I had read Junji Itou's 'Uzumaki' around two years ago and was impressed by his creativity at horror storytelling because it actually made me freak out (which rarely happens to me while reading horror manga). And that was one reason why I picked up 'Tomie' nearly two years later. The other reason was, well, I wanted to pass my time.

When I read the plot, I was excited and expected it to be as scary and thrilling as 'Uzumaki' was, or if possible, more than that. However, it turned out to be a bit of disappoint for me by the time I reached the 6th chapter. Why? Because, there is basically one common plot for every chapter with different settings and different set of characters. The story basically goes like this: There is a pretty, attractive girl named Tomie who can make almost every man fall for her, and then due to some absolutely out-of-the-blue circumstance, she is beheaded or cut into pieces (how scary and ridiculous does that sound?), and then she regenerates herself in an utterly pathetic manner to spread havoc and shed gallons of blood! Each chapter portrays Tomie as the antagonist who never dies. None of the chapters mentions or gives at least a subtle hint about her past or why she is like that. Is she a witch? A monster? Or perhaps an alien with the power of regeneration?! No one really knows. The mangaka uses this as a frame for each chapter. When I began to read the manga, I honestly enjoyed reading the first few chapters but gradually it became boring and I lost interest, mainly due to the use of the same plot again and again for every chapter.

The art is quite good because it has realistic human figures unlike the mainstream manga art styles with the characters having large eyes and abnormally long limbs! It is perfect for portraying horror and gore.

The characters are nothing special. They are not likable but not unlikable either. This is mainly due to the fact that every chapter has different characters who play their roles and when the particular chapter is over, their roles are over as well. This way we don't get to know the characters properly. Tomie is of course an exception as she is the primary character but I feel that the mangaka's purpose to create her character is only to scare the readers. You hardly get to know anything else about her.

To conclude my review, I'd say that you may pick this one if you're looking for something scary and freaky to read but most probably you'll end up losing interest in it after reading the first few chapters like it happened in my case.

Story: 7 | Art: 8 | Character: 6 | Enjoyment: 7 | Overall: 7