Story and Art by Yoshihisa Tagami
Originally published in Japan by Tokuma Shoten Publishing Company, 1987
English adaptation by Len Wein and Matt Thorn.
Touch Up Art and Lettering by Bill Spicer
Edited by Jerry A. Novick and John Togashi
Managing Editor Satoru Fujii
Executive Editor Seiji Horibuchi
Publisher Masahiro Oga
English version published by Viz Comics, 1990-1991 as Horobi #1-8 and Horobi Part Two #1-7.
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"The flesh of men . . . twisted by ancient horrors!"
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Review by William D. Tucker.
An accumulation of small anomalies and sinister omens in late 1980s Japan coalesces into a grandiose Apocalypse in the manga Horobi.
We begin with seemingly disconnected events and visions:
A couple on the run drives off a cliff and dies in a fiery TV-movie explosion in order to escape a hectoring disembodied voice.
This doomed lovers' escape is seen in the nightmares of a sexually frustrated environmental biology researcher.
This researcher gathers data on newly birthed mutant salamanders who keep dying off at regular intervals almost as if they were being born only to die . . .
. . . kinda like an illicit glimpse of a spectral monster by a couple having uncomfortable sex in the backseat of a car on a backwoods lovers' lane . . .
. . . an impossible one-eyed monster resplendent with writhing tentacles manifests like a horror movie villain to punish sex-out-of-wedlock . . .
A group of middle school students are torn to shreds by a looming demon with a horrid face after they discover a sacred object . . .
. . . that has seemingly gone missing from a Shinto shrine that was destroyed when the fleeing couple's car crashed into it . . .
Throughout, the various characters-scientists and psychics, for the most part-chat about the frustrations of dating and sex and love and lust. Horobi emphasizes abstruse, occult connections between binary gender conflicts of men and women; environmental degradation; huge phantasmal monsters appearing like Godzilla to wreak havoc upon Japan; the secret lineage of gods, demons, and humans down through the ages; secret conspiracies of ESP empowered factions fighting for control of the world; and human bodies merging with ancient, sacred artifacts like Japanese mythology filtered through a Lensman novel .
The rationalized, technocapitalist reality of the Bubble Economy bursts to reveal mythic forces that are pissed off at being displaced by science, technology, and materialism.
Humans become the tortured vessels of divine wrath.
Grotesque gods fight desperately to claw back their dominion upon the earth and enforce an Apocalypse Regime requiring a magnificent slaughter of all that lives.
Our cast of scientists and psychics are smart enough to wrestle with the bizarre mytho-poetic themes manifesting before their eyes. This serves as both exposition and drama in a clever twist since Horobi ends up being about the conflict between materialism and the supernatural. There's plenty of mayhem, but these dilemmas also require people to sit and think and talk about them as well. The scientists and psychics fight for and against the return of the Apocalypse Regime, and they struggle within themselves to decide how and why to make their stand.
Horobi, needless to say, bites off more than it can chew, but it is always fascinating, and I was pleasantly surprised by its conclusion. I think it makes for an interesting companion piece to the similarly apocalyptic Akira, another manga that uses psychic powers and mass destruction to express discontent and uncertainty about the future. Horobi is more concise, and its characters are more down-to-earth as opposed to the outlaws and oppressors of Akira.
Of course, good luck obtaining an official copy of Horobi, which has been out of print for decades.
I guess the sinister gods of the Apocalypse Regime don't want anyone reading it . . .
