Kirie Goshima (五島 桐絵 Goshima Kirie), often misspelled as Kiri or Kyrie, is the narrator/main protagonist of Uzumaki. She is a student at Kurôzu-Cho until Chapter 9 and a recurring target of the spirals.
Appearance[]
Kirie with short hair
Kirie is a rather tall (probably one of the tallest female characters in the manga) pale-skinned girl of average weight and build with straight upper-back length ginger hair where there is a side-fringe tucked behind her ear, large blue eyes (which were hazel in volume 1), thin eyebrows and she also seems to be wearing lipstick and heavy mascara. In Chapter 6: Medusa, her hair becomes cursed with spirals and tries to kill her on multiple occasions, leading Shuichi Saito to cut it short and her hair is now worn in a short, straight, layered crop which ends around her ears.
Kirie is mostly seen in school attire. Up until Medusa, she is seen wearing what appears to be a winter uniform that consists of a maroon blazer over a white turtleneck sweater and a black pleated skirt with black school shoes and white ankle socks. In Medusa, she wears a long-sleeved white collared shirt with a black ribbon tied in a bow instead of the sweater with blazer. Onward, her school uniform is similar but with her white blouse replaced by a short-sleeved variation. When not wearing her uniform, she will often wear a long-sleeved button up shirt tucked into jeans or a long-sleeved shirt with a skirt. She is usually drawn with an exasperated expression, though this may just be her neutral face.
Personality[]
Kirie is a usually serious, practical and mature young woman who is easily annoyed and rarely in the mood for jokes. At times, she can be harsh, blunt and severely critical of others, but is also gentle and caring, and is capable of understanding others, even when they annoy her. She is protective of her little brother, Mitsuo Goshima, although he annoys her in a regular brotherly fashion. On a routine basis, Kirie makes and delivers food to a depressed, reclusive Shuichi Saito who otherwise won't eat. After Volume 1, Kirie becomes rather cynical, and although still skeptical of the Spiral's existence, starts to see the pattern more often and develop a growing sense of suspense over when the next horriffic event will happen. At one point, she states that she doesn't enjoy being the center of attention, causing her spirally hair to annoy her even more. Whether her dislike of being the center of attention is due to shyness or simply a general annoyance with people in general is unknown.
Plot Overview[]
Spiral Obsession (Parts 1 and 2)[]
At the beginning of this chapter, Kirie is seen standing on a cliff overlooking the town and pondering about future chapters in past tense, narration-style. She then notices that she is late getting to the town train station, where she is supposed to meet her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito. However, on the way, she walks past Shuichi's house and spots his father, who is preoccupied with a spiral shaped shell. She attempts to talk to him, but he is unresponsive, so she moves on. After meeting Shuichi at the station, they walk to Kirie's house together while Shuichi rants about how much he hates the town. Shuichi claims in an absent mutter that the town is "contaminated by the spiral." to Kirie's confusion. Shuichi explains that his father has developed an unhealthy obsession with spirals that has lead him to stop going to work and, impliedly, become abusive towards Shuichi's mother, Yukie Saito. Kirie brushes this off, claiming that "there are people who collect much stranger things, like cigarette butts," though Mr. Saito's obsession with spirals ultimately leads him to a gruesome suicide by turning his body into a spiral.
Kirie in Part 2. Wearing a beanie to prevent triggering Shuichi's mother
Later, Yukie develops a phobia of spirals that causes her to shave her head, and cut the skin from her fingertips. Kirie comes to visit on a few occasions, until eventually Yukie kills herself by stabbing herself in the ears after she is deluded into believing there are spirals in them. After this, a black spiral of smoke rises above Kurôzu-Cho from the burning of Yukie's ashes. Shuichi refuses to go to school or leave his house and Kirie is still unconvinced of the existence of a spiral curse.
