Ito’s artwork always delivers in heaps and heaps of beautiful carnage and horror, plus the night parts have a particularly unsettling effect that lingers long after you’ve moved on to another page.

The level of terror here is caught in perfect Ito detail, down to the more madness-inducing facial expressions, as well as the more horrific body horror that occurs throughout (some of this is only rivaled by his work on Uzumaki). The body horror here has this specific ghostly feel that’s both similar and dissimilar to the Onryo horror that has been mostly dominant in J-horror (you know which movies I’m talking about, and I’m just going to leave it at that).

Tomie’s look is consistently the same, details and all, only changing for a few monstrous occasions. Perhaps what I appreciate most here is the artwork. Plus Ito delivers in variety here, with settings that very consistently change throughout, and characters who are all very natural to their specific settings. There’s a very unnatural wanting and obsession that persists throughout the series, and it keeps the reader hooked. It’s made better by a wide variety of characters, all with distinct personality arcs and backgrounds, who all suffer and/or change in very satisfyingly horrific ways. Everything about Tomie is a mystery, and it gradually reveals itself over time through several amazingly strange encounters that go from bizarre to downright disturbing. For a manga horror author, he has a unique ability to blend social commentary into his stories without his audience initially realizing it. Throughout the series, Ito addresses sexualized views of women through the perspective of Tomie and the people around her, as well as some general ideas on immortality and urban legends From beginning to end, it’s pretty obvious where he’s making his points, and the points he makes really do resonate, especially nowadays. Let’s get into the real meat of the review.įor starters, as is with other Ito works, he has points to make here. Junji Ito really likes the idea of unstoppable forces terrorizing people, and being able to combine that with his signature body horror look and feel is pretty much on point. It’s probably pretty obvious that I was going to do a Tomie review at some point. The seemingly unkillable Tomie leaves a path of seductive destruction across Japan, with no one truly able to stop her.

Tomie 1987