Kirie Goshima is the central character and narrator of the horror story Uzumaki, a high school student living in the coastal town of Kurôzu-cho. She is depicted as a tall, slim young woman with pale skin, large eyes, and straight, upper-back-length ginger hair that she often wears with a side fringe. Her typical appearance includes a school uniform, consisting of a maroon blazer over a white turtleneck sweater and a black pleated skirt.

In terms of personality, Kirie is fundamentally a serious, practical, and mature individual who is often exasperated by the bizarre events unfolding around her and is rarely in the mood for jokes. She can be blunt and harshly critical of others, yet she is simultaneously a gentle and caring person who shows great compassion and understanding, even towards those who annoy her. As the story progresses, she becomes more cynical and develops a growing sense of suspense, though she remains skeptical of the supernatural nature of the spiral curse for a significant portion of the narrative.

Kirie's primary motivation is to survive the escalating horror in her town while protecting the people she loves. She acts as a caretaker for her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, frequently making and delivering food to him when he becomes a depressed recluse after the death of his parents. She is also fiercely protective of her younger brother, Mitsuo Goshima, despite their typical sibling annoyances. Her role in the story is that of the audience's perspective, a relatively ordinary person navigating increasingly extraordinary and grotesque events. As the spiral curse intensifies, she transforms from a passive observer to an active target and a determined survivor. A key relationship is with Shuichi, who serves as the voice of reason and correctly identifies the town’s contamination by spirals; Kirie often dismisses his warnings at first but ultimately relies on him for help and survival.

Throughout her ordeal, Kirie undergoes significant development. Initially willfully ignorant of the supernatural threat, she is forced to accept the horrifying reality when she herself becomes a direct victim of the curse. In one notable incident, her hair is corrupted by the spiral, growing uncontrollably and trying to attract attention, leading Shuichi to cut it short to save her life. This traumatic event marks a turning point, making her more understanding of the plights of others and less dismissive of the danger. Her final fate is to become frozen in time with Shuichi at the bottom of a spiral city, defiantly intertwined with her eyes closed to deprive the spiral of the satisfaction of being witnessed. Her notable abilities are not supernatural but rather psychological; she possesses a remarkable capacity to remain level-headed and practical even when confronted with gruesome body horror and madness, though she becomes distressed when forced into the center of attention.