#toshio saito

[wrymbloods]

UZUMAKI ➤ Episode 1

This is my hometown, Kurouzu-cho. The stories I'm about to tell you are about the many strange events that happened here. [...] What we hadn't realized yet was that all the horrors we faced, everything that happened... was just the beginning of our descent into the spiral.

[zay-does-things]

Me listening to Subhuman

UZUMAKI - Trailer

[demifiendrsa]

Uzumaki | Official Trailer

The 4-part Uzumaki anime mini-series will premiere on Toonami on September 28, 2024 at 12:30AM (effectively September 29, 2024), followed by streaming on Max.

Cast

Japanese/ English Dub cast

Uki Satake/Abby Trott as Kirie Goshima

Shinichiro Miki/Robbie Daymond as Shuichi Saito

Toshio Furukawa/Doug Stone as Yasuo Goshima

Takashi Matsuyama/Aaron LaPlante as Mr. Saito

Mika Doi/Mona Marshall as Yukie Saito

Mariya Ise/Cristina Vee as Azami Kurotami

Katsutoshi Matsuzaki/Max Mittelman as Katayama

Wataru Hatano as Okada

Tatsumaru Tachibana as Tsumura

Kouichi Toochika as Yokota

Ami Fukushima as Shiho

Gen Sato as Boy 1

Shunsuke Takeuchi as Boy 2

Anna Nagase as Girl

Kōsuke Okamoto as Attendee 1

Staff

Director: Hiroshi Nagahama

Script: Aki Itami

Original creator: Junji Ito

Music: Colin Stetson

Animation Production: Studio Drive, Studio Akatsuki

Production Producer: Production I.G

[alexthegamingboy]

Toonami Weekly Recap 10/26/2024

Uzumaki EP#01: Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend Shuichi Saito live in the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho, which is enveloped by supernatural events involving spirals. Shuichi tells Kirie that he is concerned about the recent increase of spirals and that it is beginning to affect his father, Toshio, who has abandoned his job to obsess over them. When Kirie arrives home, she finds Toshio talking to her father about commissioning spiral pattern pottery. Later at school, Kirie and fellow classmate Azami Kurotani discuss the latter's crescent-shaped forehead scar which seems to have the ability to attract boys with whom she has crushes for. After class, Kirie introduces Azami to Shuichi at the local railway station. Shuichi becomes startled and takes Kirie away, telling her that he senses the spiral curse on the girl. Later, Kirie delivers her father's finished pottery to Toshio, who declines it as he is now interested in becoming a spiral himself. Toshio scares Kirie off by forming a spiral with his own tongue. Meanwhile, Shuichi runs into Azami who attempts to confess her feelings towards him and shows him her scar, which has now turned into a spiral. Shuichi warns Azami to leave town before she is infected by the curse. Some time later, Toshio dies and is cremated, with the cover story being that he fell down a flight of stairs. Shuichi reveals to Kirie that in actuality him and his mother discovered his body contorted into a spiral inside a drum container back at home, which crushed his bones and killed him. The crowd in attendance for the cremation become startled as Toshio's ashes rise up into the air and form a spiral and his own face. Shuichi's mother Yukie goes insane upon witnessing this and is admitted to the hospital. Back at school, another one of Kirie's classmates, a slow-moving boy named Tokuo Katayama, arrives late during a rainy day. He is bullied after gym glass by Kazuki Tsumura, who strips him naked and pulls him out into a hallway where Kirie happens to be passing by. It is revealed that there's a spiral on the boy's back. At the hospital, Yukie's mental health continues to deteriorate as she begins to fear spirals to the point where she shaved her hair and cut off her own finger and toe prints in order to avoid seeing them. Later that night, Azami tricks a classmate boy who has a crush on her named Okada into bringing Shuichi to the park so she could meet with him. Okada, feeling betrayed by Azami's promise go out on a date with him for doing this favor, rips off her hat and it is revealed that her spiral scar has now completely enveloped her head as a vortex. Okada becomes shocked upon seeing this and gets closer to her before being sucked into it. Kirie arrives as Shuichi warns her that Azami's body is starting to be consumed by her scar, which immediately proceeds to completely devour her.

