AirCommodore

STORY

"A town haunted by a spiral pattern? Really Mr. mangaka? Really? Well alright, I'll read it anyway, if only because it's rated so highly." And really that's the story in a nutshell. Spirals are taking over the town (egad!) in a myriad of ways (oh no!).

Soon after picking this up, I had a flshback to the first time I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show. Before watching/reading, I knew next to nothing about either of them, except that they loudly proclaimed to be "horror". And then quickly turned out to be ridiculously campy. Almost unbearably so.

I still can't figure out why people are afraid of this thing. Alright, I'll admit, some of the scenes were pretty creepy, but the situations were so completely far-fetched that it was impossible to get sucked far enough into the story to suspend my disbelief. People turning into snails? And I've spent far too much time coloring in anatomical plates to do anything but roll my eyes at some of the "terrifying" contortions the characters get themselves into.

ART

The art was the one thing that convinced me that this entire thing wasn't a joke. It was that good. Gore and various oddities were drawn with such loving attention to detail. Since the situations didn't creep me out at all, the few times I cringed during reading were solely due to the exquisiste art (Mosquitoes was especially chilling). The color pages at the beginning of each volume were particularly well-done.

CHARACTERS

The characters existed. That's really all I can say about them. As a situational horror instead of a psychological horror, the characters exist solely for the purpose of having stuff done to them. Kirie is a fairly good main character, and inspires a degree of empathy from the readers. Despite her refusal to do anything that won't put her in grave danger, she manages to escape unscathed again and again, which was fairly ridiculous, but I'll overlook that. Other main characters have miraculously overcome greater odds.