DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ANIME DramaItou Junji: Collection
OVA DramaItou Junji: Collection - Tomie
MANGA HorrorItou Junji Jisen Kessakushuu
ONE SHOT HorrorMiirareta Souichi
MANGA DramaTomie: Nottori
MANGA DramaItou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection
MANGA ComedyItou Junji Kyoufu Hakubutsukan
MANGA DramaItou Junji Kessakushuu
MANGA HorrorTomie: Again
ONA DramaItou Junji: Maniac
MANGA DramaSeries Tomie no Kyoufu: Gaka
ONE SHOT DramaTomie: Control

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  75/100
  The character that gave a dental technician an over thirty year long career in horror manga.

  *This review is for all of the original Tomie stories. Not just those in the original volume, but the [second volume](https://anilist.co/manga/145612/Tomie-Again/) as well! Tomie!*

  Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie. Tomie.

  

  ---

  Tomie's Introduction

  At this point, I've reviewed more than a few works by Junji Ito. Whether it be the questionable adaptations of his works (though while I still really love the Collection, the animation of course leaves a lot to be desired) or his manga themselves, I've taken plenty of trips down the Junji Ito well.

  It was only a matter of time for me to eventually reach Tomie. Before Fragments of Horror, before the Dissolving Classroom, before Gyo, and before Uzumaki, there was Tomie. Also probably before Human Chair as well. I incorrectly implied that to be Junji Ito's first story in that review because of the date that was set on its Anilist page which since seems to have been removed. Human Chair's still a good starting point to get into Junji Ito though, in my opinion.

  

  Tomie was the very first Junji Ito story to be published, and it led to his thirty plus year career in horror manga. While the bulk of Junji Ito's manga are short stories which have been gathered in various collections over the years, Tomie is essentially just one big collection of Junji Ito stories that just happen to be all centered around one character.

  ---

  Tomie

  

  To be honest, in terms of horror characters who have ended up getting entire horror franchises from their original movies/source material, Tomie's unique in that... she very rarely if ever directly kills anyone herself.

  A beautiful yet vain and prideful girl who seems to obtain the attention of every single guy all around her... seemingly perfect, yet there seems to be something disturbing lurking beneath the surface. And yet no matter what the situation is, it seems like the events circling around Tomie always end in bloodied tragedy.

  

  The first original handful of Tomie stories (before Junji Ito actually decided to focus on Tomie with the first of that batch being the Painter story that's also been included in the somewhat recent Shiver collection and also the Collection anime) were somewhat connected, but mostly Tomie is episodic.

  After all, there is a countless number of Tomie's running amok in the world. The very original Tomie story is a simple tale of a class essentially causing the death of a girl named Tomie. Or at least they think she's dead when they begin to take a hacksaw to her "corpse"... they cut her corpse into a total of forty two pieces and then each class members goes off with a different piece to discard somewhere.

  But then Tomie returns. Alive as ever. For as it turns out, and this is basically the basis for this entire series, even if you kill her and cut her corpse into pieces or even take one of her organs and transplant them into someone else... Tomie will either horrifically regenerate into a monstrous form from whatever piece of flesh was left unburned, or Tomie will possess and take over the body of whatever hosts her organs have been transplanted into.

  

  You would think for a horror character that would probably be enough. Instead, she's a full on walking femme fatale. She's capable of using her appearance to initially seduce and then completely psychologically dominate most of the males throughout her stories. However, this only works to a certain degree, for usually the men that she places underneath of her thumb usually end up snapping and giving in to their violent urges to usually murder Tomie and cut her into pieces... exactly how the Tomie in the original story was first killed.

  This idea probably should not work as well as it does for a series of twenty short stories. Yet it genuinely just feels as if Junji Ito was just having a blast while thinking of what crazy Tomie story to do next.

  

  Because despite the fact that the entire series is about the same character either driving men to madness or suicide or being killed and cut up by the men she was using, there actually is a strange variety to it that seems to work.

  I of course do not view Tomie to be on the same level as Uzumaki. Tomie is basically just straight up Junji Ito's version of you know... Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, the Chucky doll, etc. Hence, the nine live-action movies of Tomie.

  That's not even to say that there isn't disturbing stuff in Tomie. There certainly is.

