Hellstar Remina

• Main
• YMMV
• Fridge
• WMG
• Crowners
  • Awesome
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

Have you seen the rest of me?

An astronomer in a Japanese observatory, peering into his telescope one night, becomes the first person to witness a planet emerging from a wormhole. He names the planet after his daughter, Remina, and both become world-famous thanks to the unprecedented discovery. However, things take a turn for the worse when the planet enters a collision course with Earth... and the stars along the way seem to be disappearing...

A single-volume manga by Junji Ito. Like the rest of his works, it's filled to the brim with plenty of Body Horror, Eldritch Abominations, and general High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

Tropes used in Hellstar Remina include:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Mostly averted.
• An Aesop: Surprisingly enough for a Junji Ito story, it ends with a clear and uplifting one. No matter how badly things have gone, no matter how bleak the future seems, so long as you are still alive there is hope for something better.
• Apocalypse How: Class X-2
• Artistic License Physics: At one point, the earth is spun around so fast that the stars blur in the sky like the hyperspace lines in Star Wars. Aside from everyone not instantly dying from this, there is even a scene where a huge group of people are able to use the centrifugal force to fly through the air all the way around the earth and back, and some of them even survive falling back to the ground.
  • If the rest of the Earth moves with you, you're not going to die from a little spinning. But if only the earth is spinning, and the air isn't, then...
• Ass in a Lion Skin: Played deadly serious. One of Remina's tongues inserts itself into a discarded spacesuit to lure in the Mineichi family and make them let their guard down so it can devour them. It's likely the humanoid figures from the probe footage were actually a similar trick.
• Attempted Rape: Mineichi's son shows Remina the airtight room, claiming she'll be protected in there...and then tries to rape her. When she fights him off, he claims she came on to him, and Remina is thrown back to the mob.
• Badass Bystander: The Hobo. Oh so, so much.
• Big Damn Heroes: Goda gets a moment of this when he saves Remina in the midst of missiles and an earthquake. Then Mood Whiplash kicks in again.
• Bittersweet Ending: Technically a downer, but it's strangely uplifting...
  • It's uplifting because there's still hope. They're still alive, which means there's at least a chance for a better future, even if it would take a miracle.
• Body Horror: Don't take your helmet off on Planet Remina.
• Broken Bird: Remina falls a bit into this, especially after the death of her father.
• Burn the Witch: One of the many attempts to kill Remina.
• But What About the Astronauts?: Inverted. The bases on Mars and the Moon are the first to go.
• Chekhov's Gun: The bomb shelter.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The Mineichi family's long-lost elder son, now a hobo.
• Clothing Damage: By the end of the story, Remina has just enough of her dress left to cover all the important bits.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mineichi. He's happy to sponsor Remina to boost his popularity, but he's just as happy to turn her over to an angry mob once associating with her threatens him.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Without doubt. Although the ending ultimately defies the usual message of cosmic horror -- human life is indeed important, because with it comes hope, the potential for things to be better.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Remina, her father and the hobo are all tied to a cross so they can be sacrificed. The angry mob stabs her father with spears, and then lights them on fire.
• Dead Line News: An anchorman is reporting on the situation with planet Remina and the riots all over the world. Just after mentioning that an angry mob is hunting down Remina, he is attacked by two Malevolent Masked Men.

Cultist: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a message. We represent a concerned group of citizens who love Mother Earth. [...] There remains but one way to save the Earth. Find Professor Oguro and his daughter Remina. Destroy them.

• Death World: The planet's surface, a toxic jungle of aggressive alien flora, a horrifically caustic atmosphere, and strange figures looming out of the fog...
• Dirty Coward: Kunhiro Mineichi.
• Dying Like Animals: Mostly Chickens and Lemmings.
• Eldritch Abomination / Eldritch Location: Remina. The planet, not the girl.
• Explosive Decompression: From the inside out, for the poor human survivors who got attacked on Remina by the crewmember they purposely let die. Or they had all their internal organs crushed by the tentacle. Either way, it was painful.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Ikeuchi the astronomer, once he realizes just what Remina is.

Ikeuchi: MY EYES MET WITH REMINA'S!

• Guilt by Coincidence: Remina, who was born on the same day the planet emerged from the wormhole. This leads the public to believe she and her father are responsible for its appearance.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Yasumi does this by taking a knife in the back for Remina.
• How We Got Here: The manga begins with Remina tied to a cross, surrounded by a huge crowd and a couple of shadowy figures who want to kill her, while two monstrous eyes watch the scene from the sky.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: For the most part, anyway. Panicking at the thought of the coming apocalypse, the populace direct their anger towards Remina and her father, brutally murdering the latter and chasing the former around the earth.
  • Perhaps somewhat justified in that the angry masses were being egged on by te cultists, but otherwise yes - this trope is played fairly straight.

Bum: They get you, they don't, don't mean a thing to them. They'd never stop with you now that they got a taste for it.

• Informed Ability: Remina (the person) becomes famous because of her association with Planet Remina. She (reluctantly) uses the fame to become a famous idol. It's never made clear what she does beyond standing on a stage/in front of cameras and looking pretty. It's possible people are paying to see precisely that, making her career An Aesop about the inanity of fandom, or something.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Goda claims he'll save Remina's life, even if she loved Yasumi instead. He's lying.
• Jerkass: Kunhiro, who is clearly only tolerated by Remina and her friends because he's got the resources to help them out. Until the attempted rape, anyway.
• Left Hanging: As is common in both Cosmic Horror Stories and Junji Ito's, whatever the hell was planet Remina is never revealed. Nor is, for that matter, the identity of the first three cultists who wanted to sacrifice Remina, or why Goda had a tongue similar to planet Remina's when he was dressed as a cultist.
• Macross Missile Massacre / Nuke'Em: The military fires a few dozen nuclear warheads at Planet Remina's tongue. They bounce off and return to the sender.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The cultists, with their black cloaks and hoods similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan.
• More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: Planet Remina. Behold.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Planet Remina came to our region of space through a wormhole, therefore proving the phenomenon's existence. Not that such a breakthrough in astrophysics actually helps anyone...
• Oh Crap: The astronomers' reaction every time Planet Remina eats something.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Planet Remina came from Another Dimension through one of them. And if the title is an actual description...
• Planet Killer/Planet Eater: Obviously.
• The Reveal: The tenacious cultist is Goda, the president of Remina's fan club, and the hobo is the older Mineichi brother.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: once Planet Remina eats the Earth, the only survivors are trapped in an airtight fallout shelter drifting through the now-empty solar system. They have enough supplies to last a year.
• Shout-Out: That's no moon!
• So Beautiful It's a Curse: The other cause of poor Remina's many problems.
• Taking the Bullet: Yasumi to Remina.
• That's No Moon: See Shout-Out, above.
• The Stars Are Going Out: The first clue about Planet Remina's true nature is when astronomers notice that the surrounding stars "disappear".
• Torches and Pitchforks: And knives and fire axes and the occasional gun.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The story takes place in "July 20XX".
• What the Hell, Townspeople?: The entire planet turns against a teenaged girl, whom they'd previously adored, just because she shares a name with the planet that's going to eat them.
  • Equally odd is that she became a country-wide sensation just because the new planet was given her name. These people are very easily amused...
• Whole-Plot Reference: To When Worlds Collide, although in this case the giant planet about to destroy Earth and the planet that the rocket ships plan to escape to are one and the same.
• Witch Hunt: Invoked by the Cultists and mob when Remina is tossed outside by Kunihiro.
• Yandere: Goda.