Tomie (1998) |

 "My Friend Tomie Died. 

Her Dead Body was found 

Here and There in Pieces." 

- 'Tomie' by Junjo Ito

Junjo Ito is infamously a differcult mangaka to adapt. If your unfamalier with the name and you do like horror I really suggest that you take a moment to famaliarize yourself with his work. Perhaps start with "The Enigma of Amigara Fault". When I think about Ito's work I think about the complexity of it, He's known for these splash pages filled with incredible detailed and complex line work. They say that hiding the monster is scarier but with Ito he has the skill to capture every detail in his line-weight. 

This makes animated adaptations of his work differcult because unlike a static illustration on a page. Animation is about movement which means that its either a tradeoff between a complex but jerky work or a simplified smoother one. 

It's a tradeoff that is usually not appreciated by fans of Junjo Ito. What captivates in his stories is the visuals as much as the ideas. His stories are something that can only be told in a visual medium for there full effect. 

I'm realizing that I'm describing a lot of this without pictures so for example here is a comparision from his story 'The Window Next Door' (1997) and its adaptation in the Junjo Ito Collection (2018)

The contrast here I hope is obvious. I have a horribly bad habit of navel gazing in reviews but this here is to serve a point. How do you take something that is so complex, so uncanny, and translate it literally. How do you take something like this;

and turn it into a live-action film. It's not impossible. It would require a Cronenbergian level of special effects and prostetics but if anything a live-action adaptation of Junjo Ito might be for the best. There's a lot you can capture with prosthetic makeup and SFX. You might with enough effort capture the complexity of his work. 

That is if you try to capture the complexity of his work. Let's start from the beginning. 

With the Manga. Published in 1987 the original short story 'Tomie' is an incredible early work for Ito and you can tell because of how much his artistic skill grew in the decades since. Put simply it's the story of a class hiding a secret. That LOCAL HUSSY Tomie Kawakami was murdered by her teacher/lover, (yes gross), and then the students collectively decided to cut her into pieces and hide her corpse as a way of covering it up. Only there's one little problem. Tomie isn't dead. She shows up to school the next day despite the fact that her best friend literally dropped her beating heart off a bridge. 

See that's what happens to Tomie. She has the ability/compulsion/curse of having men become infatuated with her but always at the expense that that infaturating eventually sublimates into murderous rage. She is torn to pieces and then each one of those pieces forms a new Tomie starting the cycle again. There's something parasictic about it. Like the way a Cordyceps wants the ant to be eaten. To be killed so it can start again. It's a story that obviously mirrors a lot of the ways that love, sex, and violence intermingle. It's very Dworkin y'know. 

The next couple chapters follow Tsukiko Izumisawa, a tomboyish arrogant student photographer whose side hustle involves selling pictures of HOT BOYS to lovesick girls for 10000¥ (See Note), but also she was taking photos of her crush Yamazaki. This draws the attention and ire of 'Public Morality Committee' member Tomie who basically mean girl sheninigans her into getting suspended because, um yeah, your not supposed to sell shit like that using school property. Here's the stinker through. 

Note: Looking up the conversion rate from Yen to USD from 1989, which was when the original story was published. and then using an inflation calculator we can estimate that she was selling these photos for around the modern price of $200 which I agree is highway robbery. 

Every photo she took of Tomie shows her HIDIOUS EVIL SELF. It's Camera Verité bitches. And um course, Tsukiko has to distribute the ugly photos of Tomie. And of course Tomie has to send her love goons to break her knee-caps and slit her throat which includes Yamazaki who she has enthralled. And of course when that doesn't work she has to try to gaslight Tsukiko before sprouting a second head being accidentally murdered by her love goons growing a third body from a pile of blood and then re-seducing Tsukiko's crush in front of her, in Tsukiko's bedroom. 

And she did it at your birthday party???? OMG

All of the main characters survive in the original story but not without a lot of emotional and mental scars. 

And this is where we get to Tomie (1998). 

Supposedly this film is meant to be a jump forward, sort of a Pet Semetary 2 (1992) situration, where it's based off of the original but has nothing to do with the source material past that. 

We follow Tsukiko, who is now a budding photography living with her boyfriend Yuuichi Saiga, (I think?, the credits for this film are sparse and theres no photos so I apoligize if that's the wrong character). who also has amnesia about the whole thing. She frequently visits a hypnotherapist Dr. Hosono (Yoriko Douguchi) who in turn is visited by literal bumbling cop, Detective Harada (Tomorowo Taguchi). It's at this point I'm annoyed by how many layers of seperation we are from the original plot. I don't think that the Douguchi Taguchi Duo, (say that 5 times fast), really add anything to the plot besides unneeded complexity. I recently watched Takashi Miike's One Missed Call (2003) and what I liked about it was the emotional imperitus of it. It was somebody with personal stakes dealing with the mystery instead of an unaffected third party. I'm not saying the concept can't work, (like I get that Tsukiko has anmensia), but having a detective literally show up at the door and infodump the lore is the best way of killing any tension and mystery of the story. 

At this point you may be asking. "Where's Tomie when is she going to go OHOHOHO and be mean to somebody?". Keep asking. 

Because while the whole amnesia/detective thing is going on, some guy is bottle feeding a head in a box. Now at first you might think this is Tetsuo from the latter book which the visuals and poster are clearly homaging; or maybe its Yamaziki because he's the only character that wears an eye patch in the series but according to the Tomie Wiki it's supposed to be Tanabe Yamamoto (Kenji Mizuhashi), which I will say doesn't quite read for the aforementioned reasons but does work thematically. There's this idea that Tanabe was the young boy from 'Tomie Prt.2', so the idea of them cyclicaly grooming each other is both creepy and sort of a homage. Because Tomie has this Renesmee thing going on where she ages rapidly, before hitting the town and preferably Tsukiko with her car. 

I think this leads me into one of my biggest gripes; Which is how little they actually show of Tomie. Not just as a character but also the body horror aspect. A lot of Tomie's visual horror comes from the twisted ways that her body regenerates and mutates. There's a lot of meat on the bone and the least they can do is like one Eraserhead baby. Just one. Like as a treat. What we get is nothing. We get a split second shot of her eye peeking out of a plastic bag, and then *boom* 1 hour and 10 minutes later. Tomie fully formed and full of hatred. It's a dissapointment. There's very little body horror for a film that literally has a severed head on the poster. 

Tomie herself is interesting. According to David Kalat in J-Horror: the definitive guide to The Ring, The Grudge and Beyond. (the book all the sources online are referencing), Miho Kanno was handpicked by Junjo Ito based off of her expressive eyes. When I think about Tomie I think a lot about Eihi Shiina performance in The Audition (1999), Flawless Skin, Shiny Raven Black Hair, a beautiful but guarded expression. Quiet and what feels ironically cold. That to me is the visual of Tomie. Tomie's personality is a more grounded himedere. A princess in the dark. 

I don't dislike Kanno's performance. It's subdued and personal but her styling is differcult to mesh with my idea of the comic. When we first see her in the movie. The lighting casts deep shadows on her face showing off the crevices and her plain skin. The rimlight catches the frizzyness of her hair and its many, many dead ends. Tomie is supposed to be insanely beautiful and stylish. The closeups in the comic always showing off her beauty mark next to her manicured 70s-esque clumped mascara. 

Its' a difference in kind to be sure. 

I haven't posted on my blog for about a year and looking back at some of my original reviews I always diligently made some kind of handwave at the cinematography and soundtrack. I've noticed in the intervening years, that for the most part, if there's something good or bad to say about these things that they come up organically in the review process. I don't have many complaints about the production of the work. Its main issues really do come down to the adaptation changes, the pacing, and the lack of any visceral horror experience. Kanno's late entry into the film does add some drama to the work but this is after the vast majority of the film is already done. 

I think at best, this works well as the kind of B-movie adaptation for hard-core fans but I have a hard time imagining this is going to inspire the uninitiated to seek out the original. 

Also I don't think I'm going to give this a rating anymore like I used to in the olden days of the blog. Cause at some point, I get tired of feeling like everything I watch has to be some kind of recommendation or suggestion. I watch a film and it inquires questions within me, thoughts. Ideas that I want to elaborate on. However that being a sole indicator of monetary worth or entertainment value seems cheap. IDK I'm probably overthinking this. 

Anyway,

Thanks for listening.