Description

This episode has nothing to do with Naruto guys, instead Will Returns in time for a special Halloween where James shows evidence that the spiral is god's signature, as well as share some of his own personal and most frightening experiences in his life. 

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057: Junji Ito's Uzumaki (a.k.a. Spiral)

By Junji Ito

English Translation by Yuji Oniki

Special thanks to @Nirakirameart for today's tribute illustration.

Topics:

• Reminiscent to 'Final Destination' where death is quantitative and systematic. What makes it frightening is how you can be aware of its workings yet still be powerless because of concepts like manifest destiny, divine fate and the fact that death is simply a universal force of nature. Or Lovecraft, where the enemy is invisible, the spiral too is a force of nature, it too is universal.
• The model/actor (a.k.a. star) system, Ito would use the likeness of Uzumaki's Kirie and Shuichi for Dissolving Classroom's Keiko and Azeri. (Osamu did this system first)
• Similarities to the horror of RL Stine and Hino's Horror manga. Only truly scary story is what happens to Shuichi's mother, because mental illness = frightening.
• Other media
• Videogame for wonderswan (Gunpei Yokoi, sold 3 mill units but only 8% market share.) Curse simulator, you play as an agent of the spiral curse. Gathering items and planting them.
• Film – directed by Higuchinsky and released in 2000, if you're interested then James recommends you see the movies directed by David Lynch, Shinya Tsukamoto and Hideo Nakata.
• Animated mini-series 2021 Colin Stetson does the score. (known for his work on Heredetary and Red Dead Redemption 2)

• Why the spiral? (The golden ratio / Fibonacci sequence) The Fibonacci sequence starts like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on forever. Each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. It's a simple pattern, but it appears to be a kind of built-in numbering system to the cosmos. It's the code that nature seems to abide to. And if God was a mathematician, they would favour this code.

Sources and Recommended Reading/Watch List:

• Junji Ito's Interview with Crunchyroll, talking about the 2021 anime adaptation of Uzumaki.
• For those interested in the WonderSwan videogame you can watch this video.
• Super Eyepatch Wolf's video critique and analysis of the animated 'Junji Ito Collection' can be found here.
• And an example of frame Interpolation is in this video here.
• 'The golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers' by Richard Dunlap can be purchased on Amazon.

Synopsis:

Set in the seaside town of Kurouzo Cho, Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend Shuichi Saito slowly witness a sinister force plague their town. At first Shuichi's father becomes obsessed about spirals. His obsession leads towards his death and afterwards Shuichi's mother is quick to succumb to what Shuichi refers to as "the curse of the spiral".

Shuichi Saito's father loved all things spiral related, his mother, starts to fear all things spiral related. Soon Shuichi is orphaned and becomes a recluse. Although as the spiral curse causes many episodes of horror Shuichi is still available when Kirie needs him most. These episodes include souls imprisoned within pottery, Kirie's spiralling hair having a parasitic mind of its own, schoolboys turning into snails as if they were infected with a virus and a deadly light house.

During these episodes, Shuichi protects Kirie from a sentient hurricane, however as part of the spiral curse the town becomes a magnet to hurricanes and sink holes, sending kurouzo Cho into a wasteland that isolates its residents. The residents are only safe inside the old row houses, which remain oddly immune to the malevolent elements. And when overcrowding becomes an issue, Kirie and Shuichi set out to escape. Unfortunately they become lost in the woods, when they spiral back into the town they planned to leave, they find that they have been in a time vortex and what seemed like a short time in the woods has been years past for Kurouzo Cho, on their return the row houses have become extended and formed into a spiral building. Essentially one long spiralling house, this leads into a well like chasm where the lake once existed but is now dried up. It's the centre of the spiral that Kirie and Shuichi find themselves drawn towards, and where ultimately their fate is sealed.

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