Tomie
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Tomie Kawakami (川上 富江) is the main character in Junji Ito's horror comics from Japan, as well as the title character in a string of Japanese horror films made from 1999 - 2005.
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[edit] Comics
The original manga series was created and illustrated by Junji Ito. These rather disturbing tales tell the story of a high-school girl named Tomie, who can be seen as a living embodiment of lust and all the negative emotions that go along with it, such as jealousy. Tomie is the ultimate self-destructive entity, yet ironically she survives anything. She is identified by a mole under her left eye.
She possesses an undisclosed power to make all men fall in love with her. Through sleight of hand, or emotional manipulation, she drives these men into jealous rages that inevitably lead to brutal acts of violence. Men kill each other over her; and girls are sometimes driven to jealous rages as well. Tomie is inevitably killed time and again, only to regenerate. Tomie is cursed to go on forever in this way.
In the first story "Tomie", she returns to school after an announcement that she had died, much to the horror of her friends and teachers. It transpires that during a school trip, her fellow students and favourite teacher murder her and dismember her body.
Each story tells a different viewpoint of how she lived and died, with some recurring characters. The teacher who murders her in the first story returns several times, and though clearly insane, he still is under Tomie's thrall.
Her hair is a major factor in the stories. It kills as well as possesses, such as in the story of a young girl who steals the hair of her father's ex-lover (Tomie) and puts it in a box. The hair grows despite it not being attached to anything. The girl wears it and soon has a lovely head of the longest, straightest and darkest hair. But there is a price to pay for everything in these stories. The stories are gruesome but draw the reader in with horrors that hide just around the corner.
Later it was revealed there are several copies of Tomie roaming around the world, each with an individual mind. Sometimes the two Tomie copies would be jealous of each other and try to have each other killed.
When her body scattered into pieces, each fragment of her body is capable of regenerating into a complete and independent body. When her body is burnt to ash, the ash floats in air with life of its own.
Although her body is mortal and weak against all assaults, her regenerative power makes her immortal. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to regenerate her body if it is greatly damaged.
Ito's Tomie stories have twice been released in the United States. The 1997 release buy ComicsOne featured "flipped" artwork, whereas the 2005 releases by Dark Horse Comics reprint the artwork in its original right-to left format.
[edit] Films
[edit] Tomie (1999)
The movie introduces Tomie as a previously dismembered head. She is fed and cared for by a boy with an eyepatch. Her body first goes through a childlike state during its regeneration. Meanwhile, they both have moved next door to the movie's protagonist, a young Japanese woman named Izumisawa Tsukiko, who has a past relationship with Tomie that she cannot remember due to post-traumatic-stress-induced amnesia. The protagonist manages to escape Tomie's machinations and kill her, albeit as temporarily as any other would-be victors against the supernatural monster. We learn that there are recorded deaths of Tomie as far back as 1898.
[edit] Tomie: Another Face (1999)
[edit] Tomie: Replay (2000)
Tomie: Replay, technically the first sequel to the original Tomie, begins with a 6-year-old girl being rushed into a hospital ER with an unusually distended stomach. Doctors begin to operate and find a disembodied head, Tomie's head, alive and growing inside the girl's belly. The head is placed in a tank of alkaline solution in the basement of the hospital for further observation. Soon after, all five of the hospital workers present during the operation mysteriously leave the hospital or disappear entirely, including hospital Director Morita.
Meanwhile, a few nights later, Takeshi visits his friend Fumihito, who is recovering from some ailment in his hospital room. While visiting, Takeshi is confronted by a naked Tomie, now fully grown and escaped from the basement, who asks him to get her out of there. Takeshi takes Tomie to his apartment, and leaves Fumihito by himself, with no explanation. Later, Fumihito calls Takeshi to find out why he left. Takeshi reacts very defensively and irrationally, telling Fumihito that "Tomie belongs to me," already under Tomie's evil and seductive influence.
The next morning, Yumi, Director Morita's daughter, visits the hospital in search of her father, missing since the operation. She meets Dr. Tachibana, the only doctor present during the young girl's operation who hasn't yet left the hospital. Tachibana gives Yumi a journal recently written by her father, and soon after giving it to her he kills himself.
Through the journal we learn that during the operation, Director Morita and another doctor were accidentally infected with Tomie's blood, and that through that blood Tomie is regenerating within the doctors, taking over their bodies and driving them mad. Yumi reads in her father's journal about him wanting to kill a girl named "Tomie".
Later, Yumi and Fumihito meet at a party and realize they are both looking for a girl named "Tomie". They join forces to find out what happened to Yumi's father, and to Fumihito's friend.
The next day, Yumi visits the family of the 6-year-old girl who had had the operation. She learns that previous to that operation, the girl had received a kidney transplant from a girl named "Tomie". From this kidney, Tomie had begun to regenerate inside the girl's body. Meanwhile, Fumihito visits his friend Takeshi, who had gone mad after killing and decapitating Tomie in a fit of jealousy, then watching her come back to life, regenerating a new head. Takeshi soon after is committed to a mental hospital, and Fumihito becomes Tomie's new prey.
That night Yumi has a short and strange run-in with her missing father, during which he babbles about needing to kill Tomie. The following day his dead body is discovered in the hospital basement, bloated and deformed. At his funeral Yumi receives a note from Tomie, asking to meet her that night at the hospital, seemingly for a final show-down.
Yumi arrives at the hospital to find Tomie there to taunt her, and Fumihito, now under Tomie's spell, there apparently to kill her. At the last minute Fumihito decides to kill Tomie instead, chopping off her head and burning the remains. Yumi and Fumihito leave the hospital in relief.
[edit] Tomie: Rebirth (2001)
An artist is painting his girlfriend Tomie, but she dismisses it as a poor painting and he kills her in a jealous rage with an art knife and his two friends help him bury her. When the three friends are a party Tomie shows up and the artist kills himself in the bathroom. Tomie latches onto his friend and his mother kills Tomie and they cut her up together in an unnatural ecstasy. They then burn her head, which has already started to regenerate and has some crude limbs for locomotion. The portrait of Tomie allows for her regeneration, as her supernatural blood mixed with the pigments. The friend's girlfriend becomes possessed by Tomie, in a rather viral fashion. In a fit of jealousy, the two Tomies try to eliminate the other. The girl doesn't want to become a monster, and so they decide to commit suicide. However, when at a waterfall, about to commit suicide, Tomie's head grows on the side of the girl's neck next to her head. They all die and then the sister of the friend comes and throws flowers into the water. A small facial mole can be seen direction beneath the sister's left eye, suggesting that, because her brother gave her the portrait of Tomie, she was also possessed by her. Thus, the sister is the newest Tomie.
[edit] Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002)
In this incarnation, Tomie seems younger. In this movie, she tempts a girl for a change. The girl's father is torn between his love for his daughter and the supernatural allure of Tomie.
[edit] Tomie: Beginning (2005)
This movie is a prequel to the rest of the series. Tomie shows up as a transfer student at a high school. She displays all of her typical powers. In this movie we are introduced to the teacher who promises to kill her no matter how many times he has to do the "favor" as well as the eye-patch-wearing boy of the first movie in the series.
[edit] Tomie: Revenge (2005)
[edit] Manga vs. Movies
The movies generally possess the mood that the manga has provided by the scene and drawing style. Most of the stories of Tomie occur during the dark of night for its sense of eeriness, which is nearly impossible to capture on film.
Also, many of the scenes are too violent for TV and movies. Some of the bloody scenes were used in later Tomie movies, such as the dismemberment of Tomie's body scene from Tomie: Rebirth.
