Tomie, Volume 1 [Paperback]

Junji Ito (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001

Tomie is the girl you wish you could forget. She`s the one you shouldn`t have touched, shouldn`t have smiled at, shouldn`t have made mad. She`s quite lovely--and you might just love her to death. You may kill her. She will come back to life. You try to destroy her completely. It won`t work. Some piece of her is still growing, under your carpet, in your basement, in the garbage can. Junji Ito`s chilling tale of horror, obsession, and revenge isn`t for weak stomachs. Guaranteed to give you goosebumps!

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Junji Ito (b. 1963) is best known for the `Tomie` series, but he`s produced countless bone-chilling horror collections. He received the prestigious Kazuo Umezu Award for manga artistry and he cites Mr. Umezu as his main artistic influence.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: ComicsOne (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588990842
• ISBN-13: 978-1588990846
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,759,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want horror manga, this is the book to get!, April 9, 2003

By 

Amber (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomie, Volume 1 (Paperback)

We've all heard stories of vengeful girlfriends and the ladies that you shouldn't get to know. But Tomie--Tomie is all of that and more. She possesses men with a glance, capturing their souls so completely that they cannot live without her. They are also compelled to kill classmates, friends, themselves, and even Tomie. But she always comes back...

This is a frightening and disturbing manga. It has a lot of gore,but that is not what makes it so interesting and scary; the story and ideas behind the artwork do most of the job. The art is beautiful in a macabre way.

So, the bottom line is that if you are thinking of getting into horror manga, then you should seriously consider getting this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy and Compelling, August 24, 2001

By 

Matthew L. Mutchmore (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomie, Volume 1 (Paperback)

Tomie is beautiful and cruel. She'll get under your skin. You'll feel compelled to follow her and she'll laugh at your attempts to charm her. Her disdain for you will tear you apart, and then you'll do the same thing to her...but no matter what you do to her, she'll always come back. From the warped mind of Japan's most popular modern horror manga artist, Junji Ito, comes this spectacular series full of supernatural strangeness and enough gore to satisfy the most jaded Fangoria reader. Tomie is perhaps his most well known work. A big thanks to Comics One for the translation. The stories span several years and you can see that the early ones have a somewhat less sophisticated art style. Mr. Ito can render and beauty, emotional expression and visceral gore with the best of them. You can find all that and more in volume one of Tomie (and still more in volume two....!) Once I started reading this I couldn't put it down. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good left of center horror adventure.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and the Little Pieces It Often Leaves Behind, December 8, 2002

By 

TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tomie, Volume 1 (Paperback)

Welcome to the world of Jinji Ito, where horrors walk both rural and urban settings while plaguing humans in some of the most complexly perplexing tales I've seen. The reason for this is because his canvas is more than a meshing of words and pictures, offering instead a talent that knows how to illicit a shudder from its audience. Herein seems to be the secret to all truly great horror innovators, a mark that he seems to have found early in life. Tomie Vol. 1 is no exception to that rule, either, with imagery that is quite disturbing and ideas that are richly driven, taking one concept (that of Tomie) and twining it through several different pathways (throughout 6 tales that span 248 pages). Within these are richly developing ideas that mingle crucial elements within the main theme itself, with the characters playing as crucial a part in the habitual tingles that Ito's work summons as any other element. They always seem to have lives, feelings and motivations, wants and ambitions that drive them, making them more than simply characters fed to a paper world. Even the beast here, the beautiful destroyer perpetually working her way through nameless town after town, becomes less of a specter and more of an understandable nightmare as time goes on. Within familiarity, the specters of the mind truly run scared.

The premise of these stories revolves around Tomie, a beautiful young girl with a voracious appetite for consuming young men, who finds herself with a uniquely disturbing gift. She has the power to mesmerize, possessing the male soul utterly with less than even a glance, making them kill and die for her at a whim. This she uses to her advantage, picking up their spirits and smashing them against the jagged rocks she so cruelly manipulates. Unfortunately for her, these men all find themselves driven by a need to kill her as well, to hacking her into pieces with a madness even they find disturbing. Still, she has the ability to come back, each portion regenerating other Tomies that are just as beautiful and just as deadly, always unable to forgive the person that inflicted that painfully derived demise from.

If you've never had a chance to check out his works and you've the need to be disturbed by something, this is a good place to wet your feet. Then, after finding yourself hooked, you can continue to the second edition of Tomie, an even more disturbing creation, and then on into the lives of the unfortunates that Ito crafts in other tales.