Customer Reviews

Hino Horror, Vol. 3: Oninbo and the Bugs from Hell

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Oninbo is a mischievious demon who looks like a little bare-footed boy. His favorite food are bugs from Hell. Where do you find these bugs, you might ask? He finds them growing within the bodies of human beings, or more precisely, their souls. He can sense them, does some observation of the victim, who usually experiences horrific visions as the bugs mature inside them. Eventually they try to make their way into the external world, and if Oninbo cannot devour them, the human is left a dead corpse. Actually, even though Oninbo doesn't like to admit, he's somewhat of a super-hero, because in the process of attaining his food, he saves lives and is thanked by the people he heals. It's very unusual for anything positive to come out of a Hino Horror manga which makes this volume even more unique. Yeah, there's blood and gore and disgusting scenes, but Oninbo is a real hero. While it seemed a little repetitive, I enjoyed this book. It would be good for little kids if it didn't have stabbings, body fluid excretions, hostages, worms crawling out of corpses, etc. If anything this manga falls into the category of horror humor.

I have to say that this is one of Hino's best mangas. I have been reading his stuff since the 90s when it first started to get translated, and this is maybe my favorite of all his work so far. The art is superior to many of his other titles. The detail is superb, and I figure he had to have a team of magaka assistants doing some of it. Oninbo is a great character, and I see why this manga had a second book. At the price that it is listed here, it is practically cheaper than toilet paper. BUY THIS NOW!

Hideshi Hino, Oninbo and the Bugs from Hell (Cocoro, 1987)

The third book in Hideshi Hino's "Hino Horror" series, and the first of two parts, Oninbo and the Bigs from Hell focuses on "Hell's cutest little demon", Oninbo, who subsists on a diet of, not surprisingly, Bugs from Hell, which are psychological human torments. It's an interesting conceit, and it lets Hino explore various human frailties. A more recent series in the same vein is Reiko Momochi's Confidential Confessions, but this is Hino, who has long been known for the graphic violence of his stories (and films; Hino directed the first few Guinea Pig films, the forerunners of what has come to be known in America today as "torture porn"). The stories generally go like this: Oninbo goes tooling around until he finds a human under a shadow of some sort--childhood trauma, loneliness, etc.--at which point Oninbo latches on and does a sort of off-the-cuff psychological evaluation of the person, ending with a physical trip into the person's mind to find the Bug from Hell that's causing the problem. After a cute little tune, Oninbo draws the bug out and has himself a nice meal, curing the person of his or her trauma. (Who knew, Hino comics with happy endings!) Pretty good stuff, this, and it shows off both Hino's gory and analytical sides well. It does feel overly episodic, but that's forgivable. ***