After years of struggling, American publishers have finally figured out that horror manga can be successful and that they don't have to exclusively lean upon Junji Ito for that success.
Nowhere is that more evident than with the up-and-coming publisher Star Fruit Books. They not only established their own horror manga imprint but started licensing works by some of the horror mangaka who influenced Ito in the first place.
THE TOWN OF PIGS (Buta no Machi), by Hideshi Hino. First published in 1983 and first published in North America in 2022.
PLOT:
A young boy is horrified when a horde of marauding demons storm into his town, destroy every building, and imprison everyone but him. Their plan is as cruel as it is senseless: they will turn the townspeople into pigs for the sake of slave labor and food, and anyone who resists is gruesomely tortured to death. The young boy refuses to flee, choosing instead to try to find a solution - any solution - to this dilemma, all while evading a fate worse than death.