Uzumaki EP#02: Katayama arrives to school late again and is noticed to have swelling from where the spiral is on his back. Elsewhere, teenage lovers Kazunori Nishiki and Yoriko Endo are hiding from their parents in an abandoned rowhouse. Following the incident at Toshio's funeral and others, Kurouzu-cho has outlawed cremation and restarted whole-body inhumations. After school in the town cemetery, Kirie and her friend Shiho Ishikawa are ambush pranked by Mitsuru Yamaguchi, nicknamed 'Jack-In-The-Box' for his trademark pop-up surprises on everyone. Yamaguchi confesses his feelings for Kirie, to which she rejects and the girls walk away. After departing from her friend, Kirie witnesses Yoriko's family assaulting Kazunori for spending time with her. Kazunori tells Kirie that their families hate each other, and as a result won't let the two come into contact. He also tells Kirie that the two are planning to run away from town soon. Later, Kirie discovers that her hair is becoming long and distorted into curls. After the class witnesses Katayama on the school's windows crawling around as a snail person, Kirie runs away during the chaos to a barber where she requests to get her hair cut. Before the barber can cut it, the hair reacts in a hostile manner in order to stop them. Kirie's hair becomes even more distorted and soon becomes the center of attention with people, which makes her friend Kyoko Sekino become jealous. Later, Yamaguchi presents Kirie with a present, to which she rejects. In an attempt to impress her, Yamaguchi runs onto the street to try and make a car stop but it instead runs over and kills him. The next day at school, everyone discovers that Tsumura has also become a snail person and they place him in the school's chicken coup with Katayama. Kyoko arrives to confront Kirie, now also with the same curled hair, in an attempt to win over classmates' attention. Shuichi arrives and stops both hairs from attacking each other, proceeding to cut all of Kirie's off. Kyoko declares herself the winner and walks off into town where her hair consumes all her energy. Tsumura and Katayama escape the coup and the two lay eggs on a local pathway. Kirie and Shuichi discover school teacher Mr. Yokota destroying the eggs before running off to see that Kazunori and Yoriko leave town safely. They meet up with the couple at the train station, but they tell them that their parents spotted them and are actively chasing them. Shuichi suggest they cut through to the beach and all four run off. Both Nishiki and Yoriko's families spot them and catch up on the beach. Refusing to be separated once again, the couple twist their bodies to intertwin with each other and crawl off into the ocean. Some time later, Kirie encounters townspeople walking in endless circles. Rumors catch on about the town lighthouse's recent reactivation at school where everyone discovers that Mr. Yokota has also turned into a snail person. Traveling home after school, Kirie's brother Mitsuo convinces her to go to the lighthouse with him as a boat had crashed into nearby rocks, with the crew having walked in circles. Mitsuo and his friends travel up into the lighthouse and Kirie follows him in. Walking up the lighthouse's stairs, Kirie discovers the corpses of men who were assigned with investigating the lighthouse's reactivation and encounter two of Mitsuo's friends who didn't go up any further upon seeing them. Kirie reaches the top where her brother and his friend are and discovers the tower's light is severely melted, realizing it becomes extremely hot when it turns on. She warns them to run back down and as they do the light goes on at sundown, burning Mitsuo's friend who failed to escape in time and injuring Kirie.

Uzumaki EP#03: Kirie is admitted to the town's hospital for her burns. Multiple pregnant women are also admitted after complaining of being sick from mosquito bites. Kirie's pregnant cousin, Keiko Nakayama, arrives and shares the same room as her due to overcrowding in the maternity ward. The next day, three patients are found dead in the hospital and appear to be completely drained of their blood. The following night, Kirie wakes up and discovers that the pregnant women are roaming the hospital and using manual hand drills to drain and suck the blood of patients. The women spot Kirie and attempt to kill her but she uses Shuichi's mosquito repellant to disperse them. Meanwhile, Yukie continues to mentally deteriorate, with her husband telling her there's a spiral in her ear during hallucinations. Fearing them, she uses a scissors to stab herself in the ear and ultimately succumbs to the injury. Some time later, Kirie and Shuichi walk the hospital hallways, seeing the newly born babies growing spiral-patterned placentas and then discovering in the doctor's surgical room that Keiko's baby has been put back into her womb. Keiko demands blood and the doctor attempts to use Kirie as a sacrifice but she dodges, killing the doctor instead. The two immediately leave the room. Kirie's family welcomes her back home from the hospital with a celebratory dinner along with Shuichi, who becomes startled after discovering her father, Yasuo Goshima, has been making spiral-patterned pottery. Shuichi breaks Yasuo's kiln, as he hears his deceased parents from within. The pottery inside disperses and the shed it's located in catches fire. Later, a typhoon descends upon the town and the eye rests over Dragonfly Pond, calling out to Kirie. She and Shuichi attempt to escape the eye but it sucks them up and drags them near the pond before dispersing. Due to damage the Goshima's household took from the storm, they move into one of the town's rowhouse. One of the neighboring tenants dies from an unknown disease. Another tenant, Mr. Wakabayashi, catches the same disease and attempts to attack Kirie outside but is hit by a tree log from another storm. Yamaguchi's corpse randomly appears, jumping thanks to the car suspension spring inside his torso.

