Tomie is a metaphor for domestic abuse in mutually toxic relationships.
The story is about a cycle of abusive and toxic relationships.
- Tomie starts off the story as being sexually involved with her teacher which is typically not seen as socially acceptable in Japan; said teacher who then proceeds to murder her and cover it up with her classmates. At this stage, Tomie is a young girl who didn’t show any of her trademark abilities quite yet. It was only after she was killed that she started really acting like a Tomie, which may mean that this is her origin story. For all intents and purposes, Tomie is a victim of abuse.
- Every incarnation of Tomie is a bit different, since they are affected by the environment they “grow up” in. As awful as Tomie is, the “Tomies” don’t really have it easy; she’s been isolated, stalked, and murdered constantly. Plus, every version of Tomie remembers what’s happened to her, so they carry that baggage with them forever. It’s essentially symbolic of cyclic abuse; every Tomie is birthed from violence and pain (whether it be Tomie’s or someone else’s) and repeats the same behavior to someone else.
- Of course, Tomie doesn’t do much to make herself look like a good person, since she’s rude, conceited and generally a sociopath (and a child molester as the story goes on). However, this leads to a few questions. Is Tomie naturally cruel and seeks out people to manipulate? Or is Tomie’s cruelty the result of mistreatment by the hands of others, and is her meeting of vulnerable people incidental?
- As for her victims, the stories tend to be rather ambiguous towards Tomie’s effect on them. Are the men brainwashed by Tomie and ultimately helpless to stop her, or were they already emotionally vulnerable enough to do questionable things and Tomie just happened to hit the right buttons? The victims of Tomie may claim to not help themselves, but considering that the story typically ends with the victim either dead or having killed Tomie or someone else, they are hardly reliable. A lot of the guys in the story who fall victim to her often have something about them that she can exploit; sometimes they are reclusive, or objectify women already and react violently when she rejects them, or are already lonely and just want literally anyone’s companionship, or, in the case of “Boy”, are too young and naive to understand that she shouldn’t be trusted. One of the biggest examples of this ambiguity was the story with the painter. Tomie criticizes his artwork, calls his model ugly, and straight up insults him to his face; and yet, the root of his obsession with her is in part because she isn’t impressed and he wants to show off his skills by capturing her beauty. Instead she gaslights him and convinces him that his insanely accurate painting of her is somehow incorrect, and no matter how he paints her, it’s never right, which drives him to murder. It’s possible that his actions are not entirely due to Tomie, but his own insecurities leaking to the surface, due to her deliberately pushing his buttons.
- Compare this to Umehara, who, by all means, should be another victim, but somehow isn’t. There’s nothing really special or supernatural about him that should allow him to resist Tomie, he’s just a regular guy with no time for her nonsense. Some of Tomie’s victims take some extra work to convince, implying that Tomie’s powers are not infallible. Heck, Tomie isn’t even a really convincing manipulator when she isn’t trying to charm people, given that a lot of women and some men can see through her lies very easily.
- This all reflects how real abuse works; people are more likely to be abusers if they themselves have suffered from it, and are more likely to be victims because abusers pick out their insecurities. As Tomie evolves, she becomes more jaded, more cruel, and less of the person she once was. As she goes through unhealthy and violent relationship one after another, every version of her birthed from the violence of her past relationship goes on to repeat the same behavior, until eventually, in “Boy”, she takes advantage of a child, in the same way her teacher did to her. The story is about Tomie evolving from the role of victim to abuser.
Tomie is driven by venagence towards other humans.
Tomie used to be human until her first death.
Notably, the first story doesn't feature much of the hallmarks of the series. For instance, Tomie appears to actually care about Reiko and appears upset when she runs away, while usually she treats women with contempt. In addition, it is implied in that story that Tomie and Reiko were childhood friends, meaning Tomie grew up. Finally, this story treats Tomie much more sympathetically than the rest of the series, showing that while she was not a great person, she was pretty lonely and only two people really cared when she died. Either this is Early-Installment Weirdness or perhaps it was the origin story for the titular monster.- Additionally, the signature under-eye circles don't appear until after her first death, and Takagi and Yamamoto don't act very enthralled, more disinterested and jealous respectively.
Tomie is a daemonette of Slaanesh.
Tomie is often described and interpreted as a Succubus, a daemon whose career is the seduction of innocent males. She can appear to her host as whatever they considered to be the most beautiful being in existence. However, it is emphasized that daemonettes do not really want the well-being of their hosts in mind, only pleasure, and driving their hosts to obsession and in the end the brink of insanity, as per the will of Chaos.- The only problem with this theory is that the Emperor would already smite her down if she really was a Daemon. The Emperor has been silently watching over mankind long before the age of strife.
Tomie is completely blind to the fact that she is a supernatural monster
Getting murdered and chopped up and multiplying is not part of some masterplan on her part; her only goals are to emotionally torment people and boss people around. She has a supernatural ability to make people fall in love with her but in her mind there's nothing supernatural about it, she's just that good.We can see in the manga that she never actually discusses the fact that she always resurrects, nor does she ever admit the existence of other Tomies, and she always reacts with dismay when someone kills her.
Either being unaware is part of her nature, or this is a natural result of her endless pride and superiority complex; she refuses to admit she is an weird, ugly monster.
Tomie is a "cancer" to humanity as a whole.
Tomie acts as something of a malignant tumor to those around her (something she has been compared to in-story); either they feel the need to "cut it out" or are driven crazy by her mere presence. People can even be "infected" by her, either turning into other versions of her or dying as new Tomies erupt from their bodies.This theory is that not unlike malignant cancer cells in a multicellular organism brought on by mutation, Tomie is a "mutation" in the human species; a walking, talking cancer that could potentially threaten humanity if not properly treated. People's repulsion towards her (usually driving them to murder her) is an instinctual response to this, but all they really do is try to "cut out the tumor" instead of "treating the cancer", hens why all killing her does is spread this malignance.
Those who develop an infatuation towards her also qualifies as a this; some cancers go unnoticed by the immune system and sometimes the body will reject treatment. Cancers can spread and negatively impact other parts of the body, so this obsessive infatuation is her effect trying to drive the "body" to destroy itself.
Tomie is a Mask of Nyarlathotep
He seems like the type to turn into a cute girl and cause a bunch of deaths.Or, Tomie is Junji Ito's answer to Nyarlathotep
She's the Token Deliberately Evil Teammate to Ito's gang of Eldritch Abominations, after all. Tomie is a tatarigami.
Or in other words, a god of curses. Her death in the first chapters is less a Start of Darkness so much as how Tomie came into being. She was killed and dismembered in the mountains, a sacred site in Japanese mythology. This offended the kami so much that they imbued her corpse with a curse. Normally, the events of Tomie's first death could result in an onryo but the intervention of the gods created something closer to The Worm That Walks. Tomie is functionally a walking curse forced to act out her tragedy over and over again, beguiling the vulnerable and leading them to their doom.