Two Faced Terror Tomie (Tomie Manga Review)

Genre: Horror, supernatural

Rating: R-17

Chapters: 20

Author: Junji Ito

Overview:

After a tragic accident of falling off a cliff whilst on a class trip, Tomie appears dead as a dodo before her teachers and classmates eyes. In a frantic attempt to hide her body her teacher and male classmates begin to dismember her only to find out that she is in fact alive. Following through on the dismemberment and putting her to rest each classmate is asked to get rid of a part of her body. What none of them expected though was her to come back from the grave and seek havoc on anyone and everyone she encounters.

Review:

Tomie is one of those iconic manga characters. Whether you have read Ito’s work or not you have probably seen manga panels with her face on floating around the internet. I guess you could call her a bit of a horror icon of the manga world.

Tomie has to be one of my favourite collections of Ito’s work I have read so far. There is something so striking about her character that really sucked me in as a reader. When picking it up to read it at night I felt eager to read another few chapters and delve further into her sick and twisted world.

Tomie is beautiful on the outside but rotten to the core on the inside. She uses and abuses men making them fall in love with her before breaking down the sweet girl facade and revealing her heartless nature. She would often laugh at them and reject them which would often lead to her demise of being brutally attacked and murdered. I feel she has a siren like quality in the sense of luring men. Women are never apart of her devious deeds and it’s only men that she lures with her beauty. Even when she is brutally mutilated or just a head which was grotesque and deformed she was still able to control men and get them to do whatever she asks of.

I find the supernatural element of Tomie fascinating. Although it is never revealed how Tomie continues to come back to life and multiply it’s something as a reader that you just accept. As much as I’d love to know the ins and outs of how her regeneration works I never felt I needed to know the formula of how it worked. Her character and the stories were far too engrossing for me to question it. The fact that Tomie also detests other versions of herself and they all want to get rid of each other was an interesting twist. It displayed the idea that each Tomie thought of herself to be more superior than the others and told of her truly vain, self obsessed nature.

I had a constant battle of both loving and hating Tomie as a character. She is narcissistic who will uses anyone who crosses her path. As a reader I also fell for her beauty and found her such a captivating character. I cannot recommend Tomie enough to horror lovers. It’s a staple in any manga collection.

Overall rating: 8/10

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

 

 

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