Hino Horror 5: Living Corpse

There’s actually an interesting essay in the back which makes this kind of interesting story much better. Hino explains he wrote it at a time when he was very sick and his family was a little tight on money, so he was constantly worrying about what would happen if he died. This manga is actually much more interesting if you keep that in mind as you read it.

On a side note, in the time leading up to the above illness, he wrote Jigokuhen/Panorama of Hell, his big “fuck you” farewell to drawing manga, and immediately afterwards, Red Snake, because he knew he had at least one story left after he turned in Jigokuhen. It’s interesting that both those fantastic stories came at a time when he had given up on drawing manga and was basically retiring and in a state of physical decline.

Now that my requisite mentions of Panorama of Hell and Red Snake are over with, let’s talk about Living Corpse. So, a man wakes up to find himself a rotting corpse, not sure who he is, where he is, or how he got there. He is arrested and experimented on, and eventually tries to beg with the scientists to let him die, that he doesn’t understand. He escapes his confinement in the labs (complete with artificial skin, to cover his rotting, smelling body), and eventually recalls who he is and that, at the time of his death, he wished real hard to be able to be with his family again. This rather depressing story ends with a reunion and a sendoff for the living corpse which is rather sad.

My roommate compares it to Hell Baby, but I think the two are much different. This is only marginally a horror story in that it contains a rotting corpse for a main character. Take that away, and this plays out as a rather sad story about a man who doesn’t want to die for love of his family, but just can’t remember this fact due to amnesia. It’s a very simple story, and clumsy in parts… really, sort of mediocre, but it was good enough for me. It gets its point across, and you really do feel sorry for the main character, rotting corpse though he may be.

It’s a lot different from Hino’s regular fare, and kind of middle-of-the-road as far as a one-shot manga story goes, but yes, I liked it a lot.

I forgot to mention, I love the no-eye characters in this one.  They’re quite striking.