The Scar[]
Kirie with Azami
Kirie is at school with her friend Azami Kurotani, a popular girl who is followed around constantly by crushing boys. Azami seems nice enough, but things go wrong once she adamantly insists on meeting Shuichi Saito, who senses that she is contaminated by the spiral. Azami becomes obsessed after this, stalking Shuichi, screaming at him and banging on his door nearly all night every night. Kirie attempts to tell her to leave him alone, however Azami, runs away after telling Kirie that she will make Shuichi like her. Later, Shuichi calls Kirie to tell her that a boy called Okada has a crush on her and wants to talk with him for some reason, however it was a scheme set up by Azami. Kirie, confused, goes to the park to see what's going on, finding Azami on the way, who takes off her hat to reveal a spiral eating into her head, which swallows her eyeball, leading Kirie to fall back and cower in fear. She eventually makes her way to the park, only to find the remnants of Azami's body being entirely consumed by her formerly crescent-shaped scar.
The Firing Effect[]
Kirie's father, a potter, decides to use clay from Dragonfly Pond to make his works. Kirie and Shuichi Saito are concerned because said pond seems to be the center of the spiral curse and is full of the ashes of dead people. Kirie's dad gradually becomes obsessed with spirals, even going so far as to serve dinner for Shuichi on a plate made of clay containing the ashes of his own dead parents. Luckily for Kirie, her father does not die as a result of his obsession, as Shuichi figures out what is going on and smashes his kiln, releasing all the souls trapped in the clay, forcing his obsession to (at least temporarily) stop.
Twisted Souls[]
Two feuding families are refusing to allow their respective children - Kazunori Nishiki and Yoriko Endo - to become romantically involved. Concerned by this, Kirie seeks the help of Shuichi Saito who informs her that the lovers' parents are cursed by spirals to be twisted and hateful towards each other. Shuichi reiterates his desire to leave the town with Kirie, however she becomes agitated and storms out. Kirie comes across Kazunori and Yoriko hiding in an old house, discussing their wishes to elope with one another to live in peace. Kirie is skeptical of the prospect of running away, however she ultimately agrees to help them flee. After Kazunori and Yoriko's attempt to escape the town is impeded by their parents, Kirie witnesses the two forbidden lovers twist into a spiral monster and escape into the ocean.
Medusa[]
Kirie with cursed spiral hair
Kirie's hair becomes cursed by the spirals and saps her energy trying to grow longer, all to attract attention. She tries to cut it, but it strangles her whenever she does so. Kirie's friend, Sekino, has a desire for attention, which, as Shuichi explains is a product of the spirals. Seeing Kirie as a threat, Sekino somehow gets her hair to grow in the same way.
Kirie with freshly cut hair
Their cursed hair refuses to let either of them move from crowded places, and they battle against each other in the schoolyard against Kirie's wishes to see who will get the most attention. Sekino grows impatient, and begins to strangle Kirie with her hair, when Shuichi rushes in and cuts it, releasing Kirie from its grasp. She drops to the floor in exhaustion, and Shuichi cuts her hair short to save her from the curse.
Jack In The Box[]
A boy named Mitsuru Yamaguchi likes to scare people at school by jumping out at them. He falls in love with Kirie, but she rejects him several times, annoyed by his persistence and hyperactivity. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with her and jumps in front of a moving car to prove his love for her. He dies, hit by said car. Later, a Jack-in-the-box gifted to Kirie by Mitsuru tells her that he will come back from the dead to kill her. She seeks Shuichi's help and he and Kirie go to the cemetery at night to dig up Mitsuru's grave and stake him before he can rise. However, they are too late. Mitsuru comes back from the dead as a rotting jack-in-the-box zombie and tries to kill Kirie because he believes her to be the cause of his death, but he falls apart before he can achieve his goal, revealing a car suspension spring that was never removed from his corpse.
