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But the horror of ordinary life, like the horror of war and abuse and madness, is not the worst horror in Panorama of Hell. I mentioned earlier that in Buddhism, hell and heaven, life and death are all part of a cycle. This is a comforting thought, and one which gives an odd note of optimism to several of Hino's manga. Zoroku's Strange Disease (in the collection Lullabies from Hell), Living Corpse and the untranslated Kaiki! Shinin Shojo are all variations on the same theme: a person decays while they're still alive (or at least undead), their mind trapped in filthy oozing flesh. But at the end of these stories, there is a strange happy ending: when the protagonists finally rot to pieces, their souls rejoin the natural world.
15-year-old Mikako and Noboru attended middle school together and worked towards attending high school together, too. Though they claimed only to be “friends,” their connection was stronger than that. Mikako was drafted to take part in an expedition to track down and investigate aliens who had left their presence on Mars, however, leaving Noboru behind on Earth. Though they try to maintain contact with each other through super-long-range text messaging, the time lag caused by the increasing astronomical distances between them results in messages that take first days, then months, then finally years to pass between them. Can a relationship survive under such circumstances? And how long is Noboru willing to wait before moving on?
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