Making matters worse, the student body is starting to sprout shells, drink an excessive amount of water, and crawl on the walls of the school. Meanwhile, Kirie's high school is populated by a host of twitching teachers, preening pretty girls, and the slimy Katayama, who begins to walk at a snail's pace and only comes to school when it rains. Tamura, a reporter, is intrigued by Shuichi's dad's suicide and becomes obsessed with the case. Soon after, the entire town is infected by the otherworldly whirls. He then becomes one with Uzumaki when he decides to crawl into a washing machine to get a 'point-of-view' shot for his film. He proclaims that a spiral is the highest form of art and frantically creates whirlpools in his miso soup when he runs out of spiral patterned Kamaboko. His weird obsession threatens to go out of control and take over his life. He is also in the process of making a video scrapbook filled with images of anything that has a spiral or vortex shape to it. High school student Kirie first suspects that something is awry in the small town of Kurouzu when the father of her boyfriend, Shuichi begins to film the corkscrew pattern on a snail's shell.