The Snail[]
Kirie's classmate, Katayama, is cursed by the spiral to become a snail; supposedly because he is so slow. The class bully, Tsumura, picks on Katayama repeatedly throughout the chapter, and as a result, he too is turned into a snail. As snails, Tsumura and Katayama get along surprisingly well and even mate, only to escape and lay eggs deep in the forest. Their teacher, Mr Yokota, destroys the eggs, as he is deeply disturbed by the snail people, and hopes not to have to put up with more of them. Mr Yokota then arrives to class in the form of a snail. Impliedly, the other classmates do nothing to disturb the snail people thereafter. Kirie, after this turn of events is still skeptical of the existence of spirals.
The Black Lighthouse[]
Kirie's brother Mitsuo and his friends go out to explore a lighthouse that seems to be affected by the spiral. The lighthouse, every night, spews forth an intense light that melts anything, including human flesh, that comes too near it. It also causes people to lose their sense of direction and constantly walk in circles. Mitsuo nearly dies and Kirie is severely burned by the intense heat of the spiral-cursed Fresnel lens, however, they manage to escape alive.
Mosquitoes[]
Kirie was hospitalized due to third-degree burns caused by the intense heat of the black lighthouse and broken bones from her fall down its staircase. Meanwhile, the town is infested with mosquitoes that - due to the spiral curse - fly in a spiraling pillar formation and infect and kill people. The people they bite whom survive, all being pregnant women, develop the mannerisms of mosquitoes themselves, craving human blood to nourish the babies inside them, which they use their hypnotic powers to cause the victim to pass out, then, using hand-drills to drill into people's bodies to acquire. Even Kirie's cousin, Keiko Nakayma is affected. Kirie is chased by the mosquito women, but wards them off with a can of bug-spray which was left by Shuichi.
The Umbilical Cord[]
Keiko as well as the other infected women all give birth to healthy babies. The newborn babies are all strangely sapient, and want to get back inside their mothers' wombs. They regrow their umbilical cords and placentas, which are eaten by Doctor Kawamoto and distributed to the hospital patients as mushrooms. The doctor himself is cursed by the spiral, and performs surgery on Keiko that satisfies the babies' wish. Kirie witnesses Keiko killing him by sucking his blood, before escaping from the hospital.
The Storm[]
While at a recreational outing on the beach, Shuichi predicts a typhoon will hit Kurôzu-Cho and runs off to alert the townspeople, who are disbelieving and amused by his warning. A hurricane cursed by spirals remains stationary over Kurôzu-Cho; it has fallen in love with Kirie and tries to take her. Shuichi mentions that it is hypnotized by Kirie, and he attempts to keep her from the hurricane's clutches. After a period of hiding, they are found by the hurricane and sucked up into its eye, only to fall back and land in Dragonfly pond. They are fished out by Kirie's parents unharmed.
The House[]
Kirie being spied at by Wakabayashi
Kirie and her family reluctantly seek refuge in an old row house after their own home was destroyed by the hurricane. Two other lots of tenants live in their building, one room containing a mysterious old lady who is affected by the curse of spirals, and grows spiraling thorns on her body which is mistaken for a skin condition. Her son dies of the spiral curse, and slowly, Kirie and her family all become cursed, too. They are unable to leave the house due to an intense storm. All the while,Wakabayashi,the tenant next door, has been spying on Kirie, enamoured with her beauty and determination. He is cursed by the spirals and grows thorns all over his body, he attacks Kirie but is killed just outside of the house when the storm blows a sharp wooden object through the air, impaling him through the head. Once Kirie and her family move out of the house, the curse in them recedes.
Butterflies[]
Kirie and the other residents are stranded in the ruins of Kurôzu-Cho, which has been destroyed by six hurricanes. A reporter named Chie comes to the town, greeted by Kirie and the group are crammed into a row house along with a countless amount of other people. Rogue children try to destroy the rowhouse but are contested by the rowhouse's inhabitants and blown away. The children then manage to ride on whirlwinds and suspend themselves safely. The chapter ends with Kirie noticing Shuichi in the corner, away from the crowd and curled into a ball, muttering about the town spiraling into madness.