  

  The various monstrous forms Tomie ends up taking on, the numerous and quite literal descents into insanity various characters suffer, and even Tomie herself is kind of honestly fucked up. As a matter of fact, of the three Viz Media hardback editions (the other two being Gyo and Uzumaki of course), Tomie is easily the largest.

  

  It's over 700 pages of just sick, violent, and bizarre shit. As I've already implied, overall, I'm not the biggest fan of Tomie. But there are several individual Tomie stories that I either just found wonderfully fucked up or sick, or amazingly weird.

  

  Probably without a doubt my favorite flavor of Tomie stories are the ones where there are multiple Tomie's in the picture as usually, they immediately just fucking hate each other and start plotting the elimination of the other Tomie's.

  Junji Ito takes this specific flavor of Tomie story so far that eventually there's an entire story where it's just Tomie wars. A Tomie bewitches a male and sends them off with a knife to murder the other Tomie, but he just ends up fucking snapping and starts cutting whoever he sees.

  

  Then there's the "Boy" story which is just... it's arguably one of the most fucked up Tomie stories almost by default.

  

  ...Actually, you know what, we're not even talking about "Boy."

  ---

  My Favorite Tomie

  My absolute favorite Tomie story by far has to be "Little Finger." Not only is Tomie's monstrous side and her regeneration abilities clearly and effectively shown, but it's probably without a doubt one of the cruelest Tomie's.

  

  Her male prey in this story are four brothers. Notably, one out of the four are rather ugly and seemingly all but resistant to Tomie's beauty.

  Since Tomie is horrifically vain, she's unable to accept this and focuses all of her attention on the ugly brother, causing his brothers to eventually lock him away in the basement.

  

  When Tomie's usual fate in these stories has played out and the three brothers have finished brutally killing and dismembering her, they force the ugly brother to dispose of the body.

  When a dead Tomie comes back to life during the car drive and spooks the ugly brother, he crashes the car and to get away he has to hack off the fingers of one of Tomie's hands with a shovel to get away. He begins to live in a cave as his brothers have framed him with Tomie's "murder" but without realizing, Tomie's severed fingers ended up in his pocket during the struggle with her.

  ...Upon discovering them, he tries to burn them away, but apparently... he didn't let them burn quite long enough.

  

  Without a doubt whenever I think back on Tomie, it's of the "finger Tomie's" and like how they start bullying the Pinky Tomie because she's the most disfigured. It suddenly takes a strange direction when the ugly brother actually has enough of this scene and actually stands up for and protects the ugliest of the four Tomie's. Perhaps even seeing himself in her.

  This ultimate twist of this story just perfectly demonstrates how just horribly cruel and evil Tomie really is. Tomie's regeneration ability as shown in the various other Tomie stories is basically almost absolute. Thus, as is revealed, the sole reason why the Pinky Tomie remained ugly and disfigured as all the other finger Tomie's fully regenerated and left the cave is so she can finally get vengeance on the ugly brother who refused all of Tomie's advances.

  He realizes that beyond just the pity he felt for the Pinky Tomie as she was bullied, he felt genuine love for probably one of the ugliest versions of Tomie throughout all of the stories. But the moment he admits this to her, she mocks him, and then regenerates easily and leaves him to die without even hesitating.

  

  That's fucked up.

  ---

  Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie Tomie

  I give the entire collection of the Tomie stories an overall 7.5 out of 10 or 75 out of 100. Again, there's plenty of good stuff packed in there, but Tomie's not even my favorite recurring Junji Ito character.

  Though, it goes without saying that if you're considering getting heavily into Junji Ito manga, Tomie is almost by default a required read. Because again, she is essentially what sprung Junji Ito into horror manga and still to this day probably one of his most recognized characters.

  
  Continue on AniList
• 

  Thebruhhomie

  81/100
  -Tommie short review. And a review of each chapter.-

  -Tommie short review.-

  One of the most famous manga by Junji Ito, Tommie is, for the most part, a set of one-chapter, short, independent stories that are only connected by the presence of the monster?, ghost?, alien?, experiment?, god????????? named Tommie. There are, however, a bunch of chapters (2 -3 , 4 - 6 , 18 -20) that are connected and form three different arcs that form distinct larger storylines (although each arc is independent from one another).

