500https://i.ur.com/bN1G6yw.png Starting out your horror manga immediately with a closeup of a face like that is a pretty good move... A 1983 horror manga by Hideshi Hinohttps://anilist.co/staff/99735/HideshiHino the Panorama of Hell was a kind of shocking read. As I of course did not know all the background information what with everything Hideshi Hino went through in his real life. I started reading this and I was immediately met with a very strange and immediately offputting painter character talking about how hes started work on his magnum opus. The Panorama of Hell. And to paint it hes willing to drink hydrochloric acid because after all he does all of his paintings in blood... 440https://i.ur.com/uhJqZOL.png I figured it was just going to be your typical horror manga. I actually even thought it had a pretty good setup. A painter looking to paint paintings of hell is obviously on the look out for just absolute horrible scenes of gore and just humanity being awful... hence hes going to be telling the reader horror stories. And for a while thats pretty much all this manga is. Our painter friend shows us around his house introduces us to his family points outside to where the guillotine is located and the local beheadings happen... Thats pretty cool right? I love watching these as I paint 440https://i.ur.com/gAKf1Ad.png Horrors supposed to disturb. Its supposed to make you uneasy. Gross you out or disgust you. And to give credit where credit is due to Hideshi Hino its been a while since Ive so quickly felt uneasy towards a character in a horror manga. Or rather towards the whole setting. Why the fuck are there fireworks going off to accompany beheadings? Or rather why is happening right outside of the guys house? Is this whole thing literally taking place in Hell itself??? 440https://i.ur.com/ImgwYyX.png Probably. Ive always been of the opinion that if your horror mangas entire purpose is going to be gore and just being as disgusting as possible you really gotta go for it. And holy shit does Hideshi Hino go for it. Theres just so much gore and awfulness. 440https://i.ur.com/YTcUdhE.png The stand out example that I will probably remember forever being the Hell Tavern where the painters wife works. All of her customers are the recently dead who had their heads chopped off by the guillotine. But oh no how are they going to eat their meals Which is just their own severed flesh. They have no heads which means they have no mouths Thats okay. The matron of this place will just cut a nice little hole in each of their necks. Now they have mouths again 440https://i.ur.com/pOAutui.png Not gonna lie I kind of legitimately cringed. You can show me dozens of drawings of people getting beheaded at the guillotine and its nothing. But cutting a hole in a throat... let alone theyre already headless corpses... Genuinely was unpleasant to see. Which was nice. And then... then we get to the real shit. https://i.ur.com/zKocDfM.png This is not the first time Ive read a horror manga and it suddenly incorporated World War II into it. But as I mentioned at the start this part sort of also takes on an autobiographical tone to it because Hideshi Hino and his family really did flee Manchuria. 440https://i.ur.com/cA7EeMu.png Plus the stuff about his grandfather and father... hell when you get down to it all of this crazy ass gore and fucked up shit is coming directly right out of Hideshi Hinos head. The man may as well as be the painter character himselfoh now I get it. 440https://i.ur.com/ORMNCXx.png This is really when this manga fully seized my interest. Dont get me wrong the over the top depictions of Hell and gore early on were fun but... the painter literally sculpts a statue of the mushroom cloud rising from Hiroshima and douses it in blood and starts praying to it for misfortune to happen. And the painter himself said that he believes the mushroom cloud to be his true father because as it was rising it sent a light bolt over to Manchuria to cause his mother to have an immaculate conception. Holy shit. 440https://i.ur.com/5YhPMcR.png I actually became really fond of the Hell Painter character. Hes just so unbelievably evil and crazy. The ultimate hell painting he decides he wants to see is Conclusion I cant say Hideshi Hino is my favorite horror mangaka but Im definitely warming up to him. 440https://i.ur.com/abPNEFy.png This manga has one of the best endings for a horror manga Ive seen in quite a while. Its a sufficiently gory and horrible depiction of Hell whether or not thats actually where the manga actually is supposed to take place. And to top it all off you have the autobiographical angle to it and while Im sure some of it was exaggerated... 440https://i.ur.com/5yMrJ9U.png The guy definitely is a rightful owner of a yeah thats why I do horror card. I give the Panorama of Hell a 7.5 out of 10 or 75 out of 100. 500https://i.ur.com/hGLIbYP.png