The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

Remina

What's It About? 

An unknown planet emerges from inside a wormhole, and its discoverer, Dr. Oguro, christens the body “Remina” after his own daughter. His finding is met with great fanfare, and Remina herself rises to fame. However, the object picks up speed as it moves along in its curious course, eliminating planets and stars one after another, until finally Earth itself faces extinction

Remina is scripted and drawn by Junji Ito. A hardcover edition of the manga will be published under VIZ's Signature imprint on December 15. It is currently available for pre-order for $22.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

There is, I think, a very fine line between good science fiction and horror. Remina, the most recent Junji Ito title to get a hardcover edition from Viz, embodies that. It takes the simple base narrative of a scientist father discovering a new planet and naming it after his daughter and twists it to become a discussion on the perils of fame (particularly Japanese idol culture), fear, and to a degree, human resilience…or at least what we want to view as human resilience but may actually be the willful naivete of humanity.

The whole volume is essentially one long chase scene. Shortly after Remina's father names the new planet after her, it becomes clear that things are much less rosy than anyone expected. By the time researchers realize that planet Remina is quickly speeding through space towards Earth, human Remina has reluctantly accepted an offer from a production company to become a marketed celebrity rather than just the girl whose name and face everyone knows. No sooner has she made her debut – complete with official fan club and sponsor – than everything goes to hell and people begin to blame her for the danger posed by planet Remina. Almost immediately a cult calling for her death springs up and Remina spends the rest of the book running from them with the help of various men.

It is important to note that Remina is, essentially, a damsel in distress for the whole book. That seems more to make a point than anything else, especially since Ito has written plenty of female characters in charge of their own destinies. (They tend to be evil, but that's an essay for another time.) From the moment her father named the planet in honor of her, Remina lost control of her own life; even making the decision to become an idol was only a token effort since she was three-quarters of the way there anyway. That she's protected by a series of men, three of whom are strictly in it for what they believe they can get from Remina, is a statement on how she's become property – that one of her swains turns against her when he sees her as no longer worthy is the most obvious mark of toxic fan culture, but we could read that the planet's interest in her to the point of destroying her world in a very literal sense is also a statement on how it feels it owns her. The one person who truly tries to help her is the one who doesn't know her as a public figure – but how well that will play out in the end is, rather literally, up in the air.

Horror and science fiction both have the potential to really make us think about our world and our actions by taking them to their extremes or projecting the worst possible outcome of current events. This one is a bit too on the nose with its imagery a lot of the time, with its rabble-rousers in pointed hoods, crowds waving pitchforks, and people strung up on crosses, and that does take something away. But it's still a good, chilling story about intentions gone sour and the way emotions can turn against someone with the snap of a thread.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

I come from the school of thought that the horror genre is at its best when it's about something. Yes, teens getting chased through the woods and graphic murders are all well and good, albeit not to my taste, but after all is said and done, isn't society the real horror? I think Junji Ito's 2005 horror manga Remina is about something, but I'm not yet quite sure what.

The opening pages of the manga depict a young woman on a cross, surrounded by an angry mob screaming for her death. Then it jumps back in time, to the same young girl sitting next to her father, an astrophysicist called Dr. Ogura, who has just discovered a new planet that arrived in our universe via a wormhole. He announces that he has named it Remina, after his teenage daughter, and the crowd goes wild, this time with adoration.

Remina becomes an instant celebrity, and though she was put off at first, she eventually embraces her newfound fame and becomes an idol. However, when it looks like the planet Remina is on a collision course with the Earth, the public starts to turn against her. It becomes clear that Remina isn't going to actually collide with Earth, but the truth is far more horrifying.

Like I said, I'm pretty sure Remina is about something, but I haven't quite sussed out what that is yet. The character is a completely passive figure, doing little more than fleeing and crying for her dad. Those who seemed to be allies – the man who convinced her to sign with a talent agency, the president of her fan club – betray her either immediately, or once they realize she won't give them exactly what they want. She only survives because of a group of cultists who insist that she must be killed the “proper” way, rather than torn apart by a lynch mob.

I feel like it's trying to say something about celebrity culture, or perhaps the way creators become inseparably associated with their work. Or maybe it's about how women suffer because of the decisions of men or… something. I'm not really sure. A less charitable modern reading could make it about cancel culture (which, for the record, isn't real and most people who are quote-unquote “canceled” come out the other side pretty much unharmed) focusing on inconsequential problems while the apocalypse looms, but considering the story was written in 2005, that's probably not it.

Or maybe, just maybe, trying to assign one canonical meaning to a fifteen-year-old horror story is a fool's errand, and the more interesting thing is how each reader may interpret it differently from their own lens. And Remina, it turns out, is very good for that, with everything in it going on. It's hard at times to decide what's more unnerving: the hordes of people using the girl Remina as a scapegoat for their existential terror, or the chilling reality of the planet Remina.