Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror

The funeral attendees gaze at the sky and see an enormous black spiral. They realize it is a pillar of smoke rising from the crematorium—and that the source must be Mr. Saito’s ashes. Mrs. Saito becomes hysterical when she sees Mr. Saito’s face in the smoke.

Mrs. Saito develops an extreme phobia of spirals and is hospitalized. She becomes dangerous to herself, snipping the skin off her fingertips and shaving her head to destroy all spirals. Shuichi tells Kirie that the phobia developed because Mrs. Saito sees her husband’s twisted body in every spiral.

Shuichi and Mrs. Saito meet with the latter’s doctor to discuss her phobia. The doctor recommends that Mrs. Saito be placed in a psychiatric ward for observation. Shuichi notices an anatomical chart behind the doctor’s desk showing the cochlea, a spiral cavity in the inner ear that helps with balance. He rushes to leave the office with his mother before she can see the chart. Later, Shuichi convinces his mother to agree to the psychiatric ward transfer.

Later that evening, Mrs. Saito is scared awake when a centipede tries to crawl into her ear. She slaps the centipede to the floor and watches as it winds itself into a spiral. The centipede takes on the face of Mr. Saito, whose spirit tells Mrs. Saito that there is a spiral inside her ears. The next morning, Mrs. Saito races to the doctor’s office—only to find the anatomical chart gone. On the side, the doctor tells Shuichi that he took the chart down and that they need to transfer Mrs. Saito right away.

During her last evening before her transfer, Mrs. Saito sees the face of her husband in her IV fluids. Mr. Saito’s spirit chants that there are spirals in her ears. Mrs. Saito destroys her IV—but can still hear Mr. Saito’s voice. Convinced that there is a spiral inside her, she takes a pair of scissors and thrusts the blades into her ears.

In trying to destroy her inner ear, Mrs. Saito also destroyed her sense of balance; her final days are spent in a perpetual state of vertigo. On the day of Mrs. Saito’s funeral, her ashes rise into the sky as a smoke spiral.

Kirie tells the story of her friend Azami Kurotani, who begins commuting to her high school from a neighboring town. Azami immediately attracts all of the boys in school, and a rumor starts that she has a scar on her forehead that fuels her bewitching power. Kirie soon notices said scar. Azami explains that the crescent-shaped scar came about when she fell off a jungle gym as a child trying to impress her crush. She jokes that the scar might be special, as after the accident, she has been able to get any boy she wants.

One day, Azami asks Kirie to be introduced to Shuichi. When they meet, Shuichi is terrified and shouts at Azami, telling her to never return. Later that night, Kirie and Shuichi talk about Azami on the phone. Shuichi warns Kirie that Azami herself is a spiral. Azami arrives at Shuichi’s house soon after. She has become obsessed with Shuichi because he is the only boy able to resist her charm. Shuichi warns her that if she stays in Kurouzu-cho, she will become a spiral. Azami lifts her bangs and finds that her scar has turned into a spiral shape.

Azami continues to stalk Shuichi. A boy named Okada approaches Azami and pledges his devotion to her—but she rebuffs his advances and stops going to school. Several days later, Shuichi calls Kirie and tells her that Okada requested to meet him at a local park to talk about Kirie. Kirie says she doesn’t know what Okada could want. After she hangs up, she goes to the park to ensure Shuichi is safe. On the way, she crosses paths with Azami, whose head is being consumed by a cavernous spiral. Kirie watches as one of Azami’s eyeballs dislodges, rolling into the spiral and disappearing.

Azami arrives at the park and meets with Okada and Shuichi. Okada asks if Azami will go out with him now that he has delivered Shuichi to her. When Azami refuses, Okada slaps her, knocking off her hat and uncovering the cavernous spiral. The spiral becomes a vacuum and sucks Okada into Azami’s body. Kirie finally arrives and finds Shuichi in hiding. They watch as Azami’s spiral consumes her own body until nothing remains.

Kirie and her brother, Mitsuo, watch an enormous black spiral in the sky. Ever since Mr. Saito’s funeral, the crematorium’s smoke has formed spirals that spin toward and into Dragonfly Pond, which lies directly behind the Goshimas’ house. Kirie notices that the smoke from her father’s pottery kiln also rises in a spiral and joins the crematorium smoke into the pond.

Mr. Goshima submits his latest ceramics to an art exhibition. People are puzzled by the pieces, which are melted and deformed. Mr. Goshima says he is using a secret clay that causes a spiral effect. During a family dinner, Mitsuo finds shapes of screaming faces in the ceramics, and Kirie recognizes some to be Mr. and Mrs. Saito. Mitsuo, Kirie, and their mother confront Mr. Goshima over his disturbing work—but he insists that it was not he who created the faces, but nature.

Kirie invites Shuichi over for dinner. Shuichi is scared to go to the Goshimas’ because of its proximity to Dragonfly Pond, but he eventually agrees. Shuichi panics when he realizes his dinner plate is one of Mr. Goshima’s twisted new ceramics. Mr. Goshima says he picked the plate specifically for Shuichi because his father appreciated the art of the spiral. He explains that his secret clay is in fact sourced from Dragonfly Pond—and is thus filled with ashes from the crematorium. Shuichi rushes out of the house, disgusted.

Kirie watches as her father becomes increasingly obsessed with the clay from Dragonfly Pond: Each night, he wades into its depths to collect the clay himself. She notes that the ceramics look completely normal as her father makes them, for it is the firing process that distorts them. One night, Kirie checks on her father and finds him sleeping in his studio. She investigates the kiln and sees the anguished souls trapped in the clay screaming to be freed. Kirie calls Shuichi, who overhears the screams over the phone.

Shuichi rushes over to the Goshimas’ and destroys the kiln. The souls rush out, contorted in twisted shapes; the studio burns down as a result of the damaged kiln. In the ashes of his studio, Mr. Goshima digs around to salvage as many of his spiral pieces as he can.