  What’s interesting about Tommie is that, while these are a bunch of separate stories, each one gives us more information on how Tommie works and plays with the concept in a different way. Which makes it feel as if we were unraveling the mystery of the monster while at the same time making the work cohesive and avoiding repetition.

  Luckily the author avoids going into too much detail about the monster and still leaves a lot to the imagination, thus not ruining its own horror.

  The manga tries to tackle themes about beauty, envy, abuse, impulse, identity, obsession, etc. And at times it does a great job at covering those, but for the most part the story is plot-focused and puts its emphasis on creating horror, which is pretty good at.

  The first chapter of Tommie was the first story that Ito published, and you can tell by the art (although the paneling and composition were fantastic even then). The rest of the chapters were published a lot of time after the OG and with a lot of time in-between them, so you can see Ito get better at drawing people, backgrounds, creatures, and more with each chapter. Already by chapter 6 he is at an impressive level. Paneling-wise, Ito is known for his “page turn” and his control of pacing, and all you need to know is that both are incredible all the way through.

  The worst that you can say about Tommie is that the chapters vary wildly in quality and that at times it can get a little bit repetitive. Also, given a point, most of the stories stop being scary due to overexposure to the monster. Yet, Ito manages to keep them thrilling, creepy or shocking at the very least.

  Aside from that, it is a very good read.

  Here are some small reviews for each chapter:

  -Chapter 1: Basic, but it works well. 8.

  -Hospital: The concept here is horrifying. 8.5.

  -Basement: A good finale for the first “big” arc. One of the best page turns, not for being scary but unsettling with a sense of weird beauty to it. 8.6.

  -Photographs: Amazing sense of growing tension + the ending is just plot turn after plot turn of insanity. 9,1.

  -Kiss: This was just bad, boring, and too long. Yamazaki is stupid. 5.

  -Mansion: Fun at times in a goosebumps kind of way with the mansion setting, it has one of the best monstrosities out there (I wish I hadn’t seen the monster before online to get the surprise here) and an ending with a good sense of tragedy and sadness to it. I wish Yamazaki wasn’t so stupid, although she is smarter in this chapter than in the last. 8,5.

  -Revenge: Ok. 7.

  -Waterfall: SPOOOOOKYYY. 8,7.

  -Painter: It’s fine, but I don’t see what everyone else sees in this chapter. 8,2.

  -Murder: Ads a lot to the monster mythos, and the ending puts you in the shoes of the protagonist in a clever way by playing with information and the core concept of Tommie. Incredible. 9.

  -Hair: Has potential to be fleshed out more but is cool nonetheless. 8,6.

  -Orphan girl: Fun. Tommie is a bad person. 8,2.

  -Little finger: Just fucking cruel with how it deals with abuse (positive). Great ending. 8.7.

  -Kid: P.Diddy ahh chapter. The premise of an “open-minded (liberal)” family teaching his son lefty stuff so that he can be taken advantage of by a much older woman traumatizing him for life, therefore building a warning for the dark side of these ideologies, is clever, but it is barely explored. Still, the ending is creepy and a good example of Tommie just fucking around with people for her own enjoyment, thus making it more cruel (these last three chapters have been cruel, holy shit). 8,7.

  -Moromi: Goofy and dumb, the two mains are painfully stupid. Kind of breaks the lore of the character. Has some of the most beautiful illustrations, though. At least it is not as long as Kiss. 5,5.

  -Babysitter: Boring and completely inconsequential. At least Kiss was part of a larger storyline. 4.

  -Gathering. Okay. Seems like a worse version of Lovesickness (another Ito manga), with much less build-up, more predictability, and a lesser sense of paranoia. Still kind of fun in a goofy way. 6.

  -Passing demon: Fun. 8,5.

  -Top model: The best commentary on beauty, vanity, and ego of the series. One of the best page turns and great grotesque imagery. The twist at the end is fantastic. 9.

  -Old and ugly: Bruh. Could have been great with the chaos caused by the confrontation of the "three" and shit, but the protagonist (Ayako’s sister) actions make little sense, and the pacing feels too fast. The ending is great, though. 7

  That’s it. Overall, I really recommend this series.

  Bye bye.

  Thanks for reading.

  Continue on AniList

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