Junji Ito is one of my favorite horror creators, and Uzumaki easily ranks among my favorite horror manga of all time. It’s not only disturbing; it’s also entirely unique. Most other horror manga feature killers, monsters, or supernatural entities, but not so with Uzumaki. Instead, its twenty eerie Uzumaki chapters present a premise that’s almost nonsensical, even silly at first glance, yet Junji Ito brings it forth in all its twisted, nightmarish glory.
Uzumaki follows Kirie Goshima and Shuuichi Saitou as they witness the strange and terrifying fate of Kurouzu-cho, a small coastal town consumed by spirals. There are no monsters or killers here, no psychopaths or ghosts, just a single concept manifesting as an omnipresent curse.
Across its twenty chapters, Uzumaki delivers some of the most disturbing moments in horror manga. Each chapter stands as its own grotesque short story, adding to the slow spiral into madness. In this article, I’ll be highlighting the most disturbing Uzumaki chapters and discussing why they stand out as the best Uzumaki moments in Junji Ito’s work.
While the entire three-volume saga is a masterpiece, some chapters, like the grotesque Umbilical Cord, the surreal events in The Snail, and the eerie isolation of The Black Lighthouse, rise above the rest. These highlight chapters from Uzumaki showcase Junji Ito’s full range of unsettling imagination and intricate horror art.
As always, here’s a spoiler warning: if you haven’t read the manga yet, I recommend doing so first, because I’ll be discussing each chapter and its plot in detail.
5. Escape
I regard the third volume of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki as its weakest. At the outset of the final volume, multiple storms have transformed the town of Kurouzu-cho into an apocalyptic mess of rubble.
While volume three brings the manga to its Lovecraftian conclusion, it also features elements I didn’t enjoy. What I appreciated, however, was the depressing and eerie atmosphere as Kirie and Shuichi traveled through the ruined town. There’s a feeling of despair and futility that hangs heavily over these final Uzumaki chapters.
This is most prevalent in chapter seventeen, Escape. In the Escape Uzumaki chapter, Kirie and Shuuichi make one last attempt to flee the twisted hell that Kurouzu-cho has become. As we follow them into the mountains, we see that by now everything has fallen to the curse of the spiral. Nature itself has become warped, twisted, and reshaped into spirals. Soon enough, even those who try to flee the town succumb to madness and are transformed into the shape of the spiral.
It’s here that we realize how ironic the chapter’s title truly is. The Escape Uzumaki chapter shows that there is no way out: escape from Kurouzu-cho and the curse of the spiral is utterly impossible. It stands as one of the most haunting moments in the final act and a highlight of Uzumaki’s creeping, hopeless horror.
4. The Spiral Obsession Part 1
If there’s one thing to be said about Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, is that it wastes no time in presenting the horrific curse of the spiral right from the start.
After a brief introduction to our main characters, we learn that Shuuichi’s father has recently become obsessed with spirals. At first, this obsession manifests in him collecting every spiral-shaped object he can find. After his wife gets rid of the collection, his fixation takes a far more disturbing turn, one that will ultimately lead to his demise. He discovers he can use his own body to create spirals.
This Spiral Obsession Uzumaki chapter is a fantastic early entry that sets the tone for the most disturbing Uzumaki chapters to come. It’s rich in body horror as we witness Shuuichi’s father twist and contort parts of his body into spiral shapes. The chapter also contains one of the most famous and unsettling panels in the entire manga, making it one of the best Uzumaki moments.
Overall, it’s a disturbing and unforgettable introduction to Kurouzu-cho and the curse of the spiral, perfectly showcasing Junji Ito’s talent for fusing bizarre concepts with visceral horror.
3. The Black Lighthouse
I believe that Junji Ito’s Uzumaki is at its best in its second volume. It’s here that Ito’s creativity is at its peak, and the curse of the spiral takes on even stranger and more disturbing forms than in the first volume.
The Black Lighthouse Uzumaki chapter is one of the standouts. Lighthouses naturally give off an eerie atmosphere and seem to be a perfect setting for horror, and Uzumaki is no exception.
