Tomie by Junji Ito

Tomie is the story of an immortal girl, who seems is murdered by her classmates. Yes she is immortal, and yes she is murdered. This seems like a contradiction, but that is the horrific twist. After she is brutally murdered by her classmates she returns the day after her funeral and acts as if nothing had ever happened. This naturally drives some of her classmates insane. This story is a Japanese horror manga by perhaps one of the most influential horror artist of all time. It has a very plain black and white art style, which I think benefits the story. I think many of the greatest horror writers and artist really embrace the creativity of the human mind, and by that I mean that they intentionally leave some ambiguity in order to allow the readers mind to more effectively fill in the gaps. I think Tomie does that really well, the you are given enough information to understand what is happening, but not enough detail to dampen your own imagination from filling in the gritty details of a specific scene. It think the fact that it’s in black and the characters are not that detailed for the most part. There are some exceptions. The one character who is consistently very detailed is Tomie, since she is described as beautiful, Immortal succubus extra care is taken to always depict her as such.

For example this image is actually after the murder in the story, where her classmates are preparing to dispose of her body by cutting it up and hiding the pieces. I also thought one of the best aspects of the comic was the different uses of perspective. It not only looks interesting, but it also reveals different things about the characters. In the image above the perspective given is the one of Tomie’s corpse and we can see a lot about how the characters feel about the events of this scene, even though we can’t see the effects. The center of this frame is dominated by one of the more important characters in the comic Yamamoto, Tomie’s Boyfriend. He was the person who started, and finished, the murder of Tomie. You can see his anger and determination in this one frame better than any other in the comic. That’s why I think the use of perspective is very well done.

This next image is another example of an interesting use of perspective in the comic. Every single frame on this page of the comic has a different perspective. Also keep in mind that this is a manga which reads from right to left instead of the left to right we are used too. It starts out from above which establishes that they are moving down an alley. Then it shifts to behind them to show that they are sprinting down an alley, and give a better perspective to show how fast they are moving. It then shifts again to show they’ve reached an end to the alley. The perspective is then moved in front of them again to show they are both tired, out of breath, and dripping with sweat. Finally it shifts back to behind them to show that they are talking to somebody asking them something. Although there is no dialogue on this page the art and shifting of perspective tells the story all on its own. Even without the context of the rest of the story, you can still grasp a general feeling of what is happening on this page. I think that minimalism is what really stood out to me when reading this work.