Chaos[]
Numerous whirlwind gangs have risen in Kurôzu-Cho, destroying old buildings recreationally and becoming a threat to other citizens. Kirie, along with Chie and Mitsuo go scavenging for supplies but instead discover the reappearance of the snail-people. Kirie wonders what could have brought them out. After returning to the rowhouse, an occupant digs a map out of the wall plaster which depicts Kurôzu-Cho, but where the city should be there is only a giant spiral. The Goshimas, Chie and Shuichi are evicted when a hostile inhabitant, infuriated by Shuichi's repetition of the phrase "this town is going mad," forcefully and quite literally boots him out of the row house. Kirie runs to the aid of the prone Shuichi - with her family and Chie following suit - and the door is locked behind them. They come across a whirlwind gang cooking something, and find that it is three snail-people. The gang seems to be unaware of the past human lives of the snails and begin eating, even offering some to Mitsuo. The gang leader begins to harrass the group and Yasuo Goshima steps in, although sparking an altercation. The gang catches Kirie's group up in a whirlwind and blows them toward Dragonfly Pond, now a powerful whirlpool. Kirie and Chie hold onto each other, and Shuichi appears and saves them by grabbing Kirie's hand and latching onto a telephone pole.
Erosion[]
People continue to flood into Kurôzu-Cho to become trapped. Tanizaki, a disaster relief volunteer from Midoriyama-Shi, becomes acquainted with Kirie along with a fellow traveler, Takemoto, who came to check on relatives. A man in Tanizaki's group, Okamoto, begins to show signs of changing into a snail. Shuichi clarifies that the reason so many people are becoming snails is because they are moving so slow that the spiral can catch them. This becomes a catch-22, given that moving too fast will kick up a perilous whirlwind. Togawa is also revealed to be turning into a snail. The group decide to seek shelter and try to find Kirie's father, but instead come across a rowhouse with hostile inhabitants who try to blow them away. Togawa and some other of Tanizaki's group decide to try to break in, but to no avail. Another group uses a battering ram to destroy the door, and the inhabitants are exposed for tangled, spiraling mutations due to being pressed against so many people in a confined space. Their mass becomes too much for the rowhouse to handle, and it gives out at the sides. The tangled mass of people then attempt to build on to the rowhouse to create more room, which Tanizaki notes is a viable option. Kirie witnesses numerous massive rescue boats sucked down into the depths of the ocean by a gigantic whirlpool. She and the group stop for the night, only to find they're running out of food. A member of Tanizaki's group points everyone toward a leftover cooked snail-person carcass. Everyone reluctantly begins to eat, though Kirie and Chie are still hesitant. Kirie turns to see Shuichi eating and, trusting his judgement, eats too. Kirie, Chie and Shuichi part ways with the others and decide to return to where Mitsuo and Kirie's mother are settles, plastic bag of leftover snail-person meat in hand. They find the makeshift housing blown over and rescue Mitsuo from it, only to find his back is forming a snail shell. Kirie then decides that she has to escape.
Escape[]
Kirie and her group come back to Kurôzu Cho, after what seemed like only a few hours. However, it turned out that they'd been gone for almost ten years. The town had been rebuilt into a maze of spiral row houses, and the constant whirlwinds had ceased. The entire population of the town was forced into the sprawling spiral row house. Kirie's brother Mitsuo is turned into a snail, and they struggle to keep him from being eaten by another group of survivors.
The Labyrinth[]
Kirie, Shuichi and Chie walk between the spiral row houses trying to get to the center. They are occasionally blocked by some leftover ruins or a pile of corpses, and one time they are cutting through a bit of non-constructed row house, Chie is pulled into the crowd and suffocated to death. Kirie and Shuichi reach the center of the town where Dragonfly Pond was located and has now dried up. The dried up pond reveals a spiral staircase reaching down into the depths of the earth. The entire population of Kurôzu Cho, all killed, are emptied into the staircase, their last words being "WE ARE ALL CONNECTED." Kirie and Shuichi start to go down the staircase.
