Appearing as a serial in Shogakukan's weekly seinen manga magazine Big Comic Spirits from 1998 to 1999, the chapters were compiled into three bound volumes published from August 1998 to September 1999.

In North America, Viz Media serialized an English-language translation of the series in its monthly magazine Pulp from February 2001 to August 2002.

The series tells the story of the citizens of Kurouzu-cho, a fictional town which is plagued by a supernatural curse involving spirals.

Ito believes the horror of Uzumaki is effective due to its subversion of symbols which are positively portrayed in Japanese media, and its theme of protagonists struggling against a mysterious force stronger than themselves.

It was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2003, and placed in the Young Adult Library Services Association's list of the "Top 10 Graphic Novels for Teens" in 2009.

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 affects Kurouzu's environment as it simultaneously creates whirlwinds and whirlpools, especially turning the abandoned lighthouse into a hot furnace while making whoever looks at it walk in circles.

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.

The only remaining buildings are ancient abandoned row houses, which the citizens are forced first to move into, and then begin expanding as they grow more and more crowded, but have become mutated as a consequence of overcrowding, their limbs twisting and warping into spirals.

When they begin walking down the steps, Shuichi is hurled down the pit leading deep beneath Kurouzu by a mutated citizen, with Kirie herself descending via a colossal spiral staircase to find him.

She falls but is saved by 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.

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.

Junji Ito's initial desire was to create a story about strange changes that would occur to people living in a very long, traditional Japanese terraced house.

Ito uses this imagery because it lends itself well to horror due to its association with the Japanese feminine ideal (Yamato nadeshiko), as well as the unnerving flowing motions of long hair, which he describes as snakelike.

"[14] Written and illustrated by Junji Ito, Uzumaki was serialized in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Big Comic Spirits from January 19, 1998,[15] to August 30, 1999.

[28] The series has also been translated into other languages, such as Spanish,[29] French,[30] Brazilian Portuguese,[31] Polish,[32] Swedish,[33] Mandarin,[34] Korean,[35] and Serbian.

The first, Uzumaki: Denshi Kaiki Hen (うずまき 〜電視怪奇篇〜, Spiral – Television Mystery), was released on February 3, 2000, and is a visual novel retelling the events of the manga.

[55] A second teaser video was posted on June 15, 2021, with comments from director Hiroshi Nagahama describing how the pandemic forced the team to "restructure" their plan for the anime from scratch.

[58] On July 22, 2023, during Adult Swim's "Toonami on the Green" panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the network debuted a new clip from the series.

[66] The Young Adult Library Services Association chose the first volume for its list of the "Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens" in 2009.

[70] About.com's Deb Aoki placed Uzumaki in her list of recommended horror manga, describing it as a classic of the genre.

[74] ComicsAlliance author and comic artist Sara Horrocks also praised the manga, stating "What makes Uzumaki such a strong work is how precise it is in its mechanics.

"[76] Greg Hackmann of Mania gave it an A, praising both its "well-honed" art and Ito's ability to form an effective overarching plot out of Uzumaki's loosely connected substories.

[79] For the second volume, Lien-Cooper gave it 8 out of 10 stating, "What astounds me about Junji Ito's work is its deceptive simplicity and its flawless execution.

[81] Hackmann, however, gave it a 'B', explaining that "Unfortunately, this shift in story format is largely a failed experiment: with the overarching escape storyline put on hiatus, a good number of these disconnected episodes degenerate into simple, 'lookit, weird stuff happening' horrorfests that lack much of the creative spark exhibited throughout the first Uzumaki collection.