Tomie

Tomie (富江) is a Japanese horror manga series written and illustrated by Junji Ito. Tomie was Ito's first published work he originally submitted to Monthly Halloween, a shōjo magazine in 1987, which led to him winning the Kazuo Umezu award.

The manga has been adapted into a live action film series with eight installments to date, and an anthology TV series released in 1999.

Plot

The manga centers on the titular character: a mysterious, beautiful woman named Tomie, identified by her sleek black hair and a beauty mark below her left eye. Tomie acts like a succubus, possessing an undisclosed power to make any man fall in love with her. Through her mere presence, or through psychological and emotional manipulation, she drives these men into jealous rages that often lead to brutal acts of violence. Men kill each other over her, and women are driven to insanity as well — though there are some who are strong enough to resist her. Tomie is inevitably killed time and again, only to regenerate and spread her curse to other victims, making her effectively immortal. Her origins are never explained, though it is suggested by some older men in the series that she has existed long before the events of the manga.

Tomie (film series)

Tomie (富江) is a Japanese horror film series based on Junji Ito's manga of the same name. The series consists of eight installments to date.

The series focuses on the titular Tomie Kawakami, a beautiful girl identified by a mole under her left eye, who drives her stricken admirers to madness, often resulting in her own death. However, due to her ability of regeneration, she comes back to life to terrorize her killers.

Each cell of her body has the ability to generate into a full grown independent body, causing several copies of her to be created after each of her deaths. It is unknown how many copies of Tomie exist in the world although in the most recent movie, Tomie: Unlimited, Tomie is shown walking through the streets of Japan, with most of the women she passes by also being Tomie.

Junji Ito has expressed his support for the films, often attending premieres and even personally picking out the actress Miho Kanno for the role of Tomie in the first film and coaching her for the audition.

Tomie (film)

Tomie (富江) is a 1998 Japanese horror film directed by Ataru Oikawa. It is the first film in the Tomie film series, based on a manga of the same name by Junji Ito.

Plot

The film opens with the police investigating the murder of high school girl Tomie Kawakami (Miho Kanno). They learn that in the months following the crime, nine students and one teacher have either committed suicide or gone insane. The detective assigned to the case learns that three years prior another Tomie Kawakami was murdered in rural Gifu prefecture. Other slain Tomie Kawakami's are discovered stretching all the way back to the 1860s, right when Japan began to modernize. The detective tracks down one of Tomie's classmates called Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura), an art student who is being treated for amnesia. She has absolutely no memory of the three-month period around Tomie's death, and is starting to suspect the cause has a supernatural source. Meanwhile, Tsukiko's neighbor is rearing a peculiar baby-like creature. Over the span of a couple weeks, it grows into a beautiful teenaged girl with orange eyes responding to the name of Tomie Kawakami.