Completion[]
Kirie and Shuichi succumbing to the spiral curse in order to stop it.
Kirie and Shuichi wander down the spiral staircase together. They are stopped by a spiral victim who wishes to accompany them, but they refuse to carry him, because they are too tired. The spiral person becomes aggressive, grabbing Kirie and biting her ankle. Shuichi tears it off her, and is grappled onto and pushed down the staircase out of Kirie's field of vision. She runs down the staircase and falls into the City of Spirals, the capital city of the malevolent, sentient Spiral that has been cursing their town. She is carried down gently by a whirlwind, onto the floor of the city, which is made entirely of the bodies of the spiral-cursed people of Kurôzu-Cho, who are all faced to the great spiral above them. Kirie finds her mother and father, spiraled together and turning to stone, she cries for them but her attention turns to someone calling her name; Shuichi, who has been rendered unable to move. He tells Kirie to go on without him and try to keep fighting, because he believes they are very close to stopping the spiral curse. However, Kirie, too, has lost her will to stand up to the spirals any longer and is embraced in Shuichi's arms. They hold hands, their arms entwining, spiraling partially, and are both frozen in time. Impliedly, they will be able to move some several centuries in the future, "when the eternal spiral awakens once more."
Lost Chapter: Galaxies[]
Kirie receiving radio waves
This chapter happens sometime between The Spiral Obsession Part 2 and Medusa. Kirie is over at Shuichi's house when he shows her the existence of a completely new spiral galaxy. Amazed by this discovery, she informs her teacher, Mr Yokota who insists they consult an astronomer. The astronomer, Torino, is astounded by Shuichi's discovery and begins to obsessively examine the new galaxy. Kirie is concerned by Shuichi, and decides to visit him. She finds him cowering with his head in his hands, telling her that radio waves are being transmitted into his head and she tells him to get a hold of himself. Torino begins to recieve these radio waves and they tell him to kill Shuichi so he can be glorified as the official discoverer of the new galaxy. Shuichi concedes, telling him he doesn't want his name on it anyway. When Kirie returns to school, she finds people have been saying Torino claims he discovered the galaxy. She is angered by this and again, consults her teacher in order to confront Torino. They do so, and Torino informs them that Shuichi revoked his claim. Kirie refuses to let him take the credit for Shuichi's achievement and says that by default she is the discoverer, not Torino. Kirie later finds that she is receiving radio waves, much like many other citizens of Kurôzu-Cho and has people's thoughts projected into her head. Torino tries to kill her, but she escapes when he is preoccupied by the countless spiral shaped galaxies now visible to the human eye. He urges them to transmit their radio waves into his head, causing his head to grotesquely swell and explode "like an egg in a microwave," according to Kirie, then sending him up to the sky with the rest of the spiral-cursed lights in the sky. Kirie says that none of the galaxies found in Kurôzu-Cho were identified by the National Astronomical Observatory and were never seen again.
Quotes[]
- "Not this again."
- "I wonder if everyone here...is cursed by the spiral?"
- "This is Kurôzu-Cho, the town where I grew up. I would like to share with you...the strange events that took place here."
Etymology[]
- The name Kirie means "paulownia" (桐) (kiri) and "picture, painting" (絵) (e).
- It can also mean "light"/"Kyrie (God)" in Latin, which is referring to the art of Kirigami.
- Kirie's surname Goshima means "five" (五) (go) and "island" (島) (shima).
Trivia[]
- Some fans theorize that Kirie's eyes turned blue on the cover of volume 2 as a result of the Spiral.
- It is unknown whether Kirie's dislike of being the center of attention is a result of shyness, introvertedness or simply annoyance with people in general.
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