Title: Hinatsugimura
Author: Aki Shimizu
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Genre: Horror
Publication Date: February 17, 2026
The Story
There is a rumor that Hinatsugi Mountain is cursed. People who wander too deeply into the mountain end up getting spirited away. This rumor makes it the perfect topic for a school’s supernatural club. As they traverse the mountain, it begins to rain. Instead of seeking cover, they attempt to climb back down when one of the girls, Reina, falls and injures herself. A young girl stumbles across them and offers to take them to her village to heal her. When they arrive, they are treated to some food; however, the food consists of teeth, hair, eyeballs, and other human parts.
Minato knows that they need to get out of there, but when he goes to retrieve Reina, half of her face is missing! The woman of the manor captures them, and they are torn apart limb from limb and given to her daughter Kiriko, who is a patchwork doll. As time goes on, more and more people who climb the mountain disappear. This continues until we rejoin Minato, who is being held within a cell. He’s told that he has been chosen to become Kiriko’s next husband; however, when it comes time for the ceremony, Kiriko has a different wish!
Characters
While there are many characters, only three of them became the focus of the story. Two of which tie directly into one another.
While Minato can be seen as one of the main characters, he didn’t truly feel like one. We did get some backstory on him, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before… in fact, it’s stereotypical. Asian parents who want their child to be perfect academically, then get super strict when they fall short of expectations. We’ve seen it before. This allows Kiriko to sense a similarity between them. Outside of that, Minato just felt as if he was there to move the plot along.
Kiriko, on the other hand, had a much deeper backstory to her because it also related to her mother. Her mother fell in love with a samurai and became pregnant; however, with the lack of medical knowledge back then, they thought that she was cursed when she came down with a fever. She claims that she gave birth to an underdeveloped baby, but judging from the text, we can understand what truly happened. The samurai was disgusted at the sight of his malformed child, blaming her for everything. They tried to kill her, but she escaped into the mountains with it. I’m sure you can piece the rest together here for yourself.
Final Thoughts
With only seven total chapters, I felt that this story would feel incredibly rushed, but it wasn’t… to an extent. Even though I felt that it told a complete story, some parts did suffer because of its short nature. There was a storyline in the middle of the volume that came to a sudden halt, not receiving any follow-up whatsoever. This was the only part of the story that felt rushed because it simply didn’t continue. It was as if the story opened up with Minato and his club, pivoted to a side story, got told the manga was getting dropped, then swapped back to finish things off.
If that’s what happened, I would say that they did a good job wrapping things up with what they were given, but some of the continuity suffered because of it. Be that as it may, this was still a solid story from what we were given. The story did a good enough job to build enough sympathy for Kiriko to make you care about her, and while the ending can be left up to interpretation, if it is interpreted in a certain way, then there wasn’t much to suggest how it happened. Still, it wasn’t a complete and total head-scratcher, though, as there was enough backstory for you to figure out how it concluded on your own.
In any event, it was decent, and with it being a horror series, there is plenty of uncensored gore to sate your bloodthirst, if that’s what you read horror for. The story had great potential to dive even deeper, but the short nature put a halt to it. It was still worth the time to read it, though. If you’re looking for a quick horror hit, this one should be good enough for you to spend an hour or so on.
Overall Rating: 3/5
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
