The art of Hideshi Hino can be off-putting to some. It has an undeniable abrasive quality to it, although I personally love it. Once you look past the initial impression, you will quickly realise his work has incredible composition, expressive characters with unmistakable designs, spectacular use of contrast between the white of the page and pure black ink, and grotesque imagery that will linger with you. I have a lot of tolerance and even appreciation for distasteful and shocking art, but the first time I read "Panorama of Hell" by Hino as a teenager I found myself truly challenged. The dichotomy between the sincerity in how the family of that manga was presented with the horrifying things present in the manga endlessly fascinated me as a young fan of horror. And while that comic is certainly worth recommending, out of the work of his I have read it's "Hell Baby" that has impacted me the most.
This is a truly heartbreaking story. There wasn't really a point in this short read where I didn't find myself wanting to tear up. The comic follows the life of a young deformed girl, left at a dump by her parents while they continue to raise her twin sister. And not to stereotype you, the reader, but if you are using an anime database website, and specifically reading these ramblings you likely have found yourself in the position of an outcast. I certainly can. Not even delving too deeply into my queer identity and struggles with mental health conditions, it simply is impossible for me not to see myself in this unnamed girl. Like any child, she is fundamentally innocent. She is too young to be capable of even questioning the world around her, much less determining how her actions are perceived by a world she was rejected from. She wants shelter, she wants to eat, she just wants to be like any other child. But the world she was forced into is violent and disgusting. Circling back to the discussion of the art style, if the art didn't reflect the repugnant nature of the dump, then the contrast between the naive internal world of the girl and the external world would lose a great deal of it's impact. But it isn't just that the girl is not afforded the life of a normal child, she isn't afforded the identity of a girl specifically either. Hino handles gender in this manga with a lot of depth. A quote from the manga stands out in my head "The baby grew into a seven-year-old girl. But her body was much too grotesque to really be considered a "girl"". This one simple line strikes at the heart of the inquiry the manga conducts in the way society treats women and girls who do not fit the traditional mold. In order to discuss this further I would have to spoil some of this short manga. But I will say that the moments that made me recoil the most were not the ones of horror or sadness, but her untainted happiness and delight at the end of chapter seven.
I need to discuss a certain aspect of the form in which this manga is presented. Unlike in western comics, and not even a lot of them at that, manga does not use narration often. While it feels like this device often carries a bit of stigma to it, likely due to lazy use of it in movies like the theatrical version of Blade Runner, and association with cheap television and advertisements. However, there are plenty of examples of wonderful use of it, such as this comic. You won't find any of it in the first chapter, although it is worth acknowledging the paratextual quote from a poem that proceeds the rest of the work, as it reflects the tone of the work and is the first example of a non-diagetic element of the manga. And so follows that just like the quote, the narration has a simple, but bleak and poetic nature. The third person point of view the narration takes builds a barrier between you and the girl. You essentially are being told a story rather than experiencing one. Just as society refused to acknowledge any interiority to the girl, so are you forced to stay out of her head. She naturally never learned to speak, which only builds up more of a barrier. However, she remains a character impossible not to project onto. It almost makes me think of being a child and being told a story about some kid on an adventure, who was clearly there for me to see myself in. Comics seem uniquely suited to display parallel stories like such, as the narration does not fully reflect what the girl thinks. What you see, what you read, and what you think are all different. And similar to what post-structuralists suggest about the nature of signs, it is the difference between things where meaning is really found.