The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

Mansect

What's It About? 

Humans grow and age. They change. But always we are the same person, the same creature. Not so with insects, whose powers of metamorphosis alter not only their shape and size, but also their very beings. And now, because of one young man's unhealthy obsession with bugs, humans also find themselves transformed into disgusting, decrepit, bloodsucking insect monsters!

Mansect has a story and art by Shinichi Koga, with English translation by Ryan Holmberg. Lettering by Sean Michael Robinson. Published by Smudge (March 11, 2025). Rated T.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

It pretty much goes without saying, but I'd still like to reiterate: do not pick up Mansect if insects gross you out or scare you. Seriously. Don't do it. I'm not particularly squeamish about bugs, but there were a couple of scenes in the latter part of the volume that had me feeling queasy, so just take that under advisement.

On the plus side, the visceral imagery of swarming insects or spiders in mouths do a great job of putting the truth to publisher Smudge's statement that horror master Junji Ito has cited Shinichi Koga as one of his influences. In fact, it's easy to see how Ito took a lot of Koga's tricks and techniques and applied them to his own work – from reaction faces to body horror to bizarre science, the roots of Uzumaki and Gyo are plain to see here. That's not to suggest that Ito stole from Koga, but rather that without Koga's manga, Ito may not have been able to push his own art and storytelling as far.

This 1975 book walks the line between ridiculous and scary. It is hard to take some of its more absurd statements with the gravity it clearly wants us to, such as the idea that human mummies are really just cocoons from which a newly evolved human will emerge, which is said and implied a few times with a straight face. Even in 1975, I can't quite imagine that having felt like a real possibility and not incredibly pulpy, but that is part of the fun of Koga's style of horror. He uses pulp elements to make points about human loneliness and feelings of abandonment, particularly in young men. All of the “mansects” in the book are men who have experienced some sort of profound sorrow, whether it's the loss of a family member or being ostracized at school for being too smart. The implication is that those forced out will be back with force, and as a theme, it works well, particularly for a horror story.

Even if we set aside the fashions, the art here is very much of its era. But that only enhances the story – there's detail when it needs to be there, and it's painstakingly etched onto the page. Grey tones are few and far between, which works very well for the “either or” sensibility that the story is going for. The translation is also solid, although the occasional swearing feels a little out of place. Not that people didn't swear in the 1970s; I'm sure they did. But rather they feel like they've been included to make the book sound more edgy, and I'm not sure if that's on the original text or the translator.

In any event, Mansect is an interesting work from an influential creator. It's not for the entomaphobic, but it's worth picking up if you're an Ito fan.

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Kevin Cormack
Rating:

In my experience, classic horror manga can be hit and miss. Sometimes too silly and twee to be truly disturbing, at other times the simple and raw imagery retains a true ability to disturb. Mansect by Shinichi Koga fits quite comfortably into the second category as an extremely effective and unsettling horror comic.

Although there's a central premise about a man who metamorphoses Kafka-style into an insect being, in structure this is more of a loosely-collected series of vignettes about the weird insect-related stories of a variety of characters. Koga's central theme is of evolution and the adaptation of human beings to a changing world. Much like how caterpillars enter cocoons and metamorphose eventually into moths or caterpillars, could humans, when the right conditions are triggered, also be made to change? Nominal main protagonist Hideo is a painfully shy social outcast, pining for his dead mother, berated by his relatives and neighbors for his shut-in lifestyle. Preferring the company of insects to other humans, he wishes he could transform into an insect, trading a shorter lifespan for the promise of a change to his life.

After an injury sustained following a cruel prank from his bullies, his skin begins to exude a spider-silk-like substance that covers his body like a chrysalis, and he eventually emerges… changed. For most of the rest of the book he becomes a deformed boogeyman, his supernatural and horrific influence spreading to a cast of other characters, some of whom also start to develop disturbing transformations of their own.

A young boy, stressed to the point of illness by his mother's obsession with his grades rapidly ages and dies. Another boy who lost his father is somehow reunited with his mummified corpse, which ten years later mutates into an insectile tree-like being that compels his son to join him in transfiguration.

While the stories don't always flow into one another very neatly, with some jarring perspective changes, overall Mansect is quite compelling, and effectively gross at all the right times. The body horror is particularly twisted, with characters' mangled forms dripping noxious fluids and spreading disgusting metamorphosis like a disease. Full of strange ideas and weird imagery, Mansect comes highly recommended for fans of classic manga horror.