Whirlpool

——"Are you ready? Always be prepared. We are all people in the whirlpool."

The comic world of Ito Junji A "beautiful" yet morbid way of rendering the distortions of society, "Whirlpool" is undoubtedly the most enchanting work among them. Most of the traditional methods of playing horror are to design one or some monsters, murderers or psychopaths, and other "horror entities". However, in Junji Ito's comics, many of the things that make people fall into fear and horror are inanimate existences, which are existences that cannot be dealt with or eliminated at all. Just thinking about them makes people feel a little scared. Just like the work "Whirlpool", Black Whirlpool Town is a cursed place, a place cursed by an ominous whirlpool.

The vortex is the most beautiful, symmetrical and evil way of "twisting" existence. The story is narrated from the first-person perspective of the heroine. There is a peaceful town called Black Whirlpool. The wind here is always swirling, and the weeds here grow like the spirals outlined by Van Gogh with his wild brush. Coiled, the longhouses here are connected together. Looking from the high mountains, they look like a long black clockwork. The hero's father was the first person to be fascinated by whirlpools. He had no intention of working and was obsessed with collecting various living or non-living things with swirling patterns. Gradually, his two eyeballs will move rapidly in different directions at the same time, and his body will be attached to the spirit of the whirlpool. Finally one day, in pursuit of perfection, he twisted like a snail and crawled into a barrel, curled up into a ball, crushed all the bones in his body, and died. On the day of the cremation, the black smoke from the crematorium's chimney condensed into a large whirlpool in the gloomy sky. His wife fainted, and that was exactly what his body looked like. His wife was sent to the hospital because she would hear her husband's dying voice every night: "You will become a whirlpool soon." She shaved her hair, cut off the skin on her fingers and toes, and eliminated everything and anything around her. Something to do with whirlpools. However, one night she heard her husband's voice: "The whirlpool, it's in your ear." The existence of the cochlea frightened her, and in fear, she inserted the scissors into her ear. Although she survived, due to damage to her cerebellum, she could only spend the rest of her life in a state of loss of balance. That feeling was like being on the edge of a churning whirlpool... The curse of the whirlpool became more and more powerful. On rainy days, the classmates who were in class with him yesterday turned into giant snails. A few days later, the classmates who usually bullied him also turned into giant snails. Two snails were raised in the school because no one claimed them. Soon after, the hermaphroditic snails mated and laid many snail eggs... A tornado blew up in Black Snail Town, and the butterfly clan who could control the cyclone appeared. These new snails New humans are also the product of "evolution" under the curse of the whirlpool. In order to avoid tornadoes, all people flock to dilapidated longhouses. Only longhouses with the same swirling shape can protect against tornadoes. However, the longhouse does not have that much space to accommodate the entire town's residents, so the ugliest side of human nature is exposed, with ugly fights and moral decay. A small group of people planned to escape from the town. During the escape journey, some companions were cursed and turned into snails. So the former companions stuck their heads into the snail shell and chewed the juicy and delicious body that kept struggling. , it tastes great...

I always thought that Junji Ito wanted to use this work to reflect the distorted society and distorted people. Undoubtedly, he took a successful and very twisted step. The human heart of this era is suffering from an invisible disease, and this is the real curse.