What type of podcasters would we be if we didn’t cover horror manga before All Hallow's Morning? So, for this spooky time of Halloween, James and Will talk about the classic horror villain that is Tomie! Skip synopsis @ 8:43
075: Junji Ito’s Tomie
By Junji Ito
English translation by Naomi Kokubo
With Lettering by Eric Erbes
After the funeral of one Tomie, an entire classroom is shocked to see her arrive to class. Especially since the class was responsible for murdering Tomie and hiding her severed body parts. Tomie’s presence forces the class to struggle with their feelings of fear, guilt and love for Tomie as they all question their sanity and turn on each other.
But it’s through the course of each tale, that Tomie gets more powerful and threatening. Turning her admirers into obsessed zombies that do her bidding. Those who claim to love Tomie eventually succumb to the urge of not just killing her, but decapitating her, shredding her into pieces and granulating her until every fibre of her being becomes one with the environment. Tomie can split into multiple copies of herself when under heavy stress, very much like cell mitosis or the heads of the mythical Hydra. She can even germinate, as each severed body part or blood drop from Tomie can grow and become another Tomie.
You kill one Tomie and eventually two will pop up.
Such is the case when Tomie’s liver is donated to a young woman. Only for the liver to mutate and birth into a new Tomie. The Hospital staff cut Tomie out of the woman and house her in a culture tank so to study her. Only for Tomie to soon break free. Years afterwards, an entirely new generation of Tomies are created when a mysterious man goes around injecting baby girls with the blood of Tomie.
It becomes apparent that the man who infects the children is a past super model by the name of Ryo, having once been disgraced by Tomie, Ryo accidentally burnt his face after killing her, now he seeks revenge on all Tomie beings. Planning to make sure that the infected children live long enough to see old age, in doing so he can spitefully prove to Tomie and to himself that her supernatural beauty isn’t beyond the cruelty of time. And Ryo himself would have the last laugh.
When the children come of age and transform into Tomie they do their best to kill each other until there is only one surviving Tomie left. In terms of personality, Tomie is a manipulate psychopath and a narcissist. She has no remorse or respect for anyone but herself. Regardless of how many copies there are of her and who she seduces, they all share the same traits, a beautiful woman with a mole below her left eye claiming to be the true Tomie.
Ryo holds the last surviving Tomie prisoner, and encapsulates her within a block of cement. He hears her cries inside the block and waits for years until the sounds from it turn into moans and howls. When Ryo breaks the block, he sees an elderly and physically gnarled woman. The truth is that he’s gone mad and hallucinating. Somehow Tomie escaped thanks to this old crack, the wailing sounds being nothing but blowing wind within the hollow block. A wind that carries a somber note.
Topics:
- Tomie is equal to all iconic monster villains through fiction, as is the case with Dracula and Freddy Krueger, Tomie shares supernatural powers and like all good monsters, she even has a consistent weakness, fire!
- Unlike most iconic monsters, the origin story of Tomie is shrouded in mystery. Tomie starts out as a victim but becomes much more of a threat as each story progresses.
- If Tomei had another power, what would it be?
- Ryo looks like a villain from a Brian de Palma movie or a Dario Argento movie, a nod to the Italian Giallo genre of cinema, a type of movie that mostly features a blood crazed killer going about guised in a black rain coat.
- Best Tomie story, Tomie vs Tomie maybe? Best story Junji Ito story? Listen for the end.
- Julia Ducournau (pronounced Doo-con-nor) is a filmmaker and director of Raw/Grave (2016). She is interested in the grammar of body horror and the body as the subject in film.
- Could we ever fall victim to someone like Tomei? Although the theme of Tomie is obsession it remains a haunting portrayal of men who lack self-respect. Junji Ito was able to depict a perversion of love and show how powerful feelings and hormones could lead to destructive behaviour.
- You can find the Manben documentary about Junji Ito [here]!
Pop culture references/Product Placement:
- Tomie’s ability to multiply herself is similar to Planaria, an aquatic worm which may have greatly been an inspiration for Junji in creating the story. Junji himself may have also been aware of James McConnell’s studies of memory transfer between planaria.
- Psychic School Wars, a 1973 science fiction novel from Japan, written by Taku Mayumura. In ‘Photo’, there is a character who hates how Tomie is influencing the school and compares the situation to Psychic School Wars. Little does she know just how powerful Tomie can be.
- Another reference is to ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, created by Roald Dahl and is best recognised thanks to Gene Wilder’s performance as Willy Wonka, which is also based on Roald Dahl’s novel ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Tsukiko from the story ‘photo’ wears a t-shirt that has the movie’s title printed on it.
Tomie’s appearance in other media:
- The Tomie book is visible on the shelf in one character’s living room on one episode of Kim’s Convenience.
- As of 2021 there are 9 live action movies, Miho Kanno was the first person to play her in the 1998 movie, whom Junji Ito was responsible for casting, and Miu Nakamura was the latest in 2011.
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