Uzumaki EP#04 Finale

-Toonami Rewind Shows-

Sailor Moon EP#36 - The Usagi's Confusion: Is Tuxedo Mask Evil?: Minako takes a depressed Usagi to the hairdresser to cheer her up. There they are attacked by a monster who is convinced that Minako is Sailor Moon. Tuxedo Mask appears, alive and whole, but addresses himself as Endymion and appeared to be fighting for the Dark Kingdom.

Sailor Moon EP#37 - Let's Become a Princess: Usagi's Bizarre Training: Usagi daydreams of her past and enrolls in a special seminar to become more like a princess. Kunzite and the evil Endymion argue about which is more important: obtaining the Silver Crystal or killing Sailor Moon.

[byneddiedingo]

Masayuki Mori in Love Letter (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1953)

Cast: Masayuki Mori, Juzo Dosan, Yoshiko Kuga, Jukichi Uno, Kyoko Kagawa, Shizue Natsukawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chieko Seki, Ranko Hanai, Chieko Nakakita, Keisuke Kinoshita. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, based on a novel by Fumio Niwa. Cinematography: Hiroshi Suzuki. Art direction: Seigo Shindo. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito. 

[prfm-multiverse]

New work for Perfume! Please enjoy this trick as often as you like. We are looking forward to working with you from January onwards!

Moon MV Crew

Director : TAKCOM（CONNECTION） Assistant Director：倉光哲司 Tetsushi Kuramitsu Cinematographer：田嶌誠 Makoto Tajima (館岡事務所) 1st Assistant Cameraman：尾崎圭市 Keiichi Ozaki 2nd Assistant Cameraman：森田曜 Akira Morita 3rd Assistant Cameraman：宮崎新大 Arata Miyazaki

Key Grip：大江史也 Fumiya Oe,石井努 Tsutomu Ishii,岡田雅成 Masanari Okada,室山聖 Kiyoshi Muroyama

DIT：タキユウスケ Yusuke Taki(Kotetsu Inc.)

Lighting Director：前川賀世子 Kayoko Maekawa Lighting Chief Assistant：井上真宏 Masahiro Inoue Lighting Assistant：大谷力 Chikara Otani,工藤こずえ Kozue Kudo,樋口学 Satoru Higuchi,福田和宏 Kazuhiro Fukuda,藤井裕介 Yusuke Fujii,新田泰之 Yasuyuki Nitta,山崎達也 Tatsuya Yamazaki Production Designer：三ツ泉貴幸 Takayuki Mitsuizumi（STARBOY）

Transportaion：牧尾智史 Satoshi Makio Studio：角川大映スタジオ Studio Coordinator：山田隆久 Takashisa Yamada

Choreographer : MIKIKO (ELEVENPLAY) Choreography Assistant : SAYA, SHOKO, MAI (ELEVENPLAY)

Stylist：タケダトシオ Toshio Takeda（MILD inc.） Stylist Assistant：岡崎くるみ Kurumi Okazaki,藤田和哉 Kazuya Fujita Dressmaker：内藤智恵 Chie Naito,斎藤利保 Riho Saito Make-up : 大須賀昌子 Masako Osuga Hair : 福間友香 Tomoka Fukuma (VANITES)

Offline Editor : 前田径成 Michinari Maeda（CONNECTION） Colorist：芳賀修 Osamu Haga（Artone Film）

CG Production：Citro CG Director：竹山寛史 Hiroshi Takeyama,平川侑樹 Yuki Hirakawa

Post-Production：Khaki Compositor：水野 正毅 Masaki Mizuzo,川崎琴美 Kotomi Kawasaki,藤田智子 Tomoko Fujita Roto & paint : Taupe / Roudiez / Elephants Gate

Producer：松竹奈央 Nao Matsutake Production Manager：南水朋子 Tomko Nansui Production Assistant：橋本和佳奈 Wakana Hashimoto,足立芳洋 Yoshihiro Adachi,川久保開 Kai Kawakubo,日尾野穂乃香 Honoka Hibino,伊堂寺夏鈴 Karin Idouji,加賀美椋 Ryo Kagami Production : P.I.C.S.

