Hino Horror #1: The Red Snake
by Hideshi Hino
DH Publishers
Japanese Graphic Novel (Printed in USA)
English Language version
ISBN 0-9745961-0-8
$9.95

You'd like to indulge in a bit of salacious Japanese Manga but your Kanji just ain't up to scratch? Fear not -- DH Publishing (a Tokyo-based company) are on a mission to republish all of Hideshi Hino's graphic novels in translation. Those used to standard American volumes are greeted with this amusing first page, "What are you doing? This is the back of the book." In authentic Manga form, you gotta read these HINO HORROR books from back to front, from the top right of each page down.

Hideshi Hino is hailed as the master of macabre in an inscrutable society where depraved and disgusting things happen in 'Manga' books every single day. Let's examine the gory evidence for this royal title. Munching maggots, sensual centipedes, filth, wailing foetuses, worm-riddled body bags, headless chickens, young girls with fetishistic blood lust. I mean, what the fuck is this book? Horror, Japanese style.

THE RED SNAKE is touted as being about a haunted house -- in reality it's more about a haunted family. One can only wonder what this family of freaks were like before they moved into this haunted house, or maybe they and the house have been inextricably interlinked, psyche and flesh interwoven on the Hellplane so that neither is distinguishable from the other.

And don't forget the woods. The haunted woods that always lead you back to the house. Look, it' s simple, there's no escape. And that's how this book treats the reader, there's no escape from the obscene blood hunger of this crazy damned book. Those with a weak stomach and reliant upon their western sensibilities better go nowhere near this – it's a real proper mindfuck of a book.

Here are the member of the happy family: Boy (never named) roams around in a house with more rooms than are possible to explore – the haunted rooms are hidden behind an ancient decorative mirror. Grandfather has a massive puss-filled boil on his face. Father cares for 100 hens, feeding them on the bugs he cultivates. Grandmother thinks she is a hen, lives in a makeshift bird's nest. Mother uses the eggs from Father's hens to soothe Grandfather's swollen face boil. Sister is a bug stealer, a tickle fetishist and much later, much worse.

Eventually, the eponymous Red Snake appears – in the bed of Sister. Sucking on her blood. Having been to the Atomic Bomb Memorial at Hiroshima, I can see where Hino gets his skin dripping horror imagery from, surely there has never been as great an icon as hundreds civilians running around in total pain with the boiled skin hanging from their ruptured bones.

The Red Snake ends in a massive gore-spilling climax of blood-crazed egg-hatched baby zombies who rip and tear at the flesh of our hero in a concerted effort to prevent his escape from the house. It is a truly strange and cyclic story that will have you gaggin' for more.

Hino Horror #2: The Bug Boy
by Hideshi Hino
DH Publishers
Japanese Graphic Novel (Printed in USA)
English Language version
ISBN 0-9745961-1-6
$9.95

In this second volume of HINO HORROR, loner Sanpei Hiromoto is hated by everyone. His problem is he is distracted by his bugs. He loves bugs of all shapes and sizes. Snakes too. Sanpei can't get enough of those slimy, slithery creatures. His grades at school are consistently Fs. He is feared by all the girls in the school. He is hated by the boys. Every night he is beaten up on his way back from school. His family bully him because of his grades, his brother and sister are straight A students – like every good Japanese child. Sanpei is alone at school and alone at home. He has no-one to talk to, no-one to share his life with, apart from his bugs, and the veritable zoo of cats, dogs, rats and assorted creepy crawlies he has secreted down at his secret hide-away at the local tip.

Then one day he is bitten by a terrible red bug and a hideous transformation begins...

Rather than going into the 'spoiler' territory of the gruesome depictions of the story's detail, you already know the Hino patented subject matter from the review of the first volume, this review will attempt to concentrate on the thematic landscape of this nasty piece of work.

Hideshi Hino is a product of the second world war. He cites the struggle of these post-war years as a major influence on his work. And you can see it. You can see the young Hino growing up around the diseased dogs, the pestilent rats, the poverty and death of those terrible times after the nuclear holocaust delivered by those two American bombing missions. The Bug Boy is in so many ways a coming-of-age story. Aping etymological themes with reference to the bugs Sanpei adores and the rotting pupatic transformation of his little body from boy to bug, the hideous anatomical and psychological sacrifices one has to sometimes make to achieve one' s true form, you can see a reflection of Hino's early life in war-raped Japan – the years of social and industrial rebuild, the years of shame at the loss.

A whole nation poised on the point of a blade.

Sanpei figurizes the shame and isolation of post-war Japan. Sanpei shows how Hino shuffled off his boyness to become a man of ultra extreme imagery that garishly illuminates the distorted world of the Japanese post-war psyche. Look at other Manga (famous in the West) like Akira and you see again and again this brain-spinning gut-wrenching study of anatomical rape, the pain of a nation in turmoil made flesh - shown anatomically.

Back to The Bug Boy, he has transformed into a formidable horror monster and eventually realises his power and his revolting murderous exploits are soon making the news. He becomes a notorious and feared entity in his neighbourhood. His frail ego amplified by this stunning realisation, Sanpei embarks on a rampage of revenge.

A truly destructive tale.

Hertzan Chimera (http://www.hertzanchimera.com) lives in the quaint English town of Oxford. He is the author of novels SZMONHFU, UNITED STATES, YōROPPA and FREELANCER, collections BROKEN, BFGS, CHIM+HER, CHIM+HIM and CHIMERAWORLD. His book of interviews of horror writers SPIDERED WEB was recommended for a Bram Stoker Award. As an editor, he is bringing out an annual anthology CHIMERAWORLD. He is the new regulator of TERROR TALES (http://www.terrortales.org) ezine. He also speaks French, some Japanese and a little German.