Hellstar Remina is a scifi horror manga by none other than Junji Itohttps://anilist.co/staff/97410/JunjiIto dealing with the dangers of facing the unknown and the all consuming descent into violence as humanity is pushed further and further into desperation in the face of certain death bearing down upon... 440https://i.ur.com/Shtbz1s.png ...bearing down upon... them. ...Guys. Guys can we just drop the act? Im sorry but can we just drop the act? Okay? Im gonna start over now. Now that were dropping the act. Glorious Schlock 440https://i.ur.com/xCVXfV7.png Hellstar Remina is a schlocky over the top horror manga with some scifi elements by Junji Ito featuring a planet with a face that can apparently move faster than the speed of light and can travel the entire distance of the Solar System in like a day. This manga is honestly amazing. I thought I had read enough of Junji Ito to the point he couldnt surprise me anymore. Ive long since realized his stories are messy various questions are usually never answered and Junji Ito in general just does not give a flying fuck. Which to be quite honest is a part of the reason why I love the man. Im gonna do a manga about killer fish or something and farting blob monstershttps://anilist.co/manga/30909/Gyo fuck it throw some weird supernatural shit in there and a RANDOM CIRCUS EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS IN ADMIST A FISH APOCALYPSE. SPIRALShttps://anilist.co/manga/30436/Uzumaki ARE INFECTING THE WORLD SATANS ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVEShttps://anilist.co/manga/88577/YoukaiKyoushitsu TRANSMITTED VIA A TEENAGER APOLOGIZING WILL CAUSE PEOPLES FACES AND BODIES TO MELT INTO A GORY MESS. But Hellstar Remina takes it to a whole new level. 440https://i.ur.com/xHM0rO5.png Okay first of all theres flying cars. Thats how you know this story is taking place in the future. There are flying cars. This story is centered around the discovery a brand new planet which the scientist who found it proceeds to name after his daughter Remina. For some reason the country proceeds to become obsessed with this completely normal girl who this planet has been named after and some guy keeps hounding her about becoming an idol because a planet was named after her and eventually she does. However thats not important. What IS important is the planet. Its after this that the scientists realize oh shit. OH SHIT. THE PLANET IS MOVING AT AN INSANE PACE AND ITS HEADING TOWARDS US. And as it continues onward in its journey its proceeding to eat all of the other planets that are in its way. 440https://i.ur.com/Wb288Yj.png PLUTO NEPTUNwait Pluto??? Oh right this manga was from 2005 which is a year before Pluto had its planet card taken awayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlutoIAUclassification. BUT ANYWAYS ITS EATING THE ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM. ITS EATEN MARS AND NOW ITS COME TO EARTH. OH NO ...Ive brought up the term schlock in numerous other reviews Ive done but look. There cannot be a more definitive example of schlock than a planet essentially eating the entire Solar System within the span of 24 hours. Remina the planet is apparently massive massive enough to where its weird tongue appendage is capable of pulling the entirety of Mars into it but its moving across the entire Solar System at the speed of light and... 440https://i.ur.com/zsqmplU.jpg Like Im not even a science person but like Im pretty sure if this object ate the rest of the Solar System then proceeded to eat the Earths Moon and then just sat directly right over Earth in its orbit... any combination of any of these things would probably immediately just fucking kill us all? But if youre at all sane your brain has already long since given up trying to make sense of anything before reaching this point. Its just beautiful nonsense. Because after this point the gravity on Earth is just completely and utterly fucked. Like theres a whole chase that goes on between the two surviving main characters and the mob of frenzied and panicked humans witnessing the APOCALYPSE and they are basically flying over entire countries. And apparently theyre moving so fast or over so much distance that they actually at one point... like they start the chase in Japan but then they reach Japan again. 440https://i.ur.com/ogXZXEd.png ...DURING THIS CHASE THEY LITERALLY COMPLETELY GO AROUND THE ENTIRE PLANET. AND AS THEYRE PASSING BY OTHER COUNTRIES PEOPLE FROM THOSE COUNTRIES ARE JOINING THE CHASE AND SCREAMING FOR REMINAS DEATH. Lets not even get into how the final surviving guy who escapes along with Remina girl is more or less a COMPLETELY RANDOM HOMELESS GUY she bumps into when hiding from the mob out for her blood. AND THE RANDOM HOMELESS GUY IS NOT ACTUALLY NAMED UNTIL THE FINAL COUPLE OF PAGES OF THE MANGA. How and why. How and why. 440https://i.ur.com/M51N3gV.jpg Also Its Actually Genuinely Pretty Okay Putting the insanity of everything about this manga theres more I didnt go into aside there actually is a lot of genuinely effective stuff in my opinion. Like the idea of this mob just descending into insanity as the apocalypse proceeds and becomes absolutely consumed by the idea that this girl who shares the name of their destroyer is to absolutely be blamed for their impending deaths... Its great Really great. Would probably be much much better if things were extended so its more of a gradual thing. As it stands she basically becomes an idol its learned that Remina the planet is coming for Earth and basically a random guy just throws out the idea that the scientist and his daughter is to be blamed for it or is directly causing the planet to come after them. 440https://i.ur.com/W20zAk0.png Yeah thats a great plan. My Nobel prize and my daughters status as a massively popular idol will do me a lot of good when the Hellstar EATS EARTH THE VERY PLANET UPON WHICH I LIVE. But you know I feel like an asshole for even suggesting that he should have went a different direction with this. I absolutely loved how fucking ludicrously insane this became. Which may be seen as a bit hypocritical if youve read another one of my manga reviewshttps://anilist.co/review/manga/2327 but the difference is that with this Junji Ito never even attempts to put on airs. He goes from one weird story to the next and if he gets bored during it hell throw some weird new development in there because again he does not give a fuck. Which I can absolutely respect. 440https://i.ur.com/IGqCu2H.png Be as weird and absurd as you want to be and Ill fucking happily marvel at your beautiful insanity. But the moment you apply a serious tone to it and if that serious tone does not work then its just a bunch of random nonsense that youve made annoying. I dont hate random weird nonsense. I hate it when its annoying. As this manga in my opinion proves it CAN be fun. Also there was genuinely some actually creepy stuff. Like the whole part where theyre exploring Remina the planet and the nightmarish landscape that turns out to be and like when they force one of the injured passengers to take off their helmet to test and see if the airs breathable... but then their face just fucking melts and becomes a part of Remina itself. Additionally the mob Actually I really fucking love the mob in GENERAL before the gravity button is just completely switched off... because as described before thats just when it snowballs into complete and utter insanity. 440https://i.ur.com/OPdrh6t.jpg Bonus: An Army of One 440https://i.ur.com/cfRZims.png I would be remiss if I didnt at least mention the included extra Junji Ito short story. Theres not a huge amount to discuss about it in comparison to the actual story of Hellstar Remina because Im pretty sure the reason for its existence is solely that Junji Ito just wanted to draw human corpses stitched together. ...Yeah thats pretty fucking weird and disturbing. Like a bunch of different other Junji Ito short stories the actual story leaves a lot to be desired because were never shown this group thats doing this and hijacking radio stations and dropping happy appearing posters... ...But I cant say Ive ever seen Christmas trees adorned with stitched together humans corpses. So once again you win this round Mr. Ito. You sick sick bastard. 440https://i.ur.com/996jo5T.jpg Conclusion Hellstar Remina is really really fucking entertaining overall. As much as I love Junji Itos insanity which makes up a lot of the manga there actually is also some good horror stuff in there. Its certainly not the best Junji Ito manga but I really actually loved this one. A 7.5 out of 10 or 75 out of 100. https://i.ur.com/85OOeFQ.png