Spiral

Rasen

Genre: Horror

Length: 1 Volume

Allegiance: Kadokawa Shoten Publishing/Dark Horse Comics

Mangaka: Mizuki Sakura, Suzuki Koji

Vintage: 1999

Intelligence Agency Report by: I

Surgeon Ando Mitsuo is drawn into the mysterious events surrounding his old friend Takayama Ryuji’s gruesome death when he finds a slip of paper with numbers written on it lodged inside Ryuji’s stomach during his autopsy. Using the code they created in college, the numbers on the paper spells out “RING.�E As Mitsuo looks into the details of Ryuji’s untimely demise, he finds a connection to the famous urban legend about a video that causes people to die seven days after they’ve watched it. Now he’s compelled to discover the mystery surrounding the video and the real reason that it leads its viewers to such horrible deaths.

Research Agent Report by: I

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual

6.25
6.00
5.00
6.75

Overall

6.00

(not an average)

Koji, Koji, Koji... you should have known that beating a good idea to death isn’t the way to go. I thought after Ring, Ring 0, and Ring 2 that the series would finally be laid to rest, but then I just had to find out about the series�E more... ignored spinoff. Being a casual fan of the Ring series despite the fact that it’s being beaten to death with numerous sequels and overseas remakes, I felt I simply needed to get the manga version of the novel that was supposed to shower light on the mystery of Ring. The problem is that the series was far better when its logic was left behind in the dark.

Spiral serves as a somewhat creative way to make sense of the phenomena present in its predecessors, but it pays the price for its complex explanations. Character development is so abrupt that you never get to know or care about any of the people involved. What few attempts there are to add character development to the story, such as the addition of a tragic family history and hints towards Mitsuo’s cutter tendencies in the beginning of the book, are completely dropped and forgotten the page after its initiation. Even Sadako, horror movie darling of Japan since the start of the Ring series, lacks her usual flair. She is worthy of neither fear nor awe, and instead is involved in�Ea sex scene. Oooh, scary sexy Sadako! What are you going to do, orgasm Mitsuo to death?

To add insult to injury, the complex explanation that the manga sacrificed so much character depth for is far from logical and actually ruins what respect I had for the Ring franchise. Perhaps the biggest problem with Spiral is that it tries to explain the mystery surrounding Sadako with biological theories of how she can kill people just by having them watch a videotape. And the true nature of Sadako’s physiology - and how it ties into the explanation of the Ring curse - is too “out there�Eto be taken seriously. Once something that outrageous is thrown into the mix, it just cheapens the once good elements of the saga.

The art wasn’t even good enough to redeem this book’s nature a smidgen. The characters are drawn inconsistently at times and the art style is problematic in that it doesn’t suit the comic at all. Furthermore, the faces of the characters are drawn in such a way that no matter what expression is displayed, you still feel no emotion coming from them. That could possibly be a result of mediocre art clashing with bad character development and a poorly-written plot though. Granted, the art wasn’t atrocious and at times I was satisfied by the detail Mizuki-san put into her inking, but it’s by no means artwork that deserves any sort of admiration.

Bottom line: don’t bother with this book unless you’re determined to know of every facet of the Ring series and/or observe Sadako in coitus. It’s simply not worth your time or your money if you’re just looking for some good horror.

Research Agent Report by: Drake

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual

7.00
5.50
3.50
3.00

Overall

4.50

(not an average)

I've never seen the Ring movies, nor do I have much if any knowledge whatsoever on the series, other than the fact that it is a series of Japanese horror movies. Nonetheless, on one of my numerous trips to Barnes and Nobles, I picked up a copy of Spiral and began thumbing the pages to get an idea of the manga. After being initially quite disturbed by one particular scene of a man in a bathtub with his guts spilling out of his open stomach. I gathered up my wits, and began reading.

After reading through the entire manga, I was pretty confused by some of what happened, partly because I just tried to read it as a stand alone. After seeing the American version of The Ring, it became clear that Spiral was nothing but a manga used to explain the nature of what the curse is and what its purpose is. Great for Ring fans right? Wrong, for after talking to a fan of the movies, I discovered some of the elements, namely the last few pages, made little to no sense to them and virtually none to me. This is due in part to the way the characters are just thrown into the story with no explanation of who they are and how they are very poorly developed.

In my experiences with past anime or manga, I've noticed if the plot and characters are not very strong, then the artwork is, or vice versa. I'm sorry to say this is not true for Spiral. If anything, the art failed to help a reader along with the story, and made it thoroughly difficult to distinguish one character from another.

Overall, if you want a good horror story to captivate your attention, you should look elsewhere. However, if you're a hardcore fan of the movies, or just someone who is trying to comprehend the minor details behind a film that he/she loves, then you're not going to stay away from this title regardless of my opinion. However, I myself will stay away from this manga, thank you very much.