Tomie

"Great stuff. Wish we'd gotten some kind of happy ending or really any sort of conclusion but uh... it is what it is."

"Probably the chapter little finger I like how all the stories conneced"

"Okay, first of all, the obligatory mention that the art in this is gorgeous. You can tell how his art improved over the years just by flipping from the first story to the final one, and it's interesting how Junji Ito worked that into the narrative; every time Tomie dies, she comes back even prettier (and, by extension, deadlier). Okay, gushing about the art is out of the way.<br/><br/>Tomie tells the story of a girl/Lovecraftian monster named, you guessed it, Tomie. She gets men to fall in love with her and women to become maddeningly jealous of her or obsessed with her to the point they wish to become her, in turn almost always leading to her death, the people around her so obsessed with her they end up killing her-- but every time she dies, she multiplies and comes back prettier, stronger, and deadlier. <br/><br/>Each story is very successful at feeling very grounded (save for Tomie), and that just makes it feel more horrifying. The best part? In some ways, you can even start to feel for her (she didn't ask to drive men to insanity and experience death over and over, after all.) To me, the best example of this is in the very first story... (SPOILERS AHEAD!)<br/><br/><spoiler>Tomie has died, and her whole school is in shock-- well, until she walks into class perfectly fine, that is. It is later revealed that she and her teacher, Mr. Takagi, are sleeping together. Her boyfriend, Yamamoto, overhears them and pushes Tomie off a cliff. Everyone thinks she died again, and everyone sides with Yamamoto, saying "It wasn't your fault She... she was just clumsy, is all!" "Yeah, good riddance anyway." "Yeah. The stuck-up bitch." Everyone in the class agrees to cover for Yamamoto, but when the boys go to dismember her with the tools they'd had for technical education, Tomie yells in pain; she survived the fall. Instead of turning back, they kill her for real, cutting her into 42 pieces and scattering her around. Of course, Tomie comes back, driving Yamamoto mad, her only friend Reiko manages to escape, her family moves away, and she's convinced herself the field trip was a mass hallucination... until she finds the package Tomie's heart was in, which she had disposed of. Following where she thinks it may have come from, she finds a half-formed Tomie in a cave. <br/><br/>So, why does this matter? Because it reflects how the real world treats women. No one is sympathetic to Tomie, who was taken advantage of by her teacher, and they side with the man who they think killed her, the whole class helping him cover it up. Tomie is less evil in this first story and more a bit bratty. Her only crimes are cheating on her boyfriend with her teacher (which I struggle to hold her responsible for, as I believe this is one of her first "lives" and she's portrayed as being maybe 15 or so in it) and blackmailing her teacher with their relationship unless he leaves his wife for her. As Tomie continues to be killed over and over, it's always because she's confident in her beauty, or rude to the people around her (not exactly murder-able offenses, in my opinion.) That's why I feel for her, especially in this story, and even more, if my theory about this being Tomie's first "life" is correct. She was killed, somehow came back to life, was taken advantage of by her teacher, killed again, and her whole class helped cover it up, all because she's described as being a stuck-up bitch and Yamamoto, who pushed, her, shouldn't "ruin his life for a girl like that". </spoiler><br/><br/>Anyways, long tangent over. If you like subtle, psychological horror and short stories you can read relatively quickly, I highly recommend Tomie."

"10/10 completely horrifying, original, metaphorical, beautiful, will stick with me forever and ever."