[the-monkey-ruler]

One Piece (1999) ワンピース

Directed: Uda Kinnosuke / Shimizu Junji / Sakai Munehisa / Miyamoto / Hiroaki Shigeyasu Chomine Tatsuya / Yamauchi / Otsuka Takashi / Yasuyukio Screenwriter: Eiichiro Oda / Junki Takegami Mitsuru / Yoshiyuki / Tsuyoshi Shimada / Suga Sakurai / Takahashi Yoichi / Yushi Hashimoto / Ryota Yamaguchi / Isao Murayama / Hitoshi Tanaka Tomohiro / Nakayama / Naoki Koga / Hirohiko Uesaka / Takuya Masumoto / Atsuhiro Tomioka / Masaji Yonemura Starring: Mayumi Tanaka / Akemi Okamura / Kazuya Nakai / Katsuhei Yamaguchi / Hiroaki Hirata / Ikue Otani / Yuriko Yamaguchi / Kazuki Yao / Yuichi Nagashima / Shuichi Ikeda / Toshio Furukawa / Toru Furuya / Norio Otsuka / Masatane Tsukayama / Takeshi Kusao / Masato Oba / Katsuhisa Takagi / Keiichi Sonobe / Hidekatsu Shibata / Hiroshi Naka / Daisuke Sakaguchi / Junko Takeuchi / Shigeru Chiba / Kotono Mitsuishi / Hirohiko Kakugawa / Hideyuki Hori / Hideyuki Tanaka / Ryuzaburo Otomo / Kintaka Arimoto / Akio Otsuka / Tessho Genda / Mami Koyama / Mika Doi / Junko Noda / Misa Watanabe / Nogami Yuukana / Hayashibara Emi / Mizuki Nana / Sonozaki Mie / Nishihara Kumiko / Hisakawa Aya / Sawashiro Miyuki / Ikezawa Haruna / Saito Chiwa / Kamiya Hiroshi / Namikawa Daisuke / Morikubo Shoutarou / Ishida Akira / Takagi Kiyoshi / Hiyama Nobuyuki / Koyasu Takehito / Seki Tomokazu Genre: Comedy / Action / Animation / Fantasy / Adventure Official website: www.toei-anim.co.jp/tv/onep/ Country/Region of Production: Japan Language: Japanese Date: 1999-10-20 (Japan) Number of Seasons: 21 Number of episodes: 1,122 Single episode length: 24 minutes Number of Movies: 39 Movies Number of Games: 57 Games Also known as: 航海王 IMDb: tt0388629 Type: Appropriation

Summary:

Before his death, the legendary pirate Gol D. Roger left a message about his life's wealth "One Piece", which attracted many heroes to fight for this legendary huge wealth. Various forces and regimes kept changing, and the whole world entered the turbulent and chaotic "Great Pirate Era". Luffy, who grew up in a small village in the East China Sea, was guided by the spirit of the pirate Shanks and decided to become an outstanding pirate. In order to achieve this goal and find the much-anticipated One Piece, Luffy embarked on a difficult journey. Along the way, he encountered countless hardships and met a group of friends with different personalities, such as Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, and Robin. They joined hands to embark on a legendary adventure... This film is adapted from the popular manga "One Piece" by Japanese manga artist Eiichiro Oda.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Piece_(1999_TV_series)

Link: https://kissanime.com.ru/Anime/One-Piece.57500/

[lithellyl]

Watching the Uzumaki anime

Toshio Saito: "I find there to be something deeply enigmatic about spirals. In fact I'm utterly convinced there's a wonderous power inside each and every one of them! isn't the dpiral wonderful? It really is the most sublime art form of all!"

Me: "OK, calm down there Tim Burton!"

[hjmarseille]

Unit of aces; Tainan Ku pilots on 4 August 1942. Front row, 2nd from left is Takeichi Kokuba; 4th from right Kazushi Uto; 2nd row, 2nd left Toraichi Takatsuka; 4th from left Jun-ichi Sasai; 5th Shiro Kawai; 6th Yasuna Kozono; 7th Masahisa Saito; 8th Tadashi Nakajima; 12th Takeyoshi Ohno; 3rd row, 6th from left Mototsuna Yoshidsa; 7th Saburo Sakai; 8th Hiroyoshi Nishizawa; 10th Yoshio Ohki; Toshio Ohta; 14th Masuaki Endo; 4th row, 3rd from left Sadao Uehara; 4th Keisaku Yoshimura; 9th Ichirobe Yamazaki.

Photo and caption featured in Japanese Naval Fighter Aces: 1932-45 (Stackpole Military History) by Professor Ikuhiko Hata, Yashuho Izawa and Christopher Shores

[sailormoonartblog]

This is the splash page of chapter 16 of Codename Sailor V! (the last one of the series), published on the October 1996 issue of RunRun. Image credits to Miss Dream.

