Genre Horror Published by Kadokawa Shoten Published 1966 | Written by Kazuo Umezu English publisher IDW Publishing Volumes 1 | |
Reptilia is a Japanese horror manga written and illustrated by Kazuo Umezu. The manga, titled Hebishōjo (へび少女?, "Snake Girl") in the original Japanese, is a series of three stories involving a shapeshifting snake-woman who haunts a Japanese village. It was originally published in 1966 by Kadokawa Shoten.
Hebishōjo was published in English under the title Reptilia by IDW Publishing in 2007.
Reception
Ken Haley from Pop Culture Shock qualified the story as "simplistic", and he said it follows a formula since in the first two chapters Yumiko is always running away from the Snake Lady. Haley commented that Reptilia reminded him of "a classic Universal horror flick", adding that he did not want to put it on the same level as Lugosi's Dracula, or Karloff's Frankenstein but saying that it might appeal to the fans of monster flicks. He also stated that the manga is "nothing like most of the horror series [...] on the market" at the time. Joseph Luster of Otaku USA praised IDW's "fine presentation" of the book and the newly designed cover by Ashley Wood. Luster commented on the manga: "Per usual, one should expect a lot of raging delirium and paranoia from this Kaz[uo Umezu] story. The freakout moments, presented via gruesome splashes immediately after a slow turn of the page, are rendered with Umezu's typical attention to all the nasty details. Curled and wrinkled snake lips give way to venomous teeth that are ready to jump out at the reader, with the next page reverting to his eerily cute style that somehow makes horror that much more horrifying."