The Red Snake, Hideshi Hino

Within this Graphic Novel by Hideshi Hino, Something evil lurks. It is in rooms that nobody enters, it is in the dark forest all around, and it is in the minds of the people that live there. Only when a red snake appears does the evil manifest itself, unleashing horrific events that end in a bloody orgy of murder and mayhem. 

Book Review by Mike Philbin

This 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.

Nor should one 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 should go nowhere near this – it’s a real proper mindfuck of a book.

Hideshi Hino’s Red Snake 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, when the eponymous Red Snake appears, it’s 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.

Hideshi Hino’s The Red Snake, The Open Critic Verdict

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.

External Links

• Hideshi Hino, Author Website 
• Interview with Hideshi Hino at The Comic Journal
• Hideshi Hino, Wikipedia Entry
• Mike Philbin, Reviewer/Writer/Artist

Hideshi Hino Reviews at The Open Critic

• Hideshi Hino: Horror, Pathos and the Master of Manga 
• The Red Snake
• The Bug Boy
• Oninbo and the Bugs From Hell
• Oninbo and the Bugs From Hell Two
• Living Corpse
• Black Cat

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