[anamon-book]

夕やけを見ていた男－評伝 梶原一騎 斎藤貴男 カバー装画＝荘司としお『夕やけ番長』

[wrymbloods]

UZUMAKI (2023) dir. Nagahama Hiroshi

[rewovenfate-a]

a huge infodump re: miyako’s connections with junji ito’s uzumaki

this will be long and have tons of trigger warnings, which will be tagged.

also, it’s worth noting that i wrote this mini-essay on miyako’s blog, during which time her main verse was that of a villain. miyako no longer seeks to return to kurozu-cho, but i thought this essay would be good to include on the blog anyway.

section 00. disclaimer.

now, uzumaki itself has a lot of talk about the nature of mesmerism and the spiral’s cause of it. chapter 6, medusa, in particular references the nature of the spiral and its desire for attention. reading off of shuichi’s dialogue...

the manga itself already implants that seed, therefore, there’s not much else to theorize here about mesmerism and attention. tv tropes’ page on uzumaki also talks about this with some theorizing, but again, this post focuses more on other aspects as to how the spiral works.

anyway, with that out of the way, time for the main portions of this post.

section 01. the eternal spiral.

this is the section where I basically just infodump about uzumaki and the symbolism that’s very heavy-laden on the manga. there’s really a few smaller items in here that i’ll go over. womb imagery, life/death/rebirth, and the occasional endpoint of life into death without rebirth.

for the purpose of making things easier, here’s the characters i mention by name who will appear more than once in this analysis:

kirie goshima: the protagonist of uzumaki

yasuo goshima: kirie’s father, a potter

mitsuo goshima: kirie’s little brother

keiko nakayama: kirie’s cousin; she is pregnant in chapters 10 and 11, which are HEAVILY influential to this analysis

shuichi saito: kirie’s boyfriend, who seems to be clairvoyant in the matters of the spiral

toshio saito: shuichi’s father; i’m using the given name from the movie so i don’t have to type “shuichi’s father” ten thousand times

yukie saito: shuichi’s mother

chie maruyama: a journalist from toyo tv who arrives to kurôzu-cho, a brief deuteragonist to kirie between chapters 14 and 18

mitsuru yamaguchi: a seventh-grader who has a crush on kirie, but dies when trying to prove his love for her would stop a car

womb imagery?

basically, i define “womb imagery” as being the presence of several factors in representing the womb. googling actually brings it up as “mother/birth” imagery, but for the purpose of being accurate and direct, i’ll be using “womb” instead.

the very first instance of this imagery shows up in chapter 1, the spiral obsession pt. 1, when toshio contorts himself into a spiral within a wooden tub, in the room where he once kept his collection of spirals. a person COULD count a couple of scenes earlier on where he’s crouching among spirals or talking about spirals as being hints of it, but for the purpose of this, i won’t.

however, i did notice that the saito family’s choice of alibi as to how he’d died was an odd choice as well ---- falling down the stairs. technically that could involve a spiral, despite not fitting into womb imagery, but let’s move on.

chapter 2, the spiral obsession pt. 2 introduces yukie saito’s fear of spirals. in this chapter, she sees her deceased husband in any image of a spiral, one of these being a centipede; this specific imagery is important, as what toshio specifically says is that he wants to curl up inside of her ears.

“why her ears?” because there’s a spiral inside of it, the cochlea. the fact it’s a small, enclosed space makes it a candidate for ---- you guessed it ---- womb imagery.

after yukie stabs her ears to attempt getting rid of the cochleas, she is wrapped entirely in bandaging, but ends up dying regardless. still, another point towards the womb imagery, although she is not curled up during this.

chapter 4, the firing effect, could be interpreted as a womb in a different manner ---- that is, the warping of what comes in and the rebirthing into something entirely new. normal pots that yasuo makes turn into spiral-laden creations with the faces of the previously-cursed dead.

chapter 6, medusa, also touches upon it, without the death aspect that usually accompanies it, with kirie’s hair wrapping around shuichi when he tries to cut it, before he’s forced to cut it from the inside-out. sekino, the other victim of the spiral hair, isn’t so fortunate.

ironically, chapter 7, jack-in-the-box, touches upon this imagery with a literal corpse. of course, a jack-in-the-box itself could be considered it too, since it appears in this chapter, but mitsuru is a huge example of a point i’ll make in the next subsection.

chapter 8, snail people, and the mentions of snail people afterwards is also a prime candidate for imagery of the womb; snails by their nature can curl up into their shells, similar to babies in the womb. later, another character curls up in their shell to protect themselves from being eaten. yikes tm.

chapters 10 and 11, mosquitoes and umbilical cord, are the BIGGEST portions of this analysis due to the fact that it dedicates two chapters to an incident regarding pregnant women who, after being bitten by swarms of male mosquitoes, began to drain the blood of other patients using hand drills.

they all gave birth within the hospital to extremely beautiful babies ---- babies who wanted to return to the womb. keiko being one of the victims, was also the first to give birth and the first to have her child returned to the womb. the fact that they regrow their umbilical cords and placentas is used as evidence that the children want to return to the womb, not just the dialogue the babies have when talking.

