Hino Horror 12: Mystique Mandala of Hell
Posted: November 5, 2008 Filed under: Hino Horror 2 Comments »I know, it’s not October anymore, but let me get through these last few volumes of Hino Horror on the site. They’ve been waiting for their turn in the spotlight for years.
I was disappointed with the last few volumes of short stories, but this returns to the one-shot format of some of the earlier volumes. The story itself is pretty great: a girl named Mandala is names sole savior of the Eastern demons, though through a mistake she makes she winds up wandering the Earth as the last of her kind, looking for a special crystal.
But this makes it sound like something it’s not. It starts off with an oddball girl starting at a new school and all the children speculate on her. A bully finds out her secret and is basically threatened in one of the most cosmic manga scenes you’re likely to see. Later, a nice boy begins to follow her around in an attempt to make friends with her, and he unwittingly stumbles on her lost crystal. Woe follows him as a result, and a very Junji Ito-like misfortune haunts him. Mandala helps him out, and eventually has a showdown with a crow, leader of the Western Demons.
There’s plenty of gore. Mandala’s crystals are actually her eyeballs, and they get popped out a fair number of times throughout the volume. Plus the scenes that play out in front of the little boys are suitably horror manga-esque in a way that is entirely unique to Hideshi Hino.
The story’s a lot tighter than I make it sound, and is really pretty good. It’s not even close to Hino’s best work, but it is more than a decent one-shot, and the surreal bully threatening scene alone is worth the price of admission. The three before this one are probably worth skipping, but this one is for sure a worthy read.
Worth reading deffinitely. Not finished possibly and a bit inconsistent in the story itself but I still devoured this manga very very quickly.
Yeah, this was one of the better Hino Horror volumes. You’re right about it being sort of spotty and unfinished, but the premise was really good.
Have you tried Red Snake yet? That one is heads and shoulders above the other Hino Horror volumes. It’s a shame it set the bar so high for the first volume of the series, because it made the other volumes disappointing in comparison.