"The Red Snake (Hino Horror # 1)" by Hideshi Hino
Reviewed by: John R. Platt

With more than 200 graphic novels in print in his native Japan, Hideshi Hino is acknowledged as one of that country's masters of horror comics. Strangely, he is virtually unknown in the United States, where only a few rare pieces of his work have appeared in print in English. With "The Red Snake," the first in an ambitious series of newly translated reprints, Cocoro Books hopes to change that.

This disturbing and surreal tale is narrated by a young Japanese boy, who lives with his crazy family in an isolated house in the middle of nowhere. As the book opens, the boy tells us that the house fills him with dread. He has never known any other place, and every time he tries to escape into the surrounding jungle, he somehow ends up right back where he began.

The boy shares the house with his mother, father, grandfather, grandmother and sister -- none of whom appear to be very sane. His father raises chickens, and lovingly converses with the heads of the ones he has slaughtered. His mother slavishly uses the chickens' eggs to massage and treat a terrible growth on the abusive grandfather's face. The grandmother thinks she, herself, is a chicken, and spends her days sitting on a giant nest of twigs, trying to lay her own eggs. And then there's the boy's older sister -- obsessed with bugs, she gets just a little bit too much pleasure out of their company.

Although the house is huge, possible endless, the boy has seen little but the few rooms his family use for their dwelling and chicken-rearing. They are kept from the rest of the house by a huge, ornate mirror, which blocks one of the hallways. The mirror fascinates the boy, but his grandfather warns him that it is a gateway to hell, and that anyone who looks into it will bring a curse and ruin down upon his family.

One night, the boy dreams that he is passing beyond the mirror to the unknown world beyond. Before he can see what lies behind the gate, he wakes, and his sister yells from the next room. Running to her side, he sees a mysterious red snake slithering out from her bed, and two bite marks oozing blood down her thigh.

Also responding to her cries, the grandfather announces that the red snake came from the mirror -- which they find is now cracked -- and that a terrible fate awaits them all. The boy says nothing, afraid that his dreams have brought the snakes to torture them.

From here, the horror develops quickly. The red snakes multiply, drinking from the sister in a nightly orgy. Their attentions change her, giving her a taste for blood. Caught killing chickens to drink their precious fluids, the grandfather tries to tie her up. She responds violently, slicing off his foot before he can punish her. But the wound is not fatal -- instead, it causes his cancer-like growth to suddenly move from his face down to his leg.

The chickens forgotten, the grandfather orders the boy's mother to treat the painful growth with more eggs. While massaging it, the growth explodes, raining acidy blood upon the mother, destroying her face and mind.

Meanwhile, the grandmother has disappeared, and the boy's father has taken to tending to her nest. His mother now appears to be pregnant, infected by the evil blood. And his sister begins to shed her skin to reveal a giant red snake below.

From there, things *really* get odd.

Throughout the book, Hino keeps the pace moving, the tension high, and the horror non-stop. Every page is more disturbing than the last, until you think he can't go any further over the top. But he does. Several times.

The story itself owes a great deal both to Japanese ghost legends and to more modern masters of the weird story like H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. But Hino takes his influences much further, raising the stakes and infusing the plot and characters with a strong personal voice that shows the dark underbelly of the world as he sees it.

As for the art, it combines detailed and realistic backgrounds with highly cartoonish characters. This combination serves to heighten the horror even further. The settings appear real, but the exaggerated faces and bodies of the characters make them appear even more insane than their actions.

While the violence and level of bloodshed in the story is extreme -- Hino is definitely not one to shy away from depicting the grotesque -- it serves the story and the tone. Other artists might have tried to depict some of the violence "off camera," but that does not appear to be the way that Hino sees the world.

"The Red Snake" just may be the most twisted, disturbing and powerful horror comic published in the U.S. in years. If you think you can handle the nightmares, give it a try. Three and a half stars.

SPECIAL NOTE: Like many publishers importing Japanese comics to the U.S. these days, Cocoro presents this book in its original Japanese format -- known in the trade as "manga style." The book is bound on the right, and the pages are read from right to left. It's a bit difficult to get used to if you are not accustomed to the format, but it presents the creator's work the way it was meant to be experienced.

Publisher:  Cocoro Books (DH Publishing, Inc.), 2004, $9.95
ASIN/ISBN: 0-9745961-0-8