( this is where i say, “listen, uzumaki? is weird. bear with me.” )

chapter 12, the storm, does hint towards the “return” to the womb that finalizes at chapter 19, with the storm insistently dragging kirie and shuichi back to dragonfly lake, which leads down to the spiral city.

chapter 13, the house, focuses a lot on the dark room/cranny aspect of the womb imagery, with the warts mutating two men beyond comprehension, both of those men having been in the dark for prolonged periods of time. while kirie’s family also have these spiky warts, they are able to leave and thus recover from them afterwards.

the row houses become a fundamental part of the womb imagery as well, as later chapters show numerous inhabitants forced to take refuge in their safety; it was either become packed like sardines, turn into snails walking too slow outside, or become swept up by the tornadoes outside. by chapter 15, chaos, we’re well-established that there is no escape from kurozu-cho.

chapter 17, escape, brings up the snail people once again, with a snail-person attempting escape from being eaten by going into his shell. however, when a man enters the snail’s shell to eat him, he gets stuck and has to be forced out.

finally, chapter 19, completion, leads to the spiral city down below the town. this is definitely the culmination of the “return to the womb” that chapter 11 had been working towards, with the previous chapter showing that the people in the row houses had also been heading to the center --- to dragonfly lake.

and...yeah, that’s the end of the womb imagery. one may notice that there’s hints of a cycle of life -> death -> rebirth going on in the story, but we’ll make that portion a lot shorter. we did just go through the entire manga, after all.

life, death, and rebirth.

one may have probably noticed hints of this cycle going on within certain chapters. we’ll make a brief recap, but i’ll also add some additional information that i didn’t mention.

chapter 6, medusa, has an ironic skip from “life”, to “death -> rebirth”, when he’s swept up in kirie’s hair trying to cut it. however, his “rebirth” from kirie’s hair leads to cutting it, and thus, kirie sports a new haircut throughout the rest of the manga, sans the lost chapter.

chapter 7, jack-in-the-box, ironically uses a corpse for the rebirth aspect, similar to a zombie. mitsuru’s corpse, brought out with the intention of preventing him from completing that cycle, then chases kirie and shuichi.

chapter 8, snail people, introduces the death of the old human self, and the rebirth of the self as a snail.

chapters 10 and 11, mosquitoes and umbilical cord, the image of rebirth comes up with the plants made from the babies’ placentas turning into “mushrooms”; on top of that, keiko is the first to be "reborn” as a mutated appropriation of a human mosquito, complete with proboscis designed to drain blood from her victims.

chapter 13, the house, has the peeping tom who mutates be “reborn” from exiting a wall after being discovered, now a large spiky monster who has no objection to eating live animals. yikes.

the row houses after that point become a huge portion of this imagery as well, with the death of the individual and rebirth as part of a larger whole, a spirally whole in which another death is possible.

also, the entire town. see the below image from the manga itself.

there’s also a quote where kirie finishes up telling the story of kurozu-cho, at the very last page of chapter 19, completion. remember that, at this point, it’s implied that kirie and shuichi have both turned into stone in the spiral city below the town.

and with the spiral complete, a strange thing happened...

just as time had sped up when we were on the outskirts ( chapter 17, escape ), in the center of the spiral it stood still.

so the curse was over the same moment that it began, the endless frozen moment that i spent in shuichi’s arms.

and it will be the same moment when it ends again...when the next kurozu-cho is built where the ruins of the old once lay.

when the eternal spiral wakes once more.

by now, you’ve basically got the gist that the eternal spiral goes into its own cycle, with waking/cursing -> destroying everything but the row houses -> calling people to the city -> destroying the rest of the city -> “sleeping” -> repeating the entire cycle again.

so...what does this have to do with miyako?

section 02. miyako’s role in the spiral.

to focus on miyako, we have to first start with miyako’s mother, kaori nakamura, a former resident of kurozu-cho until chapter 11, umbilical cord. by this time, we’ve already seen that the smoke from the cremation of kurozu-cho’s inhabitants turn into a spiral. this also applies to those who escape the town prior to the town “closing up”, as seen below.