The chapter begins with Kurouzu-cho’s abandoned lighthouse mysteriously working again. Everyone is puzzled by this, but soon enough the light begins to influence people, making it impossible for them to walk in a straight line.
This is only the beginning. Before long, Kirie’s brother Mitsuo and his friends enter the lighthouse, prompting Kirie to follow them. As she climbs the seemingly endless stairs, she notices spiral patterns all over the walls. These patterns, rendered in Junji Ito’s exquisite detail, give the entire staircase a disorienting, hypnotic feeling.
Eventually, Kirie stumbles upon horribly burned bodies and discovers that the lighthouse lens has melted into the shape of a spiral. She realizes it must be the light itself that melted the lens, and also the bodies she found earlier.
Of course, Junji Ito doesn’t stop at suggestion. As Kirie, her brother, and his friends flee down the stairs, one of the boys is consumed almost instantly by the burning light.
The Black Lighthouse is one of the most visually striking Uzumaki chapters, showcasing Ito’s mastery of atmosphere, spiral imagery, and sudden, shocking horror.
2. The Snail
While The Snail is lower on gore than many other chapters, it stands as one of, if not the most, unsettling and unnerving chapters in Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
This Snail Uzumaki chapter is the first in which we witness people transforming into snails. Junji Ito isn’t content to stop at showing a disturbing and grotesque transformation. No, he goes even further. After Katayama, a bullied boy, transforms into a snail, his bully Tsumura soon undergoes the same fate. Not knowing what to do with the snails, the school keeps them in an enclosure.
And here we reach the most disturbing part of the chapter. Snails are hermaphrodites, and soon we witness Katayama and Tsumura mating. This moment elevates The Snail into one of the most disturbing Uzumaki chapters, precisely because it blends body horror with a deeply uncomfortable psychological element.
People turning into snails is already horrific enough, and Junji Ito renders the transformation in all its grotesque details. But the sight of a bully and his former victim mating is beyond unsettling, making this one of the best Uzumaki moments for sheer shock value.
It’s a fantastic chapter that may be lighter on gore, but delivers concepts that are unnerving in a completely different, and unforgettable, way.
1. The Umbilical Cord
Junji Ito’s Uzumaki features many strange and disturbing ideas, but The Umbilical Cord Uzumaki chapter might be the manga’s most unsettling of all. It’s the second chapter set at Kurouzu-cho’s hospital and follows directly after Mosquitoes.
After the events of The Black Lighthouse, Kirie is hospitalized. In Mosquitoes, she witnesses pregnant women, including her cousin Keiko, sucking the blood of other patients. While Mosquitoes is a great chapter, it serves only as the prelude to The Umbilical Cord.
This chapter begins with the birth of the babies of these blood-sucking women. Kirie quickly notices that something is wrong with the newborns. Soon afterward, strange mushrooms become a regular ingredient in the hospital’s meals. While Kirie refuses to eat them, other patients grow obsessed with the dish.
Wandering the hospital, Kirie overhears the babies speaking of wishing to return to the womb they came from. When she hears her cousin’s screams, she rushes into the operating room and stumbles upon heaps of the strange mushrooms.
Here, the truth is revealed: the mushrooms are actually placentas, regrown from the babies’ umbilical cords. As if that weren’t disturbing enough, we also learn the horrifying fate of Keiko.
The Umbilical Cord is one of the most disturbing Uzumaki chapters, blending multiple grotesque ideas: placenta mushrooms that drive people mad, unnerving newborns, and the imagery of a woman whose baby has been forced back into her womb. Each element on its own is unsettling, but together, they create a masterpiece of body horror.
In my view, The Umbilical Cord is the best chapter in Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, both for its unforgettable imagery and for the sheer number of disturbing concepts it contains. It’s a standout moment in a masterpiece of horror manga and even served as inspiration for my own story, Special Diet.
If you’re planning to read Uzumaki, I highly recommend getting the 3-in-1 Deluxe Edition.
