Review: Uzumaki, Vol. 3

Uzumaki, Vol. 3 by Junji Ito
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The last volume of Uzumaki, where everything winds down to a close. Ha-HA. WINDING.

Let’s see. It opens with the town destroyed by a rash of cyclones. The slightest air movement, be it a handwave or someone shouting, causes twisters. Those remaining townspeople who didn’t leave at the first sign of weirdness are crammed together in old row houses, which strangely remain upright under the air pressure. Whatever isn’t destroyed by cyclones is trashed by young hooligans who have learned to ride whirlwinds like horses, Starvation is rampant, as well as the number of people who are turning into snails. Hmmm…no food, but plenty of snails. You can guess where that line of thinking goes…

In the midst of the growing insanity is Kirie. Well, there’s also Shuichi, but he’s rendered useless, okay…MORE useless..but Kirie’s still her chipper, albeit oblivious self. She doesn’t wonder why the ancient row houses don’t crumble. She has no desire to figure out the reason why Dragonfly Pond has turned into a whirlpool. And even though the town has become a deathtrap, she doesn’t question why people still keep coming from the outside. When the people in the row houses finally kick her and her family out, even though technically it’s their house, she does nothing to fight back. She is passivity personified, until her breaking point comes when her mother and father get blown away to whereever, and her brother starts showing symptoms of becoming a snail. When she sees the shell forming on his back, suddenly, it hits her that hey, maybe the town is dangerous after all. And after so many chapters, she realizes “we have to get out of here.”

The problem with having a passive protagonist is that through one, you don’t learn anything. The character accepts what’s before her eyes and shows no curiosity or interest to change her situation, much to the frustration of the audience. Now, granted, this is a horror story, so the protagonist can get away with being stupid, in which case, we can take great delight in her demise. But the entire problem I have with the series is that there is no rhyme or reason for why these things are happening, and since Kirie isn’t willing to find out, I’m left…spinning my wheels, so to speak. She loses her parents. She loses her brother. The townspeople go insane. Ito pulls out all the stops to kill everyone through…spirals. Labyrinths upon spirals upon circles until we get to an underground city that’s full of spirals…and then it ends with Kirie and Shuichi giving up and lying down and turning into spirals. Just like that.

I guess it’s supposed to mean something. Some sort of metaphor. But if Ito wasn’t willing to give us a hint to why all this was happening, then why should I care? At least the movie did a better job in trying to get in some explanation of why the town was so obsessed on spirals–not that we got any answers, but hell, it *tried* (and may I say that the truth in the movie got buried in a gruesome, but hilarious manner). But in the manga, we never know the answer. Spirals happen and then you’re dead. Or not. Whatever. I find I do not have the energy to care.

I’m rating this two spirals out of five. The second volume was the scariest of the lot. This one was just weird. But it did have some interesting ideas–and it did have the female reporter from the movie; her plotline was probably the most interesting part of the whole hot mess.

(A quick note…after the end, there was one more chapter where Kirie had long hair again and the town was back to normal and I was like OH SNAP DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME IT WAS ALL A DREAM! But no, it turns out that this as a lost chapter. Apparently, Ito wrote it but didn’t know where to put it in the narrative, so he stuck it at the very end of the third volume. Don’t know why he did it, and frankly, I was so sick of Death By Spiral, I didn’t even read it.)

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Review: Uzumaki, Vol. 2

Uzumaki, Vol. 2 by Junji Ito
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Volume 2 of Uzumaki continues the tale of Kurouzu-cho and the town’s spiral into decline through…uh…spirals.