naturally, this will likely happen with miyako as well, and presumably any who are tied with miyako in blood. yes, this includes any children she may have, but EXCLUDES spouses unless they, too, fulfill the condition that she does ---- that is, being tied to the town of kurozu-cho.

naturally, miyako seeing her mother’s ashes turn Into That only fuels an interest in the spiral ---- but she doesn’t throw herself into it until after she’s caught daisuke cheating on her, resulting in his and nana’s death by forced spiraling.

miyako’s own turn of events results in a downward spiral, one that she works to hide by keeping herself in a positive appearance. this downward spiral also causes her to turn her attention to kurozu-cho, and then turns into a full-on obsession with finding the town.

her feelings of being less than a person after daisuke ease into a desire to reconnect with what she considers as her roots ---- that is, the spiral, the eternal spiral in the town her mother was born at and became a part of even after escaping it.

after her murder of daisuke, when she becomes a villain, miyako gets a spiral branded onto her back and several tattoos of spirals on her body, sort of a way to be ritualistically prepared to return to the spiral.

in her search for the town, it’s very likely that miyako has acquired certain information about the town from later chapters as well as prior ones. for example, the below image shows the town of kurozu-cho recorded on a map as a spiral itself.

all of this adding up? miyako planned to return to the spiral on her own terms ---- that is, either dying on kurozu-cho’s soil or ( as she WOULDN’T know ) going down into dragonfly lake’s spiral staircase and joining the spiraled people under the town itself, within the spiral city.

this also becomes a huge influence on her methods of crime, in a spiral pattern, escalating/de-escalating depending on her position within the pattern.

really, the best way to describe this outlook would be that miyako views “joining the spiral” as “returning home”, or ---- more accurately ---- “returning to the womb” and “completing the cycle of life -> death -> rebirth”.

section 03. what about rehab?

the pro-hero who’d met miyako ironically STOPPED miyako from following through entirely with her plan, their outlook of miyako as a person easing her to finally take up rehab and begin to recover. being spoken to about the city in rehab could lead to her divulging her plans, but...well...

early on? she may not even acknowledge “joining the spiral” as suicide, simply because it’s a completion to a process as she herself sees it. to end the lives of those who “killed” her, then heading to the city and becoming a part of the spiral itself, in a way that is “fulfilling” a purpose ---- being “reborn” within that purpose.

however, later on, as she comes to terms with both her own feelings and the reality behind them, it becomes harder to face the fact that she had planned to die, moreso when given a second chance. it’d lead into a reclamation of both her own feelings and the spirals of her quirk, and becoming something new.

...ironically, allowing herself to be “reborn”.

aaaaaaaaaand that’s the end of this ted talk, if you came to the bottom of this, whew. thanks for joining.

[demifiendrsa]

Uzumaki | SDCC 2024 Teaser

The 4-part Uzumaki anime mini-series will premiere on Toonami on September 28, 2024 at 12:30AM (effectively September 29, 2024), followed by streaming on Max.

Cast

Japanese/ English Dub cast

Uki Satake/Abby Trott as Kirie Goshima

Shinichiro Miki/Robbie Daymond as Shuichi Saito

Toshio Furukawa/Doug Stone as Yasuo Goshima

Takashi Matsuyama/Aaron LaPlante as Mr. Saito

Mika Doi/Mona Marshall as Yukie Saito

Mariya Ise/Cristina Vee as Azami Kurotami

Katsutoshi Matsuzaki/Max Mittelman as Katayama

Wataru Hatano as Okada

Tatsumaru Tachibana as Tsumura

Kouichi Toochika as Yokota

Ami Fukushima as Shiho

Gen Sato as Boy 1

Shunsuke Takeuchi as Boy 2

Anna Nagase as Girl

Kōsuke Okamoto as Attendee 1

Staff

Director: Hiroshi Nagahama

Script: Aki Itami

Original creator: Junji Ito

Music: Colin Stetson

Animation Production: Studio Drive, Studio Akatsuki

Production Producer: Production I.G

[hatayurieworks]

映画「ほったまるびより」Blu-ray

Cast / Risa Oda Satoko Shibata

Yu Goto Kaho Kogure Ayaka Suga Yui Yabuki

Director, Screenplay, Edit / Nao Yoshigai

Cinematographer / Mai Yoneyama Lighting / Daiki Kato Sound Recording / Junichi Sasaki Production Designer, Stylist / Koyuki Kato Costume / Kanae Shimoyama

