The story explores the clear-cut story of Tomie, or two, maybe three sometimes, it's a wild ride through what I thought was just a simple one-shot at the start, but no, it goes hard on following 1 theme, 1 set of rules that even if you can't really get your head around the most important ones and then the most abstract ones, you get a feel for how it works. The first stories (Chapters) try to set a number of guidelines for how the horror works, how the horror will happen on each chapter and how you can say goodbye to any idea you may have of that, it keeps fresh, it keeps solid and always, as I said, consistent.
Sometimes Junji Ito's work tends to go up and down in the long series, sometimes he adds stuff that if you adapted you can easily say yeah, this goes in the cutting room, feels filler like, not even disturbing but just plain weird, as an example the hair arc on Uzumaki. Tomie never runs into a problem like that and yeah, sometimes the story felt a bit more underwhelming than others but never really skipping in the great aspects of usual Junji horror; the horror, the panels, the art, and as I go through that, let me explain myself.
Art - 9
It's a cliché at this point to call Junji's art as anything but amazing or perfect, but the passage of time is apparent, the starting point being very simple, even if impactful, art, the character expressions weren't as defined, the horrific panels not as disturbing or gross, it had some polish coming, and it did deliver, making the last chapters absolute masterpieces in visual horror, as usual with him.
Story - 6
Now this is where it depends on the viewer, Junji Ito's style isn't to tell a compelling story, it's just to tell a story where something happened, something weird, horrible, isolated happened, you don't usually meet people at the start of their journey, you don't find all that many relatable, charismatic people, usually most being a depraved portrait of beauty, it follows the morbid, distressing, gross and horrible side of a theme, not always making sense or judging aspects of it, it happens, and we are only spectators, not interesting story, but that's not what we're here for.
Characters - 7
As cool, amazing, character driven moments are?, there are not many, I don't come here for them, but in a way, that's exactly why they work, why it matters to have them, of course some even with the workings of the author and the way it gets you into the story, some were just roadblocks that didn't interest me to continue, it was just a bit boring sometimes and Tomie even if mysterious in rules, as a character, we got her deal pretty early on.
Enjoyment - 7
I loved the art, the set-pieces, the situations, how creatively you can stretch a single character and its rules for so long, but I just liked it in general, simple horror, the raw and specific type that the author loves to make, it was like holding his hand, not through a tumultuous ride but around a museum, full of horrific pictures at his own pacing, slow, methodical, consistent, like a teacher you really like giving a lecture about something you love.
Overall - 7.3
Great horror manga, but very simple, and I mean, it's kind of his thing, I liked the consistency, but Tomie's Highs and lows have about the same altitude, while some of his other works go from a bit low to impossibly high highs.
