The Bug Boy (Hino Horror, 2)

Rating:
Summary: BEING DIFFERENT=PERSECUTION
Review: Hideshi Hino is considered a master of Japanese horror manga, with over 150 of his graphic novels in print. Now we in America are able to appreciate his genius of the macabre as Coroco Books is printing translations of his works like mad. They're putting them out so fast, it's hard to keep up with the expense of buying them. I think they're printing the 13th and 14th volumes as I write this.

The Bug Boy is about a young elementary school boy named Sanpei Hinomoto. Sanpei has always been a sickly child and has never measured up to his brother and sister intellectually. He is hated at school by the students and faculty and his parents think he is good for nothing too, even to the point of physically abusing him. The only joy he gets out of life is spending time at the garbage dump where he has constructed a second home underneath the rubbish. He considers this place a paradise because he keeps a menagarie of pets there:dogs, cats, birds, even a couple of rats that he loves and feels accepted by. He also likes to play with anything slimy and icky such as caterpillars, which get him in trouble at school.

One day, after suffering years of inhuman abuse from every "human" being around him, he gets sick and throws up. What comes out of his puke is a large centipede-looking insect. When it stings him, it starts a metamorphosis in Sanpei that will isolate him further from the world, as he finds himself transforming into the likeness of the bug that bit him. What follows is a sad tale of loneliness, madness, and murder.

In the end, this book was about the cruelty of society. Everybody already knows that those who are different and strange are persecuted, especially in the early school years, when children have yet to form a moral system. Bug Boy reminded me a lot of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in that Sanpei is driven to murder because there is not a single person or animal that cares about him in the world. The drawings which seem comical at first quickly transform your feelings to horror and sadness. Don't worry, Sanpei will find what find what he is looking for, he just won't find it here on Earth in this life.

If you liked this book I would also recommend the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.