You would think after the first book that Kirie gets a clue that there’s something seriously wrong with her hometown, but other than sporting a shorter haircut (which mysteriously doesn’t returned to its super curly mode–go figure), most of the chapters usually go:

Kyrie: Hey, there’s [person/place/thing] that I [know/friends with/spoon with/gives me the creeps]. but lately they’ve been acting a little odd. Wonder why?
Shuichi: That’s because they’re cursed with the SPIIIIIIIRAL. And you think I have enough of all this ever since both my parents succumbed to the SPIIIIIIIIIIIRAL. But no, I’ll just slink around looking emo and whine to you whenever you call about how much I hate this stupid town, but apparently not enough to leave it. Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to go sit in my empty house with my knees up to my chest. ::broodbroodbroodbrood::
Kyrie: I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re weird. Lalalalaaaa…
[Weird shit happens that involves red-veined eyeballs, the occasional buttcheek, and SPIIIIIIIIIRALS]
Kyrie: OMG, that [person/place/thing] became all spirally and dead and/or disappeared to be never seen again! Maybe…maybe there is…a curse?
Shuichi: So that means you’ll elope with me out of this town?
Kyrie: Elope?! No way! I’m in school! You’re so weird. I’m just going to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is back to normal. Going back to school now!
Shuichi: Whatever. ::broodbroodbroodbrood::

In this volume, the first two chapters are centered two characters that were in the movie: the boy who shows his crush for Lorie by jumping out of odd places to surprise her (because that’s how you tell someone you love them–by stalking and scaring them out of their wits.), and the slow-moving boy who turns into a snail. While the two manga character share the same demises as in the movie, the manga kicks it up a notch and expands on what happens after their deaths. I don’t know how the movie would’ve done it, but it did make their stories creepier.

In fact, as the manga progresses, it gets harder and harder for Kyrie to remain in Denial mode. The creepiest story, and probably my favorite one in the series, where Kyrie is in the hospital at the same time as her pregnant cousin, who had been infected from mosquitos who fly in spirals (yeah, it is a stretch) and turns into a pregnant vampire. Then things get extremely weird. (I am grateful, in fact, that this did not make it into the movie. If you are squeamish about birth and/or mushrooms, don’t read this book). Kyrie escapes, saying “I have no idea what happened after that. I wasn’t about to go back and find out.”

Another time, the town gets haunted by a lighthouse, which of course, Kyrie’s brother goes into and Kyrie has to bring him out. After SPIRAL SHENANIGANS, they escape. Kyrie’s words at the end: “They say they’ll demolish it someday…”

Not going to do anything about it…demolish it someday…You know what? I’m beginning to suspect this whole spiral thing …is a…a…METAPHOR.

That’s the theme of Uzumaki. Not death from spirals…but death from passivity. The townspeople are too set in their ways to notice anything strange about the town, and when strange things do happen, they don’t do anything about it until it’s too late. Kirie herself falls prey to it several times: her hair turns into long curls that try to strangle her. Her cousin attempts to drill holes in her so her baby could drink blood. She gets swallowed by a damn cyclone…and each time, she escapes, recovers and goes back to normal with the vague sense that something’s wrong, but dangit, she don’t know what…

How does this obliviousness affect her and the town? That’s answered in the last book, which I’ll review separately. But I thought out of the whole series, this one was the creepiest so I’m giving it four spirals out of five.

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Review: Uzumaki, Vol. 1

Uzumaki, Vol. 1 by Junji Ito
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first introduced to Uzumaki at my birthday last week, which just so happened to be Friday the 13th. The movie was weird, campy, and creepy. Happy birthday to me indeed. If I still wrote for The Agony Booth, I would’ve been on the forum saying, “Albert! I got a new idea for a recap. Get this: a Japanese town goes insane from….wait for it….SPIRALS. At times it’s artsy: Hey look, there’s a computer-generated spiral! Ah! Made you look! Then it gets creepy: Ever wondered what a man climbing into a washing machine to spiral himself to death sounds like? Eating pretzel stick in a microphone, actually. And then, WACKY HIJINKS. FUNKY CAMERA ANGLES. A cigarette that explodes LIKE A MINIATURE DEATH STAR when it gets stubbed out. FOR NO REASON WHATSOVER.”

Ahhh…I do so miss writing for the Agony Booth.