MoVI Director / Hikari Homma Under Water Camera / Masaaki Chijimatsu

Camera Assistant / Satoshi Ichiki, Yusuke Kitami Under Water Camera Assistant / Arisa Kaneko

Assistant Director / Sho Ishii Production Support / Nanako Kobayashi, Omoi Sasaki

Music / Satoko Shibata Recording Support / Yukako Kaiwa

Choreography / Nao Yoshigai, Ayaka Suga, Yu Goto, Yui Yabuki, Kaho Kogure Color Grading / Hiroshi Iwanaga Recording Studio / TOEI DIGITAL CENTER Sound Editor / Masaya Kitada Sound Engineer / Takamasa Haraguchi Foley Assistant / Mayumi Tsumita Foley Artist / Miyuki Horiuchi

Title Logo Design / Yurie Hata Photography / Natsuki Kuroda

Producer / Tokushi Suzuki, Kengo Nakamura, Kaihei Shiota Publicity / Ui Yamanaka, Shun Takeda

Executive Producer / Toshio Watanabe

Costume Support / ANTIPAST, RED profire Location Support / Fululu Old-House, Yamagishi-Home

Planning / Tokushi Suzuki Planning Support / Takatoshi Naoi Production Support / SPOTTED PRODUCTIONS

Support / Mao Sonohara, Nami Isomura, Michiyo Hasegawa, Shunta Saito, Miyuki Shimoyama, Hiromu Nishizawa, Rei Kikuchi, Keijiro Suzuki, Neo Sora, Takuro Araki, CORE Inc., CAMPFIRE

[byneddiedingo]

Kinuyo Tanaka in The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)

Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Tsukie Matsuura, Ichiro Sugai, Toshiro Mifune, Toshiaki Konoe, Kiyoko Tsuji, Hisako Yamane, Jukichi Uno, Eitaro Shindo, Akira Oizumi, Kyoko Kusajima, Masao Shimizu, Daisuke Kato. Screenplay: Kenji Mizoguchi, Yoshikata Yoda, based on a novel by Saikaku Ihara. Cinematography: Yoshimi Hirano. Production design: Hiroshi Mizutani. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito. 

Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) is by turns a lover, a concubine, a courtesan, a servant, a wife, a prostitute, and a nun, which in the 17th-century Japan of Kenji Mizoguchi's film is almost everything a woman could possibly be. But Tanaka's great performance individualizes Ohara, keeping her from just being a representative figure, a stand-in for Woman. Over the course of the film, Oharu suffers almost every indignity that could be inflicted on her: At the court in Kyoto where she is a lady in waiting, she falls in love with a page, Katsunosuke (Toshiro Mifune), but when their affair is discovered, she and her parents are expelled and he is beheaded. One day a courtier for a powerful feudal lord comes to the village where they are exiled: The lord is in need of an heir, and his wife is barren. Oharu fits his rather exacting specifications to the letter, so she is brought to his palace where she bears him a son, but she's not allowed to nurse the child and is expelled from the household by his jealous wife. She goes to work as a courtesan to pay off the debts incurred by her greedy father (Ichiro Sugai), takes a job as maid to a woman who suspects her of sleeping with her husband, marries a man who is killed by robbers, and becomes a Buddhist nun but is expelled from the temple for supposedly seducing a man who was actually trying to rape her. Years pass and she loses her beauty and now walks the streets to earn money to survive, but she is subjected to scorn and mockery as a "goblin cat" by a man leading a group of young pilgrims. Hope dawns when she is summoned to meet her son, who has succeeded his father as lord, but it turns out that the officials in the court really want to cover up the fact that their lord's mother has been a prostitute, so she runs away after only a brief and distant glimpse of him. At the end she wanders the streets as an itinerant nun receiving alms in exchange for prayers -- her prostitution is now spiritual rather than physical. It's easy to take a synopsis like this and dismiss the story as "lachrymose as a soap opera," and "a reverse Horatio Alger adventure," as a particularly obtuse New York Times review did when The Life of Oharu was first released in the United States in 1964. It is neither of those things, of course. Even the Times reviewer was struck by Tanaka's performance, Mizoguchi's direction, and Yoshimi Hirano's cinematography, without understanding how or why these elevate the story into art. The story comes from a 17th-century novel by Saikaku Ihara, The Life of an Amorous Woman, a work far more erotic and picaresque than the melancholy screenplay Mizoguchi and co-screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda derived from it. The Life of Oharu is unremittingly grim -- it put me in mind of the novels of Thomas Hardy, whose characters suffer more than seems absolutely necessary for the author to make his point about the workings of fate. But the film is not about suffering; it's about strength, and women's strength in particular.