Hino Horror 13: Zipangu Night
October 30, 2009
Hideshi Hino – Cocoro Books – 2004 – 14 volumes
“Hino Horror” is the name for this series, but they are mostly unrelated volumes of horror stories by Hideshi Hino.
I can only talk about Hideshi Hino in October, but sadly, it’s been a long time since the last new volume of his work came out in English (or Japanese, as far as I can tell, at least on Amazon Japan). I’ve got nothing left to talk about once these last two volumes of Hino Horror are covered here. Maybe I’ll just loop back around and start again with Hell Baby next year.
This is another more contemporary volume of short stories, these are circa 1997. Now, as I’ve mentioned before… these stories aren’t… well, they aren’t good, by most conventional methods of reckoning. You have to know what you’re getting into. They’re cheap thrills for children, and there’s not much to them. They get the job done, though, and if you go into it knowing what to expect, you’ll probably wind up enjoying it.
I liked this volume better than some of the others because of the esoteric themes of the stories. It reminded me a lot of Mantis Woman by Senno Knife, and I suspect Knife probably owes a lot to Hino. We’ve got a little bit of everything here, from rat girls to children who wake up with their head backwards or with gigantic brains… an onibaba-type that appears to be feeding children pieces of other children, and a grim reaper teacher. The stories never really go any farther than the gimmicks they’re based on, but I like that every single one of them takes place “so long ago that nobody remembers the exact details” even though they all seem to take place in the present.
While the art is nothing like Hino at his best, there are still plenty of shocking visuals. The grim reaper teacher chapter in particular has a lot of little kids being decapitated, stabbed through the head, and otherwise maimed and dismembered messily. For maximum shock/vomit value, there’s a story with a woman breastfeeding a baby. Without warning, her nipple pulls off in the baby’s mouth and maggots spill from her rotting breast. That has to be one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in a manga. For kids? Not so much, but it sure does seem like it was written for that audience.
Yeah, this was probably one of the better Hino Horror volumes… but again, there’s not a whole not to these stories.
October 30, 2009 at 7:17 am
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