Anyway, I read up on the movie afterwards and learned that the movie was done before the manga was finished, so the ending is supposedly different from how the manga ended. This is no big deal–anime does it all the time **coughFullMetalAlchemistcough**. But the movie still managed to piss off the die hard manga folks, who said it was too goofy and too low budget to take seriously. The manga was far more disturbing and creepy. Glutton for punishment that I am, I took that as a challenge to read the manga to see for myself and betook myself to the library.

The manga is drawn beautifully. Ito is a good artist. There’s a color print of Kirie, our plucky girl protagonist, standing in a field of ferns. SPIRALLY ferns. The town she lives in is artistically detailed. You can feel the claustophobia of so many houses close together. His drawing of people looks good too, except the eyes. Ito has this thing for drawing eyeballs. Red-veined, bulging eyeballs. Eyeballs that make you want to reach for a bottle of Visine.

As expected, there are differences between the movie and the manga: movie Kirie only lived with her father, whereas manga Kirie also has a mom and a younger brother. Movie Shuichi was played by a vaguely creepy actor with all the emotional range of a broom. In the manga, he is unhinged from page one, when he bursts out how much he hates the town and freaks out when the five o’clock bell goes off. Plot points are more fleshed out. In the movie, it’s not clear how Shuichi’s father’s dies in the washing machine . Does he drown? Centrigual force? The manga makes that clearer. Shuichi’s mother’s demise is also fleshed out, and horrible as it sounds, it was my favorite chapter (her death is more prolonged, but with less gore.)

Up to that chapter, the manga had retained, perhaps even elevated its creepiness without any of the campiness of the movie. But as the chapters went on, I began to detect a sort of…pattern. Shuichi, now an orphan, spends his time lurking and brooding, and every so often declaiming “SPIRALS ARE EVIL!” And Kirie…wow. At least in the movie, she had the range of emotions of scared, bewildered, and that one scene where she has…ahem…paroxysms of happiness in eating a melon. In the manga, she’s as dumb as a rock. Repeatedly. As in, yes-I-just-saw-demons-fly-out-of-my-father’s-kiln-and-burn-it-to-the-ground-but-that-doesn’t-mean-anything-I’m-off-to school-tee-hee dumb. Her best friend develops a spiral in her forward and implodes, and the next day, Kirie’s acting like nothing has happened. A teenage couple elope ala Romeo and Juliet, and by that I mean entwining themselves like snakes and throwing themselves in the ocean. And Kirie acts like nothing is wrong. It became sort of ridiculous, and I was thinking, man, there might be two whole other volumes of this where Ito just finds entertaingly creepy ways to kill people through spirals. But the last chapter breaks the pattern when the spiral infects Kirie herself and WACKY HAIR HIJINKS ensue. Hijinks on the same par of hilarious creepy idiocy as the movie and ending on a nice, uh, twist, that makes me want to read the next volume. There’s even a cute omake at the end of Ito himself that shows that even he doesn’t take this seriously.

So, I give this volume four spirals out of five, and off to the next volume.

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Review: The Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Shaun Tan’s story about a man immigrating to a new land is simplistic in story, but the pictures are breathtaking. I loved how Tan uses a fantastical country with whimsical creatures to show the immigration process. The world seems familiar, but the creatures, the foods, the writing throws what we know in a tizzy. We follow the main character as he puzzles out his apartment, tries to find a job, and meet others who are helping him to adjust. The drawings in this is detailed, gorgeous and deliberate. Not a single picture is wasteful. A page filled with nothing but clouds is beautiful, but also shows the passage of time.

This is something I want to get for my missionary inlaws. I think they’ll find it beautiful. Five fantastical pets out of five.

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Review: Un Lun Dun

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading the bleakness of Hunger Games, I wanted something lighter, and UnLunDun fit the bill. When I first started reading it, I joked, “This is the anti-hunger games”. But the more I read it, I realized it’s more like the UnHunger Games.

There are similiarities. There is a girl who is chosen to save the world. There is a war. Friends get hurt, even killed. But where the Hunger Games were bleak, UnLunDun is more whimsical, thanks to the Mieville’s wonderful drawings, and the storyline itself, which proves not to be your standard girl-gets-pulled-into-alternate-world, girl-must-save-alternate-world, yadda yadda yadda.

Zanna learns she is the prophesied Swazzy, the chosen one who will save the world UnLunDun (say it fast and you’ll get it). But when an accident knocks her out for the count, it’s actually her best friend, Deeba, who rises up to the challenge. Deeba wasn’t meant to be the Swazzy, just her funny sidekick (there’s a beautiful scene where Deeba learns this, much to her chagrin). I think Deeba is also South Asian Indian from her last name, so we got ourselves a POC main character as well. Nicely done.

I like how the novel sets up expectations and then breaks them. The novel even starts in Zanna’s POV, but gradually switches to Deeba. Hemi, the half-ghost boy who’s people are shunned and feared, continues the breaking stereotype them. And there’s an overreaching environmental theme as the evil villian is The Smog, which is…smog. But Deeby has allies, some human, some more whimsical. One of my favorites was Mr. Cavea, a man who has a birdcage, complete with bird, for a head. There are also the binjas, that are rubbish bins and ninjas combined.

Mieville does a wonderful job of creating a London that is strange and fun and frightening all at once. The characters have delightful puns that sometimes are evident, sometimes more subtle (Skool’s origin, for instance, is apt and clever). All the characters charmed me over, and the settings were fun to read. I doubt I would read this to my 7-year-old son, but will put it on the list for when he’s a little older, maybe 9 or 10, as some scenes were a little intense.

This gets 3 out of 5 binjas. I could’ve used a binja to whoever knocked down my mailbox last week. That would’ve been awesome.

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Review: Defending Black Faith

Defending Black Faith by Craig S. Keener
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a good book. I wish I read the previous book “Black Man’s Religion” as the book refers to it several times, and I think it would discuss more in detail about the experience of being black and Christian. Reading the history of Christianity in Africa was illuminating–it was the first time I read such a thing, and it showed me how seriously lacking I am in my knowledge of black church history.

This book makes for a good information source…half the book is footnotes, which is just as interesting as the text, but made for a slower reading.

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Review: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition by Rich Horton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s neat that I’ve met (and talked face to face) with 7 authors in this collection. I’ve also already heard half the stories on Escapepod or Podcastle. It was nice to read these stories and linger over the prose (such as Eros, Phillipe, Agape–read it on Tor, heard it on EscapePod, but reading it in print helped me catch nuances i missed. Same thing with Catherynne M. Valente’s The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew).

Stories that stuck with me:

The Persistence of Memory by Paul Park: normally I hate meta fiction, but this finally elevated it to an art form. Read it several times and something else revealed itself to me each time.

Technicolor by John Langan: very spooky retelling of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Never realized colors could be so deadly. Or lectures for that matter.

Wife-stealing Time by R. Garcia y Robertson: wry tale that combines friskyn females and hunting beasts

The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finley: invoked memories of my childhood

Mongoose by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette: Heard this one on Drabblecast. A delight to read in print.

Secret Identity: if I was to ever get audio equipment, I would beg Podcastle to let me read this. Also, Kelly Link, Kelly Link.

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Review: Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans

Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans by Roland Laird
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very interesting to read. Two “elders”, man and woman, tell the history of African Americans from slavery to modern times in graphic novel form. I liked how the elders sometimes bickered with each other as they told the story, and thus illustrating that there are differing opinions on what happened in history. It was also interesting to see that there is no clear-cut absolutes. Wealthy white slaveowners were depicted as greedy pigs, but some were also portrayed sympathetically. Black people were shot at, brutalized, but they’re also shown as disagreeing among themselves as to what to do.

The book also showed that black people had a strong presence in politics, even during slavery times. I liked how that the book didn’t just focus on slavery, but on the conferences (blacks held a Republican conference at one point. That was delightfully ironic), as well as the writers and scientists.

The only thing that turned me off was the drawing style. It felt a little crude to me. But the history telling was so rich, I soon overlooked it.

This is something I would love to have as part of my library. Four freedom trains out of five.

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Goodreads Book Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was surprised that none of the “Frankenstein” mythology was really present. Frankenstein doesn’t create the monster in a laboratory by lightening. It’s more implied. In fact, I would venture to say Frankenstein was a dick. He creates this monster but doesn’t take responsibility for his actions–even after the monster endeavors to learn life on his own.

The most heinous thing Frankenstein did though was keep silent while Justine was sentenced to death for killing his brother. He was more concerned about his status than her life. I lost what little remaining respect for him. The monster had more respectability than him.

Interesting that it was a story within a story within a story. The best story was the one about the British family who helped the Arabian woman and the son and her became lovers. I wanted to see the ending to that! Of course, the monster ruined it by revealing himself. Bummer.

So, mostly this story was about Frankenstein creating a monster and then whining about for the rest of the story. Meh. Good thing it was a quick read.

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Musing on a moment at the Gathering of American Gods at the House of the Rock, Halloween Weekend 2010

(Edit: Welcome to all the Cracked.com visitors. This was part 1 of my time at the House of the Rock. You can read more at Part 2.)

There was a moment.

There were many moments, in fact. The moment on Friday when, as Neil sat in a chair and read the House on the Rock chapter in American Gods, the wind billowed through the tent we sat under, causing the sides to heave and flap, as if we sat in the belly of a living, breathing beast.

There was the moment when on Saturday, after the costume contest and the raffle tickets had been called, and the rest of us headed down the ramp into the house proper, everybody dressed in feathers or make-up or robes or, in my case, billowing tea-stained wedding dresses, so full of bubbly giddiness we couldn’t even run, we glided, laughing and cheering and calling and gasping, full of terrible anticipation of the night before us.

There was the moment that happened that wasn’t even at the House on the Rock, when I drove home from the reading and turned onto 151, seeing the half moon hanging before me, and just then, just then, a streak of light pierced the moon and fell before I had a chance to blink.

There are all these delicious little moments. I haven’t even dwelled on the ones that happened with Neil. I’ll get to those in a bit.

But there was this one moment. One moment that I keep replaying in my head over and over since the Gathering. It’s the moment when I stepped into the Carousel room to watch the contest winners ride the carousel.

Now, see? Those words above, it doesn’t do it justice. It won’t mean anything to you, the reader, unless you’ve been to the House on the Rock, at which you’d know exactly what I’m talking about. But even then, even then, if you have just gone as a tourist, it can’t really touch upon the electricity and emotion I felt that night when I went through the doorway and saw the Carousel spinning in all its gaudy glory, with people on it.

On my camera I have a video I did as I entered the Carousel Room. You can see the lights, the drums, the carousel itself spinning. What you won’t see is me tilting my head back to look up at the myriads of full-sized mannikens with angel wings plastered all over the ceiling. The video doesn’t capture the full experience of the room. The lighting was dim and the music too loud and my hands too jittery. But you can see the Carousel.

How can I describe it? How can I described how a whole bunch of us, too many for me to count, dressed in costume, pressing around, watching our favorite author climb onto the carousel and mount the exact eagle/tiger he described in his book? To see lights that go on and on, the different creatures that loom out: elephants, satyrs, minotaurs—creatures too primal to be on a typical merry-go-round. And the music plays and the carousel turns, and you whoop and hollar with everyone…

It’s a moment I shared with hundreds of people.

It’s a moment no one else will experience ever again. Even if the House on the Rock do decide to open up the house again, it won’t be the same.

Today, I’ve been thinking about moments. I have a friend who spent the last two weeks in Capetown for the Lusanne Conference. Watching her updates on Facebook made me think back to when I went to Mozambique, and how we drove through a cornfield and I heard voices singing. We stopped and those voices surrounded us, until women appeared out of the corn, clapping, stomping, dancing. A similar type of joy.

Okay. Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about Neil. And the cheeseburger.

But for now, I give you a taste of that moment. It’s not the real deal, but it’s close enough.