Plot
Uzumaki follows a high-school student, Kirie Goshima (五島桐絵); her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (斎藤秀一); and the citizens of the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho (黒渦町), which is enveloped by supernatural events involving spirals. As the story progresses, Kirie and Shuichi witness how the spiral curse affects the people around them, causing the citizens to become either obsessed with or paranoid about spirals, including transforming them into grotesque monsters such as contorting their bodies, making pregnant women act like mosquitoes, raising the dead, and mutating most of the citizens into snails. The curse also progressively affects Kurouzu's environment. Among other things, it causes smoke from cremations to form spirals in the sky, turns the abandoned lighthouse into a hot furnace while making whoever looks at it walk in circles, creates whirlwinds and whirlpools, and warps vegetation into spiral patterns.
Shuichi becomes reclusive after both of his parents die from the horrific psychological and physical powers of the spirals, but he also gains the ability to detect when the spiral curse is taking place, although he is often dismissed until the next paranormal effects of the curse become obvious. Eventually, Kirie is affected by the curse as well, when her hair begins to curl into an unnatural spiral pattern, drains her life energy to hypnotize the citizens, and chokes her whenever she attempts to cut it off. Shuichi can cut her hair and save her. As the community begins to break down, the curse continues to plague the town until a series of typhoons conjured by the curse destroys most of its structures. The only remaining buildings are ancient abandoned row houses, which the citizens are forced to move into.
The curse's power increases dramatically, resulting in loud sounds or sudden movements generating whirlwinds. Kirie and Shuichi gather everyone to devise a plan to escape Kurouzu, but when they attempt to escape, their efforts are unsuccessful. After returning to the town, they discover that several years have passed since they left, as time speeds up away from the spiral. The other citizens expanded the row houses until they connected into a single structure, forming a labyrinthine spiral pattern. Almost everyone in the town has been mutated by the curse due to them being forced into the overcrowded rowhouses, with their bodies twisting into spiral arrangements. Kirie and Shuichi decide to search for Kirie's parents, which brings them to the center after many days of walking through the labyrinth which leads them directly to Dragonfly Pond, which has drained to reveal a spiral staircase.
When they begin walking down the steps, Shuichi is hurled down into the pit by a mutated citizen, with Kirie descending the stairs to find him. She slips and falls, but survives after her fall is broken by a whirlwind, landing on countless bodies making up the ground of a vast, ancient city consisting entirely of spiral patterns in various arrangements. As Kirie looks for Shuichi, she finds her parents twisted and petrified, resembling stone statues, along with many other citizens of Kurouzu who have met the same fate. Then, she hears Shuichi call for her and goes to him. Both are overwhelmed by the ancient spirals surrounding them. Shuichi points out how it seems as though the strange assortment of structures has a will of its own. Noticing that the petrified citizens of Kurouzu are all facing the spiral city, Shuichi determines that this is the true source of the curse; the sentient city has periodically expanded on its own, and is cursing the land above.
Shuichi urges Kirie to leave without him as he can no longer walk and the curse should be over soon, but she replies that she does not have the strength and wishes to stay with him. The two embrace with their bodies twisting and intertwining together, signifying their acceptance of the never-ending curse. At the same time, a stone tower in the shape of a drill bit rises out of the city and breaches the surface, forming the centerpiece of the abandoned town. As Shuichi and Kirie lie together, Kirie notes that the curse ended at the same time it began, for just as time speeds up away from the center, it freezes at the center. The spiral's curse is eternal, and all the events will repeat when a new Kurouzu is built where the previous one lies.
