Ningen to Kaibutsu no Aida/Noroi no Chikashitsu

Ningen to Kaibutsu no Aida, a legendary masterpiece widely regarded as one of the most harrowing works in the history of rental manga, is finally here!



A brother and sister who lost their parents in a horrific plane crash. The only two remaining family members. Walking side by side, hand in hand. If only they could have found happiness even amidst their misfortune. But the younger brother no longer had arms or legs.



This is the tragic story of Yuuichi—the younger brother who miraculously survived the accident despite being burned over his entire body and losing all four limbs—and his older sister, who watches over him and lives by his side. Though she devotedly cared for Yuuichi, who could not survive on his own, the older sister grew weary of the never-ending burden. One day, she finally reached her limit and found herself consumed by an unthinkable desire she had thought she had sealed away deep within her heart.



“Can I never be happy for my brother’s sake?”



“If only Yuichi weren’t here…”



What is a human? What is a monster? A hopeless Friday begins.



The C/W work is Noroi no Chikashitsu, from the special supplement to Shogakukan’s Shougaku 4-nensei magazine, August 1968 issue.



Rieko is a girl raised healthily by her kind parents. One day, while playing with friends, she enters Inuzuka—a place her mother had strictly forbidden her to enter. In the basement of Inuzuka, Rieko encounters an eerie creature with the face of a human and the body of a dog, and, overcome with terror, she faints. Found in a grassy field, Rieko wakes up in her own room. When she tells her parents what had happened at Inuzuka, they're evasive and simply say they know nothing about it.



However, that night, Rieko learned a shocking truth from her parents’ conversation. It turned out that the monster with a human face and a dog’s body was none other than Takeshi—the severed half of Rieko’s twin, who had been born with two heads ten years earlier! Ten years ago, feeling sorry for Takeshi—who had lost his body to save Rieko’s life—her parents had transplanted his head onto a dog’s body in hopes of prolonging his life even slightly and spending as much of that limited time together as possible. With such a mismatched head and body, it was clear it wouldn’t last long, and everyone assumed Takeshi would soon live out his natural life… Cursed screams echo through the cursed basement. This is another must-see, controversial work on par with Ningen to Kaibutsu no Aida.



It’s also intriguing to note the apparent thematic similarities to Sugashima’s phantom work, Soutou no Shoujo—a story introduced as his next project in the publication guide at the end of Tokyo Mangasha’s Kion but never actually released.



(Source: Mandarake, translated)