly’. They destroy buildings for fun and rob food from rescue
  teams. Snail people begin to appear again after long unseen. The
  apartments become more and more crowded and people begin to quarrel
  with one another without proper causes. By helping Shuichi from a
  conflict with another man, Kirie’s family is casted out from the
  apartment. As they wander to find a new place to shelter, they witness
  the Butterfly gang having snail people as a meal. They say snail
  people’s meat is delicious and persuade Kirie to join their meal.

• Chaos Part 2 - Several groups of town-people try to escape
  from the town, but all end in failure. The apartments become overly
  occupied until they crash into pieces of wood. As food runs out, some
  begin to eat snail people’s meat left over by the Butterfly gang.
  Shuichi eats it and tell Kirie to take some. Kirie finally finds
  Mitsuo, her brother who has lost along with her mother and father since
  the last twister, only to discover the horrible truth.

• Escape - Kirie’s group make another attempt to escape for
  now Mitsuo’s transforming to be a snail and other town-people are
  desperate for food. They seem to find no way out of the town and Mitsuo
  finally transforms. Kirie forces her now snail brother to flee away
  from the hungry townpeople.

• Labyrinth - Kirie’s group finally comes out of the woods
  only to discover that they have returned to the town. They also
  discover that several years have passed while they were away, and the
  remaining townspeople have repaired and expanded all the old
  apartments, revealing that they connect together form a giant
  spiral-shaped labyrinth with the lake at its center. Shuichi theorises
  that the strange events have happened again and again through the ages,
  always ending with the rebuilding of the spiral apartments. After all
  is over, the apartments are slowly ruined and all traces vanish, and a
  new town is built. The reason why no-one knows of this is because all
  the people have vanished after the events.

• Ruin - Kirie, Shuichi and Chie follow the labyrinth to its
  center, but Chie is trapped by some of the now spiral-shaped people who
  live in the apartments, and Kirie and Shuichi must continue without
  her. When they reach the center, they discover that the lake has dried
  up has been replaced by a long spiral-shaped stairwell that goes deep
  into the earth. Without any other choice, they follow the stairs and
  discover a huge cave with a lot of gigantic, spiral-shaped towers and
  buildings, with a huge, glowing spiral-shaped stone in the center. They
  find all the corpses spiral-shaped inhabitants of the towns, who have
  begun to turn to stone, Kirie’s parents included. Shuichi is wounded
  after an earlier attack, and is unable to leave the cave, and asks
  Kirie to leave him. Kirie refuses and decides to stay with him. As they
  hug each other, their arms become spirals that bind them together. The
  stairwell begins to close, thus imprisoning Kirie and Shuichi and
  ending the spiral curse for now, only to return later, when a new town
  is built around the lake.

• Lost chapter: Galaxies - Strange-looking radio galaxies
  are discovered in the night sky, which begin to have strange effects on
  the residents of the town. Judging by the length of Kirie’s hair, this
  story takes place sometime before Medusa.

Taken from Wikipedia, since I’m too lazy to write it all myself. =3

ps: I’m too creeped out to study ‘Human Rights Law’… T.T

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