Customer Reviews

Tomie, Volume 1

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I haven't read much horror, but I'm a big fan of Lovecraft's Mythos and Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. In a way, part of the attraction of Tomie is its combination of independent, episodic stories, continuity of (occasionally) recurring characters, and variant twists on familiar concepts and ideas. However, as is the tradition of manga, even the villains have enough character development to give them **some** sympathy, and, much like the pessimistic depression of some Japanese stories, everyone is, in their own way, doomed. A compelling question behind the stories is, "Who or What exactly it Tomie?" Is she a curse? Is she a curse to herself? Is she a creature? Is the Tomie in one story the same Tomie in another? Japanese entertainment frequently combines familiar elements into a new whole and Tomie does this **very** well.

A friend of mine loaned me this manga/comic book/graphic novel saying that it was one of several horror comics that he really liked. I had to agree, I found the woman/creature Tomie to be very well created and quite disturbing in a very readable way.
To me she embodies all that is dangerous in women and brings out in men all that is frightening but all to real. She is truly a monster, and one that I think all men fear that any woman might become.
Manga comics are often disposable. Read quickly and thrown away, but I had to search and find a copy of this to keep for myself...and to loan to other men as a warning (evil laugh).

This was one of the most frightening books I have ever read. Peter Straub and Stephen King might be the masters of literary horro, but I honestly believe that they have met there match in the form or manga artist and story teller Junji Ito. The story begins when a licentatious young girl is killed by her classmates and teacher. Yes, this is the fact she was killed by her classmates and teacher. If that fact is not disturbing enough they cut her body into over forty pieces and dispose of her. She comes back, however, to bring them hell. Tomie is a demon, taking on many different horrific forms to torment those that dismembered her, and as the story goes on to kill many others. A beautiful girl in a sailor school girl uniform. This is what one seas at first sees, then she metamorphs into some of the most hideous creatures i have ever seen.

I got this for a minimul amout at the convention and wouldn't have given them any more money than that. Now don't get me wrong I did like it, it just didn't keep me wanting more after the first volume so I won't get any more.

I read those review online and buy all three books of Tomie. That was a big mistake. Tomie is so boring, and so is her stories. All the guys in the stories love her because of her beauty, and then for no reason, cut her into pieces. It sounds interesting, huh, but the truth is that all of the stories of Tomie just rotates in the same circle, nothing's new. Believe me, don't buy this book!!!!!