Living Corpse, Hideshi Hino’s Undead

Hino Hideshi’s, Living Corpse give us Shinkai Yosuke who is haunted by a past he cannot recall, and a rapidly decomposing body. Washed up on the shores of Japan, he is isolated by doctors eager to find out why he has been brought back to life only to suffer again a slow and gruesome death. Shinkai, who knows he has little time left, is desperate to find out who he really was, and why he has become a Living Corpse.

Book Review by Mike Philbin

In Living Corpse, Shinkai Yosuke doesn’t know where he came from. He wanders around in a place he doesn’t know where the people run away from him in fear for their lives. He has no idea why he is here or even who he is. Then he sees his face in a shop window. What a disgusting horrible creature. A rotting corpse that thinks and breathes and speaks. Surely this can’t be true? Who is Shinkai Yosuke and why is he in this seaside town?

The doctors who take him into their care have no idea either but subject Yosuke to further excruciating pain in an attempt to stop him rotting away to nothing, injecting him with preservative fluids and pumping giga-watts of electricity through his decaying body in a futile attempt to revive his cells .

As earlier mentioned, even the undead don’t escape the tortures of the degradation of the body. Hino never lets up on the mental and physical agony he subjects his ‘hero’ to. Following a fatal accident at the hospital where he is being held captive, Yosuke escapes and is quickly branded Public Enemy #1.

There is a slight negative aspect to this book but it has nothing to do with Hideshi Hino, more to do with the way the original Japanese has been translated into English. The offending scene involves Yosuke and a drunk, in a jail cell. It’s a really short scene, too – it just stands out as not up to the quality of the rest of the book. The drunk has this terrible colloquial English accent and it’s hard to discern whether it’s supposed to be Scottish, Australian or Germanic – this should have been dealt with at the editorial stage.

Overall, this is another great read from Hideshi Hino, with real human appeal and real human suffering. Will Yosuke find out why he is rotting away, leaving a trail of puss and maggots all over this seaside town? Will he discover anything about his past life? Will he return home?

External Links

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

More 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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