Tomie

Horro Manga is even more popular with mass audiences than horror stories and novels. Among young Manga artists, Ito Junji is at present most famous. In 1986 he made his début with the story Tomie, which Oikawa has filmed. Tomie, the heroine, is a despot who leads men astray with her misleading attraction that drives men to distraction. Men fight each other to the death for her favours. One of the men obsessed by her kills her and cuts her into little pieces, but she comes back to life because she is not an ordinary person. Director and scriptwriter Oikawa Ataru previously made Nihon seishonen/The Boy Made in Japan (1995), a film about a young woman wearing a pacemaker, giving her a special consciousness and verbal powers. In Tomie he gives the heroine a special eloquence alongside her pugnacity allowing her to reveal her self-awareness as an immortal, young and attractive creature. This self- awareness is however not aimed at one of the men, but at a second heroine, with whom Tomie eventually has to fight a decisive battle. The character of the police inspector who is obsessed by Tomie is played by Taguchi Tomoro, well known as the protagonist in Tsukamoto Shinya’s Tetsuo. Cameraman Suzuki Kazuhiro also shot Shiota Akihiko’s Don’t Look Back (